About a decade ago, many of us tech geeks were very excited for a new project that Google was working on, with Motorola (before Google sold Motorola off to Lenovo, and spun off Motorola Solutions). And that was Project Ara.
This project was shown off at Google I/O, in fact, I vividly remember sitting in a session about Project Ara at Moscone West in San Francisco – before Google moved it to Mountain View. It was a pretty cool concept. Where it would let you hot-swap different components like cameras, batteries, speakers, and much more.
The device was being beta tested back in 2014, but ended up getting delayed before Google decided to shelve it entirely.
Now, we’re seeing some prototypes pop up from 2014 and Project Ara, to show us what Google was actually working on.
TikToker posts prototypes of Project Ara, a decade later
A decade after the project was shelved, a TikToker by the name of Racoondetecionsquad ended up with three Project Ara prototypes and several modules for these prototypes.
He also has a video showing the process of removing the modules and popping in a new one. Another module has a switch of some kind included. These modules are definitely different from the ones that had leaked in 2016, it’s likely that this could have been a later prototype as well.
This definitely would not work in today’s smartphone world, as companies want you to buy new phones every few years – that’s mostly how they make their money. And being able to replace batteries, cameras, and other components with ease, would not be great for their bottom line. Still, Project Ara was a really cool pipedream that would have been cool if it came to fruition.
The post Google’s Canceled Project Ara Just Resurfaced — And It’s Still Wild a Decade Later appeared first on Android Headlines.
