Link to Project Ara Developer Edition page: https://atap.google.com/ara/

r/android seems unimpressed because many of the initially removable components are no longer removable (at least, as indicated by marketing videos) [1]. However, it seems silly to me to get upset about this because this is a Developer Edition and Google clearly had to limit the scope of the project in order to ship. Though, one wonders if there are physical limits causing the CPU, GPU, battery, and display to be non-removable. We'll see.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4k9bwr/project_ara...

> because many of the initially removable components are no longer removable

It's not that "many" of the components aren't available, it's all the components anyone cared about. It seems like you won't be able to swap out the CPU, GPU, RAM, battery or screen. So if you want a phone with a faster CPU, you need to buy an entirely new phone, which goes against all the hype for these modular phone plans.

From the venturebeat article linked below: "The idea of Ara is to ensure that your devices are future-proofed, meaning that the whole “upgrade every two years” mentality is no longer a thing. ". This certainly isn't true. Though I guess it could be slightly cheaper, since you would be just buying a frame, and could pop in your old camera module.

There also aren't any modules being shown that can clue you into what the potential is. The only thing recognizable is a camera module, and what I'm guessing is a small e-ink display., every other module is just an unlabeled colored/textured rectangle. In every article about it the only example ever used is a camera.

The module idea actually seems really cool, a standard way for anyone to create hardware for your phone. But I think the "modular phone. Upgrade one bit a time. Never obsolete." marketing angle is a blatant lie.

Edit: I agree with one of the jokes in that Reddit thread about this

    Here's what I want for my six modules:
      1. Camera
      2. Battery
      3. Battery
      4. Battery
      5. Battery
      6. Battery

Because really, what else is there?

Different types of cameras such as night vision or infrared heat camera. Also laser range finder modules or something capable of stereoscopic vision. Altimeters. Barometric pressure sensors. Communicator modules for other peripherals when Bluetooth isn't appropriate. Temperature sensor. Wind speed device (would have to protrude beyond the phone's edge so wind can pass through). Light sensor for automatic white balance measurements. Chording keypads to enable more interesting input for power users.

Anyways that's just a stream of conscious I came up with in 5 minutes of noodling. There is potential. Maybe not as much for day to day, but definitely options for professionals that make their living outdoors.

Having access to those things sounds brilliant. I'd guess that while we might see Ara on the market one day, we're also likely to see standard Android phones with a single Ara accessory port on the back, perhaps replacing the built in camera. That gives users the swappable modules advantage of Ara with the cost/weight/durability benefits of a typical device.

Medical sensors -- eg. portable blood analyzer.

Theranos can pivot!

>but definitely options for professionals that make their living outdoors

My thinking was also that this makes a great platform for professional tools that are currently standalone devices. Multimeters, surveying equipment, thermal inspection tools. Maybe a microscope or even a microfluidics device.

And Google will be glad to deliver all those types of cameras, because they can't bring StreetView in your home - yet.

So ... streetview requires nightvision and won't be happy with cameras beeing there allready?

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.)

> It's not that "many" of the components aren't available, it's all the components anyone cared about. It seems like you won't be able to swap out the CPU, GPU, RAM, battery or screen.

The article addresses this directly:

"After lots of research and testing, they made a big decision: rather than turn every single piece of the phone into modules, from the processor to the RAM to the hard drive, they’d consolidate all that into the standard frame. They found that people don't care about, or want to think about, the processor in their phone. And they especially don't want to worry about it being compatible with all their apps. Users just want a good phone with good specs that does all the basics well, and then they want a place to play on top of that."

They did the research. It turned out that people didn't care about those components after all.

If you think your research is better, build the product.

Did the research ask how many people wanted to carry around a bag/box of spare modules they might need during the day, or how big the bag/box would need to be?

>If you think your research is better, build the product.

Or not.

I'm all for experimentation, but hardware is always tricky, and the original idea - open source hardware - has always been problematic.

It looks like the cost of module development is going to be way outside the budget of individuals, security is going to be an issue, and unless the platform builds a big ecosystem very quickly - possible, but unlikely - there's going to be little incentive for companies to join up.

ARA makes perfect sense as a concept phone for hardware research, but I'm less convinced it can ever be a viable popular commercial product.

> If you think your research is better, build the product.

I've been saying since the announcement of Ara (and even earlier with that Phonebloks Kickstarter) that it will not work.

So if you'd like to put it that way... I guess my research was better. Also, I have not built a modular phone, but neither has Google. Since I didn't spend 2 years not building the phone, I guess my non-existent product is better too.

And you don't find it curious that what made the original concept implausible suddenly is found to "not be desired" by costumers?

