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

A Theif's Dream Come True

[Jane Q. Public]

Imagine... a phone you can steal tiny little parts out of, rather than the whole phone. It might be minutes or even hours before anybody even notices.

Re:A Theif's Dream Come True

[Jane Q. Public]

Crap. I can spell "thief". Really I can.

Re:A Theif's Dream Come True

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Imagine... a phone you can steal tiny little parts out of, rather than the whole phone. It might be minutes or even hours before anybody even notices.

Are you serious? You think your little armchairy-10-seconds-of-analysis thought on the security of this device hasn't been covered by google's team of engineers?

Oh, it has:

Google says that there will be a “manager” app on the smartphone that controls some kind of locking mechanism, which keeps the modules from popping out when the phone is dropped or twisted.

Re:Don't learn from the past.

[ArmoredDragon]

I remember those exploding Nokia phones. I think that was probably Nokia's best design ever. Not for practical reasons, but every time it happened it made you and everybody else sure that your phone was ruined, only nothing bad ever happened to it, and all of the witnesses were reminded of the Nokia brand in spectacular fashion.

Re:Don't learn from the past.

[gweilo8888]

Awesome, so your phone can wipe your credit cards and (more likely, because they have a lower coercivity) hotel room keys. What a feature!

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?