Getting exactly what you want: Project Ara

[chrisbell]

Google is trying to stay on top. It is already forcing all business owners to get Google Plus accounts and doing everything it can to get a monopoly in the search engine business, but the technology company wouldn’t mind having a monopoly on everything. Unfortunately, the smartphone competition is fierce keeping them on their toes. Smartphone manufacturers had better watch out. Google may end up on top after all.

Motorola project Ara

Motorola, a smartphone manufacturer owned by Google, announced a project called Project Ara, according to BBC News. The project, which has been in the making for over a year, would allow you to pick any hardware you want for a new phone. More or less, it is a way to build your own smartphone. You pick the exact components you want in the phone, and Motorola will sell it to you. Instead of wishing you had all the features that come in all the phones, you can literally piece together all the best things of the phones you love. Maybe it won’t give Google a monopoly, but it will definitely give them an edge on the competition.

How it works

The project works by allowing you to start with a skeleton of a phone. Motorola will be letting developers create their own gadgets to piece with the phones in just a few months. More or less, you can put together any kind of phone you want, almost like legos, according to Chris Green of Davies Murphy Group. No more do you have to wait for the perfect phone for you to come out. Instead, you can make the perfect phone.

Opportunity for developers

This isn’t just a great opportunity for customers to build their phones but also for developers to create different gadgets and pieces for phones. If you have a great idea of something you wish your smartphone could do, try and make it happen. Soon, the days of developers selling their ideas to manufacturers will be gone. The days of everyday inventions will soon arrive.

No Apples to add here

The only real problem people have with it is that you can’t add Apple components into the phone. It would be really convenient if you could create an android phone with access to iPhone music and apps but without all the heavy restrictions Apple puts in all its products. Unfortunately, Apple would never agree to partner up to create the ultimate smartphone. If you want an Apple phone without restrictions, you’ll just have to jailbreak it.

Get ready businesses

As a business, you should be preparing right now for what might come from this change. People building their own phones could mean many more opportunities for marketing. Try and stay ahead of the curve, so you are always hitting the right markets for your audience. If you are on your game, then you will be able to monopolize off the change almost just as much as all the developers out there.


Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24726071

[Dattebayo]

The project [...] would allow you to pick any hardware you want for a new phone. More or less, it is a way to build your own smartphone. You pick the exact components you want in the phone, and Motorola will sell it to you.

This should be renamed project common sense or project good business practice for lazy/non-computer literate folks. And only if they don't include all that bloatware that always comes with such devices...

[WDRacing]

The project [...] would allow you to pick any hardware you want for a new phone. More or less, it is a way to build your own smartphone. You pick the exact components you want in the phone, and Motorola will sell it to you.

This should be renamed project common sense or project good business practice for lazy/non-computer literate folks. And only if they don't include all that bloatware that always comes with such devices...

I concur!

[krash]

inb4 Jesda ruins my hopes and dreams

[gwoods]

Google and Motorolla are both my customers I have no doubt that 50 years from now I will be shopping at Google instead of Amazon or Walmart and driving a I iHovercar

[MinisterofDOOM]

More or less, it is a way to build your own smartphone. You pick the exact components you want in the phone, and Motorola will sell it to you. Instead of wishing you had all the features that come in all the phones, you can literally piece together all the best things of the phones you love.

I'll believe that when it happens (and it won't). This is not a new problem, nor is it in any way unique to phones. This is the very very old problem if integrated vs discrete components. Phones are tiny. They are INCREDIBLY densely packed, to the point where the very layering of the components has become a bragging point. You will NEVER be able to "pick the exact components you want in the phone" and just order it. Laptops have worked this way for DECADES, and nothing has changed, despite similar outcry. If you want compact computers, the biggest sacrifice is variability in choice. There is simply no way to affordable, practically, cost-effectively, or efficiently allow people to design exactly the phone they want and sell it. It would require complete repackaging of the device for every customer. Unless you're designing it to support "everything" and then peeling back to the basics to allow "choice" (in which case it's really no such thing, but rather artificial restriction) it simply isn't possible.

It will never happen. And if it does even come close to happening, it'll be more like "choose whether you want this particular manufacturer's high-end CPU rather than the low-end one, whether you want NCF or IR, whether you care about wireless charging and whether you care about always-awake voice commands" (a-la Moto X). The answer to all of those things will be "yes" for anyone who knows enough about smartphones to actually "build" one, which means there's no point in customizing in the first place: just build a high-end phone with everything and call it a day.

Hardware's not the only problem. This would step RIGHT on the toes of one of Android's biggest software benefits: community support. There are already a lot of mass-produced phones that get poor support for various reasons. It's hard to get this display chipset working with that ARM chipset, or it's hard to get NFC working usably with that one. Or it's hard to get GPS to work at all. Things like that. Yes, one of LINUX's strongest assets is the modular kernel design, but Android isn't able to take advantage of that because it's so lightweight and purpose-built compared to full-on Linux distros. You flash the OS you need, and use it. There's no LKM support or anything like that. Which means if you build a phone with a weird hardware combination, you're basically on your own for software. And that CAN be okay: it's pretty easy these days to build exactly the OS you want for exactly the hardware you want. But you've still lost the COMMUNITY support: the wide-range mass-user testing and bug reporting, the strengths of having an "official maintainer" with your OS of choice building for exactly your phone. If no one else has your chipset and sensor combination, you're going to be building for yourself, maintaining for yourself, and finding bugs for yourself. Not only is that less convenient, it's also less fun. A big part of the ownership experience for many Android phone owners is the same as that of many Linux owners: the community development experience.

[Looneybomber]

MoD comes in with technical prowess and kills this thread. I thought of the manufacturing impossibilities and forgot all about software issues.