Project Ara- every geek’s wet dream

When touch screen feature on a phone was re-introduced in a more mass marketed price, we kissed analog phones goodbye. Not that analog phones are bad, quite the contrary. They are efficient, have long-lasting batteries and get the job done- text and call. The thing is, with touch screen features, we can maximize screen real estate. This new feature and of course the inevitable innovations in technology, led us to new operating systems adjusting to the new hardware.

Things get better and faster. So much can now be done with a phone, oh wait, a smartphone. Smart because it can now do more tasks than just the conventional text and call feature. Today, a lot of brand manufacturers lure the buyers with the sleekest, fastest and biggest smartphone any man can dream and build. It comes to the point that build quality suffers, not because of cheap manufacturing but because the destruction of a feature can affect all system.

This creates a problem. We do not refurbish them when the camera gets buggy or the screen shatters. We buy new ones. When we want to upgrade the chipset, we buy new ones too. The point is, smartphones become disposable tech that now becomes an environmental pollutant. We do not think much of the long run, when we are seduced by new tech right?

Good news is that a group of computer engineers saw this problem and wanted to solve it. How you might ask? They come up with an idea of a fully customizable, changeable and upgradeable hardware phone! BOOM! Phoneblok was born. Phoneblok has a vision. It is like playing Lego pieces. Build your own dream phone. Are you more of a camera person? Prioritize the camera specs. You want a faster RAM, prioritize it. Your screen shattered? No problem! You even want to try your friend’s new camera? Borrow it and snap it into your phone!  I believe that this is the future of the next generation smartphones.

Phoneblok first incorporated with Motorola and since Motorola was bought by Google, the project became under Google. Thus, PROJECT ARA came to life. This project is gaining a lot of attention from the tech community right now. This project is promising and eco-friendly. With this, we can now also ‘smartly’ reuse and recycle parts of tech. With this phone, we don’t need to buy all the specifications all at once. We can now costumize and build one. We can build from the parts of the old one. We can share. This time, we can finally have a phone that's worth keeping. Now that, for me is smart and efficient. This is every geek’s wet dream (and mine as well, really). I hope it become yours too!

photo credits: graphicnews.com

To learn more about the project, visit this link.

Wanna watch a demo? Click this link!

Seems interesting? Share us some of your thoughts, comment below!

(Disclaimer: Neither Motorola nor Google paid me for this.)