Swap Project Ara Gray Phone modules when turned on
As good as the OnePlus 2 will no doubt be, I am really looking forward to the release of the first modular smartphone from Google, early next year – and the news keeps on getting better.
The Google Project Ara, or Gray Phone, is expected to arrive in 2015.
Google are still playing their cards close to their chest but it has just been revealed that changing parts will not only be easy but can be done at any time, even when the phone is switched on.
Project Ara team leader Paul Eremenko announced at LCU 14 that the swappable smartphone will be really easy to modify. The whole point of Project Ara is to do to hardware what apps have done to software – made them more accessible.
This should mean more affordable hardware that can be added to Ara as-and-when required and when you have the money to do so.
Even with current microSD storage, if you want to slot in a new card you will most likely have to power down your phone first – not so with Ara. You will be able to pack in another memory module on the fly and, since other units are the same, you should mean that you could swap out your camera for a more suitable one for each photo – say a different lens type.
Even the battery can be hot-swapped thanks to a reserve held by the phone. It sounds like only screen and CPU will not be “hot-swappable”.
Project Ara will feature a modified version of Google’s Android L operating system and is expected to be out in January 2015.
Check out the video below.
[youtube id=”IQhbM55F23U”]
