Indie-Resource.com

This is exciting news to me! Project Ara prototypes are out! I have been following this for over a year now, since it appears to me to be the next major evolution of the smartphone. As the article explains, Project Ara is an idea for a new way to build smartphones so that they are modular! This would mean that each component of the phone could be snapped together like Legos to make a functioning device. When a new processor, GPU, camera or memory size comes out that you want, instead of upgrading your entire device and sending the old one to a landfill in China, you could simply buy the new component, pop out your old one and slide in the new one. This has the potential to actually move smartphones and tablets to be less consumer electronics and more like your desktop.

Personal computers largely started much like smartphones today, where you bought a black box for a set price, and once an upgrade was on the market you wanted, you trashed the whole computer and bought the whole new system. Moving to the IBM compatible standard in the late 80's created standard hardware interfaces that allowed companies to become hyper-focused on specific components, which ended up creating companies like nVidia, ATI and many others. Before that, these component companies were spending much of their research and development time making sure their parts were compatible with the variety of computer systems made by the manufacturers that contracted them. Once the interfaces were standardized, they could shift that R&D to pure performance tuning and could sell directly to the public on a larger scale. It also obviously saved consumers tons of money since they no longer were replacing their case, keyboard, monitor and other parts that were working fine that the new system did not upgrade.

I am hoping this works and we could possibly see a similar shift in the smartphone and tablet market

I know it's still a prototype but I think it's absolutely hideous. It looks to be mighty expensive as well if you have a custom case and you want your components to match.

Yeah, I am sure they are going to work to make it nicer looking once the design slows down. Also, they decided to show one with a horrible custom color and photo printed on it, which I don't really understand.

I don't think cases will be a huge problem once these are on the market, since the sizes are going to be pretty standard.

I hope the prices are not ridiculous like Google Glasses... I don't get these companies, that prefer to flop something instead of lowering the price for the masses...
So for some glasses that make phone calls and stuff I have to pay the same price of a high-end PC? Sure thing, I'll be right there -.-

I would buy this ARA project for a maximum of 200$.

vitinho444 wrote:I hope the prices are not ridiculous like Google Glasses... I don't get these companies, that prefer to flop something instead of lowering the price for the masses...
So for some glasses that make phone calls and stuff I have to pay the same price of a high-end PC? Sure thing, I'll be right there -.-

I would buy this ARA project for a maximum of 200$.

I think that's a little cheap haha. It's hard to find a decent phone brand new for that price unless it's obsolete now and chances of this phone becoming obsolete is pretty rare since it seems like pretty much all of it is upgradable much like a PC

I was referring to 200$ as a base for a decent level components, maybe 1ghz with 1gb ram phone. But yeah.. :/ I doubt it will be that cheap.

vitinho444 wrote:I was referring to 200$ as a base for a decent level components, maybe 1ghz with 1gb ram phone. But yeah.. :/ I doubt it will be that cheap.

It really isn't about the price of components. They will obviously be much less than the cost of a new phone, and will instead be around the price of that specific component. So a high-end 2.5 ghz octo-core CPU will be very expensive, but it will at least be more of an option since the phone manufacturers can offer it as an upgrade rather than tying a whole model of phone to it.