I find it entirely reasonable that research shows consumers don't want products that don't work very well. The text I quoted explicitly called out that it would be a software compatibility nightmare.

So then what modularity do they think consumers do care about?

And yes, that was exactly what everyone was saying from the beginning: it's infeasible to do what Ara was dreamt up to do.

Sure, I can find that section of the article for you:

"Which brings us to the most important question still facing Project Ara: what the hell kind of modules are people going to build? Woolridge and his team took their user research to the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona in February, where they started showing it to potential partners: carriers, tech companies, fashion brands, everyone.

Turns out they all have ideas. Better speakers, flashlights, panic buttons, fitness trackers, projectors, app-shortcut buttons, kickstands, a million other things. Some are incredibly high-tech—pro-level cameras clearly fascinate the Ara team, and they all get excited at the idea of replacing my hideous tape recorder with a microphone module—but some aren’t. Bertrand shows me a small compact case for storing makeup, and a small hollow pillbox. They’re also building “style” modules, which don’t do anything except look nice. Apparently, when given the opportunity to make anything that plugs into their phone, people come up with some pretty useless ideas."

> potential partners... Carriers, tech companies, fashion brands

Aka the people whose weird priorities got us to this position (needing/wanting Ara) to begin with?

Id go for two cameras, and try to hack some 3D recording out of it.

and replacement inertial sensors, those always seem to break on me.

edit: actually, it would be cool to put an FPGA on there.

What would you do with it?

In theory a lot of things. Depending on how much hardware you could synthesize, you'd only be limited by your IO and size. You could have a module that is able to be modified by software.

off of the top of my head:

SDR, Storage, bigger/better Speakers, more USB/whatever ports, HDMI output, video Projector, JTAG (why not?), RFID

edit: oh, temperature/barometer built into the device would be pretty cool too.

From the article:

>“The key here,” Camargo says, “is to develop the functionality you don’t get on your smartphone today. I’ll give you the smartphone, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

It sounds to me the reason their "dev kit" includes so much "out of the box" is to spur development of newer more interesting modules.

Like you said, we all know that camera, storage, battery modules will be there, but they are pushing to see what others can come up with (blood sugar testers, credit-card readers, touchpads, temperature sensors, etc...)

2 Cameras for recording in 3D? ;-)

I haven't read the Reddit comments (and I don't even own an Android phone) but... aren't those the things you would MOST want to upgrade in the future?

Bingo. SOC, screen and battery define the longevity of the device. Being able to upgrade those piecemeal moved mobile devices closer to that of the desktop PC (frankly if we could move the CPU onto a daughterboard i would be dancing with joy).

Also, screens are what most often break on a device, because glass don't deal well with sudden applications of force. Making them modular with a defined attachment system would be godsend for many butterfingers and parents.

All in all, what they are presenting now is things that can be done USB, WIFI or bluetooth.

At least the modules will get power from the case (I assume) so they won't all need their own batteries and chargers. That could be handy.

Given the economics of today's limitations, yes, that would be.

But if you knew, for example, that your camera could be used with your next two CPUs, you might make a longer term investment in a higher-quality camera.

I think OEM's pushed Google a bit, not wanting to kill the upgrade cycle. One sign for that is the non-removable battery - which is easy to do technically.

I'm not so sure. Look at the module sizes the largest one at the bottom is still much smaller than modern batteries. If the battery had to be in one of those they'd have issues with longevity. Maybe allowing additional packs but trying to fit a main battery into it is going to require compromises somewhere.

They couldn't even make the battery removable? That's pretty weak for something touted as a modular phone.

the core of the phone contains a non-removable battery. That doesn't mean you can't attach supplementary battery modules to it.

You can attach a supplemental battery pack to any phone, but many normal phones (such as every phone I've ever owned) have replaceable batteries. It seems hard to believe that if you're going to make a phone specifically touted as being modular you'd be less modular than other phones already on the market.

The original Ara prototype had a small internal battery to allow hot-swapping of the battery modules. I'm not sure if this has changed and it's now more of a standalone battery, but it used to only give you about 5 minutes of power.

One of the big criticisms of the LG G5's claims of "modularity" was that the battery couldn't be hot swapped, so it seems that some level of internal battery is necessary for modularity.

if they are making all battery removable, most probably they will have to start a support line for everyone who can't power on their device :) Cust A - "Why can't I power on my device? I charge it"

Except that they had a more modular device booting on stage a year ago.

And shipping this as a dev device will limit the scope of ideas developers will implement.

