Why Project Ara could produce 2015's best phone

Project Ara is a Google-led project that’s creating modular smartphones - that is, phones you assemble yourself from whatever components you want in a kind of Android Lollipop LEGO. It’s unleashed all kinds of creativity, and Project Ara could produce 2015’s best phone.

Before we start, it’s important to explain what we mean by “best” in this context. We’re pretty sure that Project Ara won’t produce the best performing smartphone, because modular phones don’t benefit from the optimization, expertise and enormous financial muscle that a firm such as Samsung brings to its phones. Similarly Project Ara won’t produce the best-looking phone unless quirky is your thing, because modular devices can’t really do that. Imagine your favorite lust object modelled in LEGO and you’ll understand what we mean.
What Project Ara can do, though, is produce 2015’s best phone for you: the phone that does exactly what you want and has exactly what you need. Here’s why.

Project Ara means swapping almost anything

On most smartphones you’re limited to swapping out the battery, and in many cases you can’t even do that. With Project Ara, though, the goal is to have almost everything swappable - so if you want to swap out the camera, or the Wi-Fi radio, or anything else, you can. That needn’t just mean phone bits. One company, Lapka, has produced a Project Ara prototype that essentially creates a Star Trek-style tricorder with modules to detect UV light, to track CO2 levels in the air, to monitor your heart rate or your glucose level, or to check that you haven’t drank too much to drive legally.
It’s important to realize that Lapka’s design is a concept rather than an actual product so far - it’s like a concept car in that it shows what might happen rather than what actually will happen - but it gives a great indication of what Project Ara might be capable of.

Project Ara means never having an old phone

Fancy a new Snapdragon? A better camera sensor? A faster 4G radio? With Project Ara, you should be able to replace the relevant part while keeping the rest of your phone. If you’ve ever dumped an otherwise great phone because the camera was rubbish, because the storage became inadequate or because the latest OS didn’t support it, you can see the appeal. Fewer dumped phones and fewer entire phone purchases is better for the environment too.

Project Ara means never having to swear at Samsung

One of the less fun things about being a phone fan is that there’s often a huge gap between new tech arriving and that tech appearing in something you can actually buy. For example, we’re really impressed by Sony’s latest camera sensors, but we’ll have to wait for some time before we see them or their equivalents in most mainstream phones. With Project Ara we wouldn’t have that wait: all the manufacturer would need to do is create a new Ara module and we’d all rush to buy it.

Project Ara means hot swapping

Forget battery-drain doom: with a Project Ara phone you’ll be able to pop a dying battery out and a new one in without your phone turning off, provided you can do it within about 30 seconds. In the longer term you should get a minute or two’s grace.

Project Ara means getting excited about Spirals

Google’s calling each phase of Ara development a Spiral, so we’re currently in Spiral 2. That means 3G rather than 4G, limited module support and fairly rubbish battery life. The third spiral, due later this year, will bring 4G, better support and all-day batteries, and you’ll actually be able to buy it - although you’ll have to go to Puerto Rico, because that’s where Google will be trialling the tech.

Project Ara promises to be cheap

Fed up spending $500 on a smartphone? Us too, and Project Ara hopes to be a lot cheaper: Google is talking of a $50 to $100 bill of materials cost for a bare-bones Ara device. That’s the cost of making it, not the price you or we would pay, but you can see that manufacturers should be able to make a profit without making their Ara phones too pricey. Naturally the more powerful the modules, the more you should expect to pay for them.

Project Ara already offers something no other phone does

It might not be quite ready for prime time just yet, but when Spiral 3 hits later this year Project Ara will be able to offer something nobody else currently offers: a genuinely unique phone. In a world where handsets from all firms are all starting to look horribly similar with carbon copy spec sheets too, that alone is something worth getting excited about.
What do you think? Is Ara a whole bunch of vaporware, or is Google onto something really exciting? Would a LEGO-style phone have us all singing “everything is awesome”?