Motorola unveils project to allow users design their mobiles

US-based smartphone maker Motorola has unveiled a project, Ara, that empowers the user to decide and choose the components they want in their mobiles.
The project aims to develop a free and open hardware platform for building modular smartphones.
Motorola, which is now part of the search giant Google, unveiled Project Ara, an open hardware platform for building modular smartphones.
"Led by Motorola's Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones," Motorola said in a post on its official blog.
The post further said: "We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software -- create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines."

Motorola added its goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones.

"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," the handset maker said.
Explaining the project, Motorola said the design for Project Ara consists of an endoskeleton (endo) and modules.
Endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter or "something not yet thought of!", it added.

"We've been working on Project Ara for over a year. Recently, we met Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Turns out we share a common vision: to develop a phone platform that is modular, open, customisable, and made for the entire world," the firm said.
The blog post further said: "Dave created a community. The power of open requires both. So we will be working on Project Ara in the open, engaging with the Phonebloks community throughout our development process, as well as asking questions to our Project Ara research scouts (volunteers interested in helping us learn about how people make choices).

"In a few months, we will also send an invitation to developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform (to spice it up a bit, there might be prizes!). We anticipate an alpha release of the Module Developer's Kit (MDK) sometime this winter.