From Wi-Fi balloons to self-driving cars and its famously free and healthy staff meals, Google is known for doing things differently.

Now it's looking to change the way smartphones are manufactured and bought, creating a scalable consumer smartphone with fully customisable hardware.

The Ara Spiral 2 prototype. Credit:Google

The tech giant stepped up the development of Project Ara on Wednesday, announcing a market trial of its modular smartphone to begin in Puerto Rico later this year with a global launch — hopefully — thereafter.

Google also unveiled a new prototype of the Ara, dubbed "Spiral 2", with the yet more sophisticated Spiral 3 set to be released later in the year.