As with all news you wait and wait and wait and then it all seems to come at once. For those interested in Project Ara it was only this morning we advised of the latest developments. If you missed it, Google have announced joint worldwide developer conferences to take place in January with the first taking place on January 14th and the second commencing January 21st. To add to this there is now a new video floating about which shows the development of Ara.
The video is made by Phonebloks and in short is a behind-the-scenes type deal and is set in the offices of NK Labs. If you haven’t heard of NK Labs then these are the guys who have been contracted in by Google to work on the prototype. No pressure guys. Anyway, the video itself is only a few minutes long and yet seems to show quite a lot more than you would expect. Ara is shown in the development stage with the various techies working and explaining on how the development process is going. Not to mention the last thirty seconds are the most interesting as they show Ara turning on and booting up into Android. If there was any doubt about a working prototype then this video certainly quells those worries. The video shows the ‘Spiral 1’ which is the name for the prototype. Although the developers do note that half of the space of the Spiral 1 had to be reserved for the modular components, which left little room for developer input. A remedy for this according to the engineering team came from components made by Toshiba which will feature in the next generation prototype, the Spiral 2. This is the prototype which is due to be in demo mode at the already mentioned January developer conference. Exciting!
The video has actually quite a goofy feel to it and you would not necessarily think that what they are working on and showing is so revolutionary and yet it is. Its nice to see Ara being shown and promoted in such an understated manner. If you are interested in Ara then you really should check out the video. As always and for your convenience it is below. Best quote of the video by far “Wow, this is going to be cool if we can get this thing to work“. Yes, guys it will be.