Project Ara: What Could Have Been

When you need an upgrade for your phone, like the newest chip or a better camera, you can go into the nearest phone store and get a new one. This can be inconvenient, since some people go to get a new phone each year, searching for the latest, biggest camera or the newest Apple Bionic chip, dropping thousands of Naira down the drain.

Imagine this instead: when you want a new camera, you remove the one you have, go to the store, pay ₦7000 for the 64mp camera and slot it into your phone. If you want a bigger battery or a faster processor, you do the same. So you just buy the phone once at the rumoured price of $50 (about ₦17000 today), then whenever you need a different spec, you flip it in. You could do this on the go, no need to install a driver or even reboot the phone.

That was the aim of Google’s Project Ara: the perfect modular smartphone. People wanted this phone, they loved the novelty of the idea and the extreme customisation. You could buy a different colour of each module, to make the phone very colourful, just stick to black, or even get an entirely wooden phone. It was all in your hands.

The applications were vast and exciting. The phone used modules, so if you wanted a louder speaker, you could get one and slot it in. If you wanted to use your phone as a projector, to attach game controllers, or even as a controller for your Nintendo Wii, then you could find that part and buy it, too.

Google went mute about Project Ara, with no news for 2 years. Then, all of a sudden, they released the details of a new Ara, one that couldn’t change the core system; i.e. the RAM or processor, but would still work in almost the same way. They also said that it was in the beta development stage and would be released to the public in 2017.

Then, three months later, Google released another announcement saying that it had axed the entire idea. There would never be an Ara smartphone released to the public.

We’ve not seen any major new innovations in the smartphone industry in a while, except for flip phones and foldables. The majority of smartphone manufacturers have tended to stick to the tried and tested when it comes to their phones. It’s sad to think about what could have been. It makes one wonder where Ara could have taken the smartphone industry.