This week, Google held an event for a smartphone it doesn’t even make. At the Ara developer’s conference — and through a series of YouTube videos — Google pulled back the curtain on Project Ara, a strange, exciting new initiative that seeks to create a realistic blueprint for a modular smartphone.



Google, and its partner in the initiative, a dynamic startup called Phonebloks, have made it a very exciting time in the advancement of the modular smartphone — exciting, that is, for those who know what a modular smartphone is and why it could potentially be a game-changing concept for mobile phone electronics.

If this is all foreign to you, that’s no problem. Allow us to explain and catch you up:

What is a modular smartphone?

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Phonebloks mock-up.

Here’s the idea: Instead of buying a new smartphone once every 18 or 24 months, you’ll be able to upgrade the one you have by replacing things like the camera, processor, and screen with newer versions, plug-and-play style.

So: It’s a smartphone made up of different modules, which you can replace and update as time goes on.

The visionaries at Phonebloks conceptualized the peripheral replacement and expansion mechanics of the modular smartphone as being like attaching Lego blocks. As fun and simple as that sounds, no real Phonebloks prototype has been built yet. And since Google has come forward with Ara, we’ve only just recently begun to see mock-up dummy models of what its idea of a modular device might eventually be like (see the video below).

In concept, the modular smartphone reminds us of old PC towers. These were the computers with which you could add new, larger-capacity hard drives, faster CD-ROM burners, and even switch out the RAM and processor quite easily. The idea back then was that you would upgrade your computer piecemeal and hold onto the same machine for long periods of time instead of buying a whole new one every year or so.

With a modular smartphone, this same idea is the goal, but this time for the computer in your pocket.

Who will make them?

This part is tricky. Here’s why: Neither Phonebloks nor Project Ara is a project to build a complete smartphone. Instead, these projects are, as The Verge explained, “making the instructions for how a modular phone would work.”

Like it does with Android, and the Chrome OS, Google won’t be producing its own hardware, but instead will be providing operating software and a platform upon which vendors can create devices and components. So far, Google has announced Ara partnerships with companies like Toshiba and 3D Systems.

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