Ara, a modular smartphone by Google [Courtesy of Google]
Google announced updates for its "Ara", a modular smartphone during the company's I/O Developer Conference on Friday. The modular smartphone provides users with changeable modules, such as camera, storage, battery, and processor.
The concept of "Project Ara" was first introduced in 2013 and brought the excited response from developers and smartphone users, raising expectations. But the excitement soon cooled down with rumors of the project being shut down. Google did not mention Project Ara in official events for a few years until this year's conference.
During the conference, Google introduced the Ara smartphone, running on Android with six separate hardware modules. Google also demonstrated on how the smartphone works, showing examples such as monitoring blood sugar levels with a module of Ara. Google plans to distribute developer version of Ara in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Google also released a short teaser of the consumer version of Ara, Which is thinner and lighter version when compared to a bulky developer version. Google said the consumer version is expected to be released in 2017 but did not give a price for the consumer version.
Aju News Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
