$100K Project Ara Dev Challenge

Shardul Kazi said Modular product design is the wave of the future, Toshiba America senior VP, who sees the concept being extended to tablets, wearable and other products. Google is offering developers a carrot to help make that future materialize, in the form of a $100,000 prize for Project Ara innovation. The rules for the competition will be released in May.

On The second day of its Project Ara modular phone developers' conference, Google announced a US$100,000 developers' challenge prize

The top 2 runners-up will get all-expenses paid trips for two or three people to the next Ara developers conference, there will be a few more held this year.And guaranteed hardware for the project, said Project Ara lead Paul Eremenko.

• Judging will be based on both objective and subjective criteria.

• The challenge will be unveiled officially in mid-May, with a detailed set of rules, Eremenko said. All documentation will be posted on the Project Ara website.

• Google will close the challenge by mid-September.

"This is a great project that will lead to the development of other platforms and solutions in the embedded and consumer market but not mass adoption of modular phones," Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research, told LinuxInsider. "In fact, this may be the best maker developer platform thus far."

news source: Technewsworld

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All about Project Ara (Developers conference & Price as cheap as $50)

News by:  Justin Herrick, Robert Nazarian 2nd Feb 2014

Despite selling Motorola to Lenovo, Google decided to keep the Advanced Technology and Products (ATAP) department and Project Ara in Mountain View. Google has announced that the inaugural Ara Developers’ Conference will be held on April 15-16. The focus of this first event will be the Ara Developers’ Module Kit since it will enable developers to create components compatible with Project Ara. With Google now holding a conference for Project Ara, it looks like it is starting to gain even more steam.

Modular smartphones could be the next big thing in mobile thanks to Google’s Project Ara. What seemed like just a concept a few months ago, appears to be closer to reality now that Google has scheduled its first Project Ara Developer Conference. The big question is how much will it cost?

According to Google’s Paul Eremenko, the goal is $50. However, don’t get too excited just yet. As you know, Project Ara, is a modular smartphone, which means you will buy a bunch of parts to customize it the way you want. At $50, that would probably only include the actual frame of the phone, a screen, and a Wi-Fi radio. This would be called the “grayphone.” Then it will be up to you to buy other components such as the display, the CPU, the camera module, and so on.

So where would you buy these components? Most likely through normal retail channels, but a big goal is to have special kiosks similar to what you see for gaming systems like the PlayStation and Xbox.

There is still some time yet before we see these kiosks though. Google still has to work out issues with the FCC, plus a whole slew of design issues. The good news for consumers is that Eremenko said the goal is to make Ara great, not profitable. That means that it won’t be priced for just the rich.

Story Behind Ara:



news source: talkandroid.com, talkandroid.com

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Project Ara by Motorala (modular smart phone)

News by:  Ryan Whitwam  28th October 2013

Modular Smart phone was just a concept since many years,but today "Paul Eremenko, and the Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara Team" officially posted on blog for their new modular handset called "Project ara".

According to Motorola Ara is:

The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton (endo) and modules.  The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!

Motorola isn't just taking the Phonebloks vision and running with it. The company will be working with Phonebloks and its developer community to make a modular phone possible. Motorola will soon start seeking input from so-called Ara Scouts to help the Google subsidiary shape the future of Project Ara. In a few months, Motorola will begin inviting developers to design modules for the Ara platform – a Module Developer's Kit (MDK) could be ready as soon as this winter.

It almost goes without saying, but if Motorola (with Google's backing) can make this work, it's going to be an honest-to-goodness revolution in the smartphone industry. Want a better camera, but don't need much storage? You can spend big on the image sensor and cheap-out on the NAND. Speaker in your phone busted? Just disconnect it and add a new module. Rather than buy a whole new phone, you could simply upgrade the parts you want.

It's also worth noting the crowd-sourced "Thunderclap" campaign for Phonebloks is happening in about 9 hours. So, the timing here seems very convenient. This idea sounds insane, but maybe it has a real shot now.

news source: androidpolice.com

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