On May 20th 2016, Google announced that the success of its Project Ara will allow them to release a modular smartphone. The announcement was made on the last day of Google's I/O developers conference. A developers edition of the new modular phone is expected to ship this fall. The phone will run Android and have a 5.3 inch screen. Google plans to release a consumer version some time in 2017.
Google had originally reported that it had been working on a modular phone in October 2013. A year after that, they announced that they were going to being doing trials in Puerto Rico, but the program was cancelled after the discovery of design flaws. A new design, which frees up space for modules, integrates the phones technology into the frame. A consumer can choose to change or add new speakers, a camera, or expandable storage at any time.
The key to Ara's success is a redesign of the connectors on the back of the phone. Each connector had to be able to withstand a high volume of connecting and reconnecting. Google's ATAP team created a proprietary port that uses an open standard called UniPro. Each phone has six of them and they can push up to 11.9 gigabits of data in both directions. The ports only consume as much power as USB-3.
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