Google unveils the next Project Ara prototype

Google’s Project Ara is based on the goal of giving users more choice in terms of its capabilities, appearance, composition, cost, and life span. 

Google will do that by providing the basic frame, or “endoskeleton,” that can hold the swappable modules of batteries, storage, processors, cameras, speakers, and other components.

Spiral 2 medium frame

Spiral 0 frame

— as opposed to a slab of a phone whose parts cannot be altered. Architecturally, though, the model isn’t completely new. Do-it-yourself types have existed where computers are built with basically the components you need. 

The latest version of the Spiral 2 prototype features a 3G modem and an RF bus that will support antennas, and it contains a totally different type of processor — application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), rather than field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), Paul Eremenko, director of Project Ara, announced at the Project Ara Module Developers Conference on the Google campus today.

Google has developed 11 prototype modules to slide into the phone; more should be on the way when developers come up with their own modules. And the magnets that can keep the modules stuck onto the backbone of the phone have been relocated from the modules themselves into the frame.

Google has scrapped the original plan to depend heavily on 3D printing for the Ara hardware. A dye sublimation process will be used instead, Eremenko said. A Spiral 3 prototype is now in the works, he added.

Project Ara was started in 2013, when Eremenko, at that time within Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, disclosed just a bit of information about the initiative. The group stuck around Google after Google sold off Motorola mobility to Lenovo. 

Today Google announced a “market pilot” in Puerto Rico that would begin later this year. A global launch could come later, Eremenko said. As for the cost of an Ara phone, it will depend on which modules people select.