Motorola Unveils Ara, An Open Hardware Platform To Devise Customizable Handsets

Google’s Android is the most popular smartphone platform in the world, at least when gauging from the number of Android handsets sold. Motorola is now undertaking a similar project, except that it is in the domain of hardware. The company has unveiled Ara, a hardware platform which would let you create customizable smartphones.


Motorola Ara

The idea behind Ara is excellent. The project essentially envisions that with the help of the developer community, such handsets could be created which are tailored to the individual needs of the users. These handsets will essentially comprise of modules and there will be a wide range of modules to choose from so that each user can create a unique smartphone for himself.

Explaining the project, Motorola states, “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.”

That sounds very ambitious but with the support from Google, Motorola is an excellent position to pull off such a thing. Customization is the inevitable next step for technology since virtually every other user has a unique set of technological needs today. Some users want a smartphone with a great display, other want better processing speeds, while some would prefer content with longer battery lives.

Just imagine, you are able to add a top-end module of your choice into your smartphone and fulfilling such a need. This is precisely what Ara is meant to achieve. Motorola has further stated that, “Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it.”

We certainly look forward to hearing more about this project and hope that like Android, Ara will get to be a popular platform in the hardware industry.

Source: Motorola
Courtesy: TNW

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Salman

Salman Latif is a software engineer with a specific interest in social media, big data and real-world solutions using the two.Other than that, he is a bit of a gypsy. He also writes in his own blog. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter .

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