Motorola Ara - a project to create modular smartphones

Motorola announced the launch of the Ara project, in which it is planned to develop modular smartphones consisting of replaceable elements. Owning such a device, the user will be able to replace, for example, the screen, processor, photomodule, etc.




Motorola describes the project as follows: “this is a free, open hardware platform for creating modular phones. “We want to do the same for hardware platforms as Android did for software: create a living ecosystem for third-party developers, lower the threshold for entry, increase the pace of innovation and significantly reduce the development time.”



Ara will work as follows: an endoskeleton (endo) and modules will be created. Endo will be the structural basis on which the modules will be placed. Anything can be used as modules: from the latest processor to a new display, keyboard, battery, heart rate monitor, or anything you can think of.



In fact, Motorola has been working on Ara for over a year, but only recently Dave Hackens, creator of Phonebloks, met with Motorola executives. During the conversation, it turned out that the views of the company and Dave are largely the same. Motorola did a huge technical job, in Dave created a huge community of users who dream of a modular smartphone. In total, this is a huge force to start open cooperation.

Link to a post from Motorola: Goodbye Sticky. Hello Ara
Link to the Phonebloks project: phonebloks.com