Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform

Remember that technologicallyutopian future with modular, upgradeable smartphones that I envisioned back in August? It turns out that Motorola has had the same idea. Called Project Ara, Motorola’s R&D department is working on an “open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” with the aim of doing for hardware what Android has done for software. If an open, modular smartphone ecosystem can be realized, it could do wonders for innovation, massively drive down development timelines and total cost of ownership, and finally allow you to do whatever you want with your smartphone, rather than being constrained by draconian measures imposed by carriers and device makers.
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Motorola unveils Project Ara for custom smartphones

Motorola has announced a new initiative to help smartphone users take handset customization beyond ringtones, wallpaper, and body colors to its very form and function.
The Google-owned handset company on Monday announced Project Ara, a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. An endoskeleton, or structural frame, holds the smartphone modules of the owner's choice, such as a display, keyboard, or extra battery. The approach should allow users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade as innovations emerge, providing a handset that stays up-to-date much longer than today's smartphones.
"Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones," Motorola wrote in a company blog post. "To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it's made of, how much it costs, and how long you'll keep it."
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