Failing to pass a key stress test was the reason Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) abandoned its ambitious “Ara” project that seeks to build smartphones with interchangeable parts.
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Stay tuned for more news regarding Project Ara. A hashtag can reveal so much, can’t it? Earlier reports suggested that the Project Ara team pushed back the device’s launch, because of “too many iterations” needed in the design.
The idea of Project Ara is to easily swap out components whenever you want to upgrade your handset, while also reducing electronic waste products. Turns out they simply found a new solution, one that they claim is better than the magnets they had planned to use originally. And a new way to keep the different modules together could force Google to revisit its decision to show off the phone’s different modular parts. The team is now looking stateside for potential test locations for a 2016 pilot. Although there has been no official explanation of why, a tweet from the Project Ara team appears to indicate that it is likely connected to how the phones are held together.
Project Ara is Google’s attempt to shake up how consumers buy smartphones and how manufacturers make them.
As of now there isn’t any word on these magnetic modules will be replaced.
The team explained that its experiments with electropermanent magnets, which combine electromagnets with permanent magnets, had failed and that it was now testing a “signature experience” to attach and detach modules.
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Project Ara, Google’s concept of building and commercializing a do-it-yourself smartphone will not see completion very soon, according to the spokespersons’ recent declaration.
