Motorola has announced Project Ara that is aimed at developing a phone platform that is modular, open, customizable. The project that is similar to Phonebloks is led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which is an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. The design for Project Ara consists of an endoskeleton (endo) and modules. The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place and the module can differ from a application processor to a new display, keyboard, an extra battery or anything.
Project Ara would be engaging with the Phonebloks community right from the development process. You can sign up to be Project Ara research scout to help the project team learn about how people make choices. You can sign up to be a member of the Ara Scout at dscout.com/ara. Motorola says hundreds of most active scouts will receive Project Ara at no cost when it launches, and all scouts will receive an exclusive discount.
In a few months they will also send an invitation to developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform. The Module Developer’s Kit (MDK) is expected to be released sometime this winter. More details about the project would be revealed in the next few months. Here is a demo of Phonebloks that is made of detachable bloks so that you can easily replace it if a block is getting old. Project Ara is based on the same concept.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAw7vW7H0c