Google's DIY smartphone: Project Ara postponed until 2016

By Lorraine Caballero, Christian Post Contributor Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Google's trial for its DIY smartphone initiative, dubbed "Project Ara," has been postponed until 2016, after earlier reports that it will be tested and released in Puerto Rico this year.

Google has confirmed that it will be pushing back the trial period of Project Ara, its DIY smartphone initiave, until next year. Instead of having the modular smartphone tested and released in Puerto Rico later this year, the trial will now be conducted across various places in the United States, according to the Telegraph.

Project Ara's trial period in Puerto Rico is being postponed because its developer, Advanced Technology and Projects, encountered more model iterations than what it anticipated, the group explained via Twitter on August 17.

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Google recently had a massive restructuring to separate the company's core products from the experimental initiatives, Advanced Technology and Projects chose to remain under the core company.

With Project Ara, users will be able to attach different components together to form a smartphone. They can upgrade or replace individual modules rather than purchase a whole new smartphone. Each component reportedly costs $50–$100, the report details.

This means users can choose from different brands of cameras, displays, processors, and other components to create a personalized smartphone. When the processor becomes outdated, the user can simply take it out and replace it with a newer part, CNET explains.

Project Ara director Paul Eremenko divulged the trial plan during the DIY smartphone initiative's first developers' conference earlier this year.

"Ara is full of choices. We have to carefully curate and manage the experience," the Telegraph quotes Eremenko's statement about the DIY smartphone project. "We have a variety of hypothesis, but we need to test them in the field."

Google aims to come up with a DIY smartphone that around 6 billion people could use. Project Ara will soon release a starter kit of components that consumers can use to build their own customized smartphone.