Google to sell $50 'customizable' modular smartphones by early next year

Google is reportedly set to sell customizable modular smartphones, under its Project Ara, by early next year.

The search giant aims to produce phones that users could easily modify by switching their parts as though they are Lego blocks and cost only 50 dollars.

According to stuff.co.nz, under Project Ara, the goal is to be able to complete a working prototype within the next few weeks and to sell Project Ara modular phones to consumers by the first quarter of 2015.

Google said the first phones would only be able to connect to Wi-Fi and not 3G or 4G mobile networks.

The devices would use a backbone that different modules could connect to and come in three sizes: mini, medium and jumbo.

Google said that it would sell the backbones while developers could create and sell the modules, which would include batteries, cameras, screens and keyboards.

Paul Eremenko, the man who leads the effort, said that the question was basically, could we do for hardware what Android and other platforms have done for software?

He explained that it would mean lowering the barrier to entry to such a degree that one could have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of developers as opposed to just five or six big manufacturers that could participate in the hardware space.