A woman walks past a logo of Google at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) 2015 in Beijing, China, April 28, 2015. (Photo : REUTERS/KIM KYUNG-HOON)

The highly anticipated modular smartphone project from Google, codenamed Ara, was delayed. The search engine giant recently announced that devices will start to roll out in 2016.



The team behind Project Ara cited several design changes and iterations as the core reason for the delay. Additionally, the team also announced that they are planning to release devices in some locations in the United States instead of just Puerto Rico alone.




Google's initial plan was to release devices developed under Project Ara in Puerto Rico in the latter part of 2015, according to The Verge. In fact the company has already opened up partnerships with two of Puerto Rico's biggest network provider, Open Mobile and Claro.



According to the Wall Street Journal, development is already at 100 percent but mass production problems hinder the project to achieve the initial plan. A person previously working on the project told Wall Street Journal that devices were tested at a limited temperature ranges, suggesting that the launched will be postponed.



Project Ara was announced in October 2013. A prototype developed under the project was presented at the 2014 Google I/O conference. The prototype presented was well-received by many tech analysts.



The core aim of Project Ara is to develop an open hardware platform were developers and hardware manufacturers can design and develop modular smartphones. A modular smartphone means that the device will can be built by incorporating several modules depending on the owner's choice.



Hardware manufacturers were also encouraged to create modules for camera, display, battery, memory and even the smartphones CPU. This means that if a specific module is damaged, the owner can simply replace that with a new one rather than purchasing a completely new device.



Project Ara is designed to run on the Android platform.

