Google Announces Project Ara Developer Conference, Shows Off First Prototype

An anonymous reader writes Google today announced it will be hosting the second iteration of its Project Ara Module Developers Conference for its modular device project early next year. The first event will be in Mountain View on January 14, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in New York City, Buenos Aires, and London. The same agenda will be repeated in Singapore on January 21, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in Bangalore, Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. The company also released a video showing off the first prototype from Project Ara. Until now, all we've seen so far are industrial design models. This one actually boots up.

Comments

Re:only for nerds

[c]

No one in the mass market will buy this.

Nonsense. You just haven't been paying attention. The market is already buying modular phones. It's just that the modularity sucks, hard.

What do you think those battery cases are? MHL/OTG dongles? Just modules with extra ports. iPhone camera lenses? Infrared camera adapters? Pressy (extra hardware button that fits in the headphone jack)? Dimple (stick on NFC-based hardware buttons)? Wireless charging plates that fit in behind the battery and plug into the USB port?