Actually it looks like the reason their dev kit includes so much in the "base" is exactly the opposite reason:

> “The key here,” Camargo says, “is to develop the functionality you don’t get on your smartphone today. I’ll give you the smartphone, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

They are including an entire phone as the "base" in order to get developers to create new and interesting modules for it.

Everyone and anyone can make a battery, or an SD card reader, they want to see what other things people can come up with.

Hrmf, between this and all the talk about a module marketplace i wonder if they are trying to avoid a "PC clones" scenario. Meaning that if all they control is the endo, and someone else releases a clean room implementation of same, Google's control of the ecosystem goes out the window...

It seems to me that treating the frame containing these components as just another module is reasonable enough. That said, the battery is the number one item I want to be easily replaceable. Not only is it a big help to be able to carry spares, but Li-ion batteries degrade over time and put a limit on the useful life of a device even if its capabilities still suit the user.

I like that they showed a pill box application. That's the one I could use in my smartphone.

It doesn't have to be just a passive box; it could have a companion app and door open sensor. I'm using a separate device for that: http://www.amazon.com/Reizen-Vibrating-Five-Alarm-Pill/dp/B0...

> many of the initially removable components are no longer removable

'many' is CPU+GPU+RAM, which was going to be a single module, but now is part of the frame, right?

That basically kills it for me. The only reason I was interested was to be able to transform a phone into a larger tablet just by swapping the screen module out.

Oh well.

There's no reason why you couldn't add a "tablet screen" module. It doesn't have to replace an existing feature; a module could suppliment a feature.

You are correct, and this has been done already: http://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sName=Padfone

The disadvantage is that you are still carrying the smaller screen without using it, so it adds to the weight/volume of the device.

Non-wired link: http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/20/google-working-on-consumer...

Not going to disable my adblocker just to read a story. I consider it to be an anti-malware tool at this point.

What adblocker do you use? I use google-chrome on linux with uBlock Origin addon and the site renders perfectly for me.

The addon says it blocked 32 elements.

I believe that uBlock Origin includes an Anti-Anti-Adblock filter by default in the filter list.

Not by default, but I have it enabled and it does block the Wired one. Just wait until we need anti-anti-anti-anti-adblock!

due to the proliferation of nodeJS and how horrible malvertising has become, our children will only know Javascript as a backend programming language.

I'm using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts and wired is non-functional for me.

If you didn't scroll down you probably won't notice.

But I'm using Ka-Block on Safari OS X

Is there a crowd-sourced list with anti-adblocker websites? One could combine this with a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey userscript for HN to add some warning icons right next to the submission link.

You can configure uBlock Origin or any blocker that uses lists to use Reek's anti-adblock killer list. https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer#instruction

>They’re also building “style” modules, which don’t do anything except look nice.

This is underrated, at least in the article. People love customizing. They'll spend money on that. Wood, gold, ceramic, organic-whatever, glass-with-bits-of-Holy-Land, and on and on. Even for basic parts, like the camera, people will pay just to have different colored rings around the lens.

Phone cases are one obvious example of all this, but being able to replace the materials of different parts of the phone seems like the next step.

I'm not convinced this project has much use otherwise, though. Would love to be wrong. But even their demo video shows nothing useful at all.

Small companies can now develop phone modules and release products with more advanced technology in a specific area (battery tech, camera, etc) without designing the rest of the phone. It would ideally be compatible with any unipro phone. This is important because a lot of technologies that would normally make it into phones doesn't because of how difficult designing and launching a phone is. You definitely don't need to do all that work if all you want to do is make a phone with a smaller/better camera.

Another benefit is being able to repair your phone by swapping out a broken module rather than replacing the whole thing. This should reduce waste. Also, you don't need to get new phones every two years, you can just replace modules as they get outdated.

If done well enough, this could shift phones out of excessive consumerism, where buying a new phone is often cheaper than replacing an old one (or where repairing a phone is impossible).

> Also, you don't need to get new phones every two years, you can just replace modules as they get outdated.

Alternately, you can replace each and every component immediately as soon as a minor upgrade is available! 0.5 more megapixels! Another 200 MHz on that Snapdragon! 5 GB RAM! The same battery pack, but this one has gold stripes and is clearly higher end!

> The same battery pack, but this one has gold stripes and is clearly higher end!

This point especially. New trends will come along in short time which will move the crowd constantly toward purchasing this flashy thing or that.

Just imagine celebrities and pop culture capitalizing on this product.

E.g. Same battery each model... But Model A has the battery plus a sticker of Celebrity A on it. 2 years later, Celebrity A isn't all the rage anymore. Celebrity B is where it's at. Well I guess everyone has to throw out their Model A battery since otherwise they'd be considered lame.

