ProjectAra by Motorola - The modular phone !!

Motorola newly announced its new project called Ara. This project is focused on providing modularity and customizing to the smartphones. This project allows component mix-match, so that you don't need to buy the new phone, just upgrade the module which you want to change. This also saves the money in your pocket by not buying the whole new phone.

You can customize the whole phone according to your need, for e.g: if you want to upgrade the screen or the battery or camera or speakers or anything or everything.

Right now, there isn't a lot of information released by Motorola. However, by simply looking at the pictures, we can make a lot of educated guesses about how it works.

First of all lets take a look at some of the factors that made

PhoneBloks impractical and see how Motorola resolves it

 with Ara:

• PhoneBloks undoes years of progress through 
• integration using SoC design by breaking the SoC into
•  its individual components.

This is what Motorola describes as what a module can be:

A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!

It's important to differentiate marketing spin from specifics. They never specify the components on your SoC or in the main memory.The components on the SoC must be upgrade as Heat sink, DRAM, VRMs etc . You can augment the features of SoC using application based processors or other peripherals.

Now, lets consider what this Motorola Ara project might 

look like and its implications on the consumer and the 

overall market.

What are some example modules that can be found? We may have cameras of various qualities. We can able to upgrade the amount of flash memory. We can able to upgrade the resolution of screen.  We can replace the SoC of processor of generation to generation.

If we just put a program accelerators in the module we can be able to run all the programs in the present and the future.  Nowhere is it stated though that each module slot has the same interface! For example, a Motorola Ara phone may have 4x USB2.0 and 1x PCI-E3.0 2x module slots in it.

If this this thing is open standard then the manufacture can make the modules for the device. For example, Xilinx may choose to make an FPGA module to replace that "popular program accelerator" that I'm talking about. Now you'll only need to reprogram the FPGA to retarget the popular programs. 

Now, lets discuss the marketing details for this phone. Currently, most cellular providers subsidize the true cost of the phone, such that people only pay $100-200.

In all I can say that this project Ara can seems pretty interesting for the future of smartphones and upgrading them because in the developing world of apps the new apps uses more resources of your smartphones and to every time buying a new one is seems not to be economically. There is still plenty of challenges in this project but it is not necessary that every new technology is brought to you by a company like Apple, Samsung..!!