Motorola's Modular Phone Project By Staff Reporter | Nov 01, 2013 12:13 PM EDT Motorola is looking even more towards the future by recently introducing Ara, its modular phone, this week. Motorola's Modular Phone Project, the companyâs MAKEwithMOTO team, had been on the road the past six months with a truck called Sticky. The team has been working hard on conducting âmake-a-thonsâ across the United States using hackable Motorola smartphones. High end 3D printing equipment were also used. The phone is currently being designed for the global mass market.Motorolaâs Android open hardware ecosystem discovered includes components from todayâs modern smartphones. The new highly modulular smartphone applications, devices and ecosystem developed in Motorola labs sparked the new birth of âAra.â Motorola recently stated the following for Project Ara, "We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development times." According to Motorolaâs recent blog post, âMotorolaâs Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines. Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones.â Take a look at some of the initial designs for Project Ara shared from Motorolaâs official blog: *Motorola BlogAra is designed to take a customized Android smartphone approach. Project Ara consists of an âendoskeletonâ (endo) with modules. Endo is the structural frame for the modules. The team has been designing Project Ara for more than a year. Project Ara plans to further build within the Phonebloks community. The Phonebloks concept is the founderâs vision to create a modular smartphone which is from the âbuilding blocksâ of its consumers. Still in development process, the company will further its R&D efforts through Project Ara research âscoutsâ or volunteers. The release of Araâs Module Developerâs Kit (MDK) is expected before this year. Motorola expects to send invitations to various developers in the next few months. The efforts will be in place to invite new developers to create modules for Araâs platform. The company even hints that a prize may be offered to the winners.Customisable computing can certainly lead to many possibilities if it indeed proves to work. Some of the present challenges we have with mobile technologies and advancing to modular concepts its that our technologies are traditionally not designed as âmodular.â Forward driving concepts such as Project Ara, however, could change this.Do you think Motorolaâs Modular Phone concept has potential for the real world?