Having modules be external to the device will only add to the crave. For example, I don't replace my RAM in my desktop because this model looks cooler than that model. I replace it based on performance. These phone modules, though, also serve an aesthetic purpose that must be sated.

My hope against this scenario is that the kind of person who needs to buy every new accessory wouldn't touch a Project Ara phone because they're too silly looking or because the all-in-one models are slimmer and more fashionable (see iMac vs desktop towers). We'll see how it shakes out.

Since the CPU, RAM and screen can't be updated, your phone will definitely get outdated after 2 years.

I am not convinced people are still on 2 year phone upgrade cycles. Worse, Intel already dropped the Tick-Tock cycle and phones are not that far behind.

I have a 4s, skipped 5s, thought about 6 or 6s, now I am going to wait for the 7. I just got the new 9.7 inch apple pro tablet and I don't notice it being all that much faster browsing the web.

True, but then you update CPU, RAM and screen but stay with your 128 GB memory, 3 different batteries and infra-red camera you bought. It's not ideal but still better than now.

I think this project would get a lot more love if it was presented as a modular "tricorder", rather than a modular phone.

I imagine that there's a pretty interesting collection of niche markets for a capable, connected mobile device with interchangeable sensors.

I was thinking pretty much the same, a oscilloscope module or an android module could be pretty handy at times.

Scientists aren't as frugal as consumers either, so you could add a zero onto the sticker.

Scientists also like their devices calibrated, so add several more zeros, a yearly contract and a pelican box to keep it from sinking when you're taking lava samples on your alien moon.

Ugh, this has always been a terrible idea - apparently a vanity project by people who know nothing about how manufacturing works.

Every piece they make modular adds cost - cost of connectors, weight of the frame to support them, cost of support when the connectors fail.

You can go on about "waste" all you want, but the lowest cost, lowest material devices are rated for single-insertion connections along with components both stacked and heavily integrated.

The reason they could not do displays, RAM, etc is that these components are tightly integrated to the SOC selected, and change regularly. This was true when they announced, even more true now.

Truly Google is the new Microsoft if they devote such time to obvious executive vanity projects, untouched by the taint of reality.

All those costs in modularity apply to PCs, which are still around despite the hard drive to turn everything into a SOC. If I were able to get the same amount of use out of a modular phone as I have my daily driver PC (going on nearly 10 years) then I'd happily pay more for the robust design. I get that the popular justification for SOC is power savings, but the cost is so much higher than just incredibly rapid obsolescence. Consider all the software problems, the binary blobs, the lack of security updates, the vendor lock in... we really need to step off this crazy train.

I can't even realistically say how old my two computers are, because their parts are all different ages; I can tell you how old their cases are...

edit: It's not even accurate to describe them as separate computers, because parts have travelled between them more than once.

Right, because we all know the most important feature of smart phones is their cost savings, which is why Apple phones sell close to their marginal cost and don't have 30% margins.

And this kind of device, while it may not be interesting for many consumers, will be very interested for industrial, enterprise, or medical users.

There's a graveyard of phones that thought there was a market for a wider variety of form factors. This is a variation on that theme.

To put it another way, if you were running a medical devices company with limited resources, would you bet on this or bluetooth?

With bluetooth you need to consider radio interference between the sensor and the main device. In my experience that increases complexity of the sensor, and is something you largely can avoid with a module that has a physical interface to the main device.

I'm hoping that project Ara will become the perfect test bed for sensor module development. Useful after the initial validation stage of experimental stuff on a breadboard but before the stage where you have established enough customers that you can afford to develop a completely integrated and standalone IOT device.

There are lots of mobile devices specifically designed for industrial and commercial use. Usually they are much more expensive, but add few additional components. It would be useful to be able to build up your own devices from standalone components. But I doubt it is really in the interest of the manufacturers who want to be able to offer a complete "solution".

>But I doubt it is really in the interest of the manufacturers who want to be able to offer a complete "solution".

Then they'll be leaving room for a newcomer to do it.

zakalwe2000 mentioned a lot of kinds of costs; you only mention the monetary one. In fact, your example of the iphone supports his/her point - a non-removable battery improves reliability and makes phones slimmer & lighter while also more mechanically durable.

Not everyone values slimness to an extreme, and despite the fact that non-removable batteries improve certain design margins, many many Android phones still have removable batteries, and some even reverted from non-removable designs to removable ones.

There is a crossover point wherein overhead reduction is "good enough" and when other factors about the phones begin to dominate.

The iPhone doesn't sell because of a non-removable battery, and the huge number of users who use bulky cases to protect fragile phones, and add-on battery cases, which increase weight and spoil the industrial design, tend to support the case that some people are willing to trade off thinness, weight, or cost for other capabilities.

