Just about a month ago, Phonebloks hit the web and took the web by storm. I can’t tell you how many stories and even videos I read and watched about Phonebloks. It was a pretty cool concept, but I really wasn’t sure it would take off. That was until Motorola unveiled their Project Ara, which they had been working on for nearly a year already. It’s basically the same thing as the Phonebloks concept. In the video that Phonebloks published today on YouTube, they are basically confirming that they are working with Motorola and thus working with Google as well. Which means this whole thing might actually happen, and that I’m excited for.
What exactly is Phonebloks? Well basically it’s a modular phone. Where you can switch out the RAM, internal storage, camera, display, pretty much any of the internals and upgrade them. So instead of grabbing a new phone, you can just get a newer processor. Sounds really cool right?
Project Ara and Phonebloks are working on a collaboration and there will be an MDK coming out this Winter for developers. How will this all work? Well Phonebloks long term goal is to create an active community that will allow folks to speak out about what they want from a modular device. Motorola’s team has promised to developer the platform in the open. Motorola will also actively monitor the feedback provided by the Phonebloks community.
Both Project Ara and Phonebloks sound like great ideas, and it’s definitely something new in the mobile space. But I’m still wondering how well this will work out for both companies. Nevermind the other companies that create the modules like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, LG, etc. This is something I really hope to become a reality, but I’m not 100% sure it’ll happen. But it’s definitely caught our eye and we’ll be keeping an eye on it.