Last Updated on November 8, 2015 by Mathew Diekhake
One of the reasons Android is such an attractive option to buy is because there are so many handsets, and they all have different classes. The low-end handsets are always available really cheap, and you can’t find that with Apple’s iPhone. Even the so-called “budget iPhone” is still as expensive as a mid-range Android.
Google is well aware of this and are planning on launching a “Project Ara” that will offer separate parts where people can build their own phones instead of having them pre-made. Smartphones have so many options in them these days like the processing power and type that Android thinks there is a market in letting people create and choose these options themselves.
The modular phone can also be bought and then instead of upgrading the entire phone in a year’s time, the user can just upgrade certain parts inside and keep the basis of the phone like the outer shell still intact.
The Project Ara has been talked about for some time now and just because it isn’t out yet doesn’t mean the Mountain View company is struggling with it. These things do take time, and we are confident of it’s kicking into action because the talk has never died down. There’s also Ara already has its own website and news coming out that it will host its own developers conference on the 15th and 16th of April.
Making this phone even more appealing is hearing the head of Project Ara Paul Eremenko announce that it will have a starting price of only $50.
Ara will have a base model of three different types (mini, medium, and jumbo), and all up they will be targeted at 6 billion people in the world. Last year Motorola had a hardware partner lined up for Ara, but Google sold Motorola to Lenovo. That means that Motorola isn’t a part of the Ara work any more because Android is owned by Google.
The world is ready for such a move to let people pick their parts in my opinion. We do understand that many people won’t take to the idea because they have a little understanding of the difference between hardware parts and they essentially rely on these companies coming out and choosing for them. With that being said, we know for a fact that there are huge numbers online that do know all about the hardware and what the differences are and this project is more specifically aimed directly at them. The number of 6 billion given by Paul Eremenko is a bit excessive, however, we are confident it would be a success.