I don't even think this is controversial. If you look at the number of users asking for microSD whenever a device removes it, or the people wanting additional clip-on lenses, there's a hunger to extend the phone platform.

Now, whether that happens over an integrated UniPro bus, an external lighting cable + case, or bluetooth, is an implementation detail of convenience, ergonomics, and bulk. I personally would rather have upgradeable camera modules or additional battery slots than "Morphie" cases and weird protruding clip ons that weren't designed to work with the builtin optics.

You're forgetting another large cost-sink: R&D and prototyping.

Taken from their developer page (https://atap.google.com/ara/):

More Space. New Ideas. The Ara frame contains the CPU, GPU, antennas, sensors, battery and display, freeing up more room for hardware in each module. We are looking to module makers to create technology never before seen on smartphones.

With 3D printers, cheaper cheapsets, ..., tinkerers can go on and try to create their own module which they can integrate into their phone. If the module is popular amongst users, integrate it either as a standard module in the ARA store (a 3rd party could for example propose to manufacture that module, shifting those costs to them, Google would just deliver the core ARA product).

I think that if this project succeeds, it will be as a standard phone you plug into a lot of different devices. Ara could be generic compute/storage/networking, and cheap enough for you to click one into your sprinkler system, your refrigerator, your car, and perhaps commercial equipment like your alarm system, security camera system, etc... All talking to each other and sharing a common uplink.

Now THIS here is the interesting idea, the ARA becomes the local compute component in a larger system, rather than having smaller components attaching to the ARA!

Yes, I'm thinking in particular of my wife's digital piano, which has some horrific obsolete Yamaha software to transfer files, and my 2006 Acura, which has a completely crummy in-dash navigation system. Both would have been much better served by a plug-in compute module that had its own networking and could be upgraded independently.

It's not very nice looking. For aesthetics, they will need to ship it with a case or skin that's thin & strong.

I don't often wish for mandatory bundling, but I hope that's what this is about: http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/14/google-now-lets-you-design-...

I'd settle for a phone that just lets me have source to everything that can be reflashed and allows me to practically modify and reflash as desired. I feel USB host would be good enough so that I can add peripherals as needed, I don't need fancy magnetic connectors.

I think the main thing this structure brings is the unbundling of camera module from the handset, so that larger sensor/lens modules can be offered. As it is, manufacturers are afraid that protrusions will hurt sales and are therefore hesitant to go with large sensors.

edit: On second thought, this may end up just being the foundation of Android-based camera backs. Should be a bit of help for camera makers, so that they can focus on the camera module.

> Should be a bit of help for camera makers, so that they can focus on the camera module.

Why would camera makers want to give up on the pattern of tying a new firmware feature to a minor case facelift to celebrate it as a new camera generation? Cameras are a market where a few compulsive update-buyers seem to greatly outweigh the masses of thrice-in-a-lifetime buyers in terms of number of devices sold.

Open hardware, or closed hardware? Can I run what I want on it, and will I be able to buy modules from unlicensed third party developers?

Apparently, Google controls the frame and the core components. The "base unit" is not, apparently, separate from the frame, so you can't build frames in different sizes. You can't build a tablet size frame, or use the form factor as a packaging standard for embedded control or lab instruments.

As a mobile device, it should be heavier, bigger, and less rugged than an integrated unit, so that may not be a win.

This is the game-changer the last 3 billion need.

I really hope it works out. (I expect that if it does, then over time everything will be swappable.)

The phone's going to be priced at the mid to high range. Including all the important components pre-built means that it can't be sold at a low price. 'A single phone for everyone' was the original idea, but it seems they've given up on it.

Very doubtful that this will lead to a lower-total-cost-of-ownership phone for anyone vs. buying the $30 Android phone and replacing it when it breaks.

More likely that this will become a standard compute/networking interface into a bunch of specialized modules (stereoscopic cameras, home automation, industrial control, etc.)

I love it. The fact that this idea isn't necessarily constrained to a phone form factor is also pretty inspirational.

As expected, the stuff that you really want to be able to replace (Screen, SoC, and RAM) are the ones you can't.

physical apps store will be a cool idea, especially with a macguiver-esque iot swiss army knife of add ons for health, security, communication & interacting with physical environment.

'Ara' is racist for 'Armenian' in Russia. Its a pity 'Modo' is trademark of Swedish pulp and paper giant.

The idea is great for many reasons (value, environment, etc) but god, that phone is ugly.

I actually think it looks kinda of cool.

Nothing wrong with a little Mondrian.