Project ARA: Google’s non-disruptive Smartphone Innovation!
Google’s modular smartphone ARA is coming to consumers in 2017! It’s not the disruptive smartphone innovation many Project ARA-Geeks, as me, expected!
I first read about Project ARA in February 2014 in a German SPIEGEL-Online article. The possibilities of a modular smartphone, a smartphone where you slide different little electronic modules into a frame called Endo (abbr. for Endoskeleton), to assemble a functing smartphone, fascinated me from the start. A smartphone designed to be upgradable in parts, backed by an open ecosystem for modules. That will be the next smartphone revolution I thought, and this smartphone will reduce e-waste as Dave Hakkens trys to it promote with his Phonebloks Initiative. I became a fan and followed the project development since that and became a geek.
On Friday, May 20th 2016, I watched the Google I/O live stream of the ATAP session, Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects division, to get the latest Project ARA updates. What I saw was disappointing at first. No more upgradable AP-Module! The application processor (AP) was designed as home of CPU, GPU, memory and Android-OS. And if someone wanted more performance after a while for his ARA, he only had to purchase a new AP-Module and swap it against the old one, instead of a whole new Smartphone. Now those functions are build into the frame. Together with antennas, sensors and the touchscreen display.
Display design changed!
The display was also formerly designed to be swappable, without tools! So a cracked screen could be swapped against a new one within a minute. Now you need a repair shop, like any other Smartphone.
I really hope they bring the swappable display feature back to the ARA developers version, which will be ready to ship in Q4 2016. Because this was the feature, people I talked with liked the most. The possibility to swap a cracked screen on the fly, to choose the display resolution (I don’t need a 4K display) or to swap-in an e-ink screen if you read a lot e-books. This is what matters to most users. And I liked the idea, that blind people could swap in a braille screen. The technology is available, but there’s no major smartphone manufacturer making a good smartphone for the blind, to let them participate and interact with the internet (e.g. WhatsApp) as we do.
Battery design changed
The battery design changed also, but not into a built-in solution many tech blogs and news sites falsely reported. The current ARA prototype has an internal and an external battery. The internal battery is built into the frame and has enough power to enable a hot-swap of the external battery, without powering down the phone. The external battery has now a defined battery-slot at the bottom of the ARA’s backside. It’s capacity is increased to power the ARA a whole day. With additional battery modules, plugged into the six available module slots, you could extend battery capacity by about 45% per battery module.
c|net demonstrates hot-swapping of the external battery in a GIF here:
Why did Google changed changed Project ARA’s full-modularity against semi-modularity?
In a c|net article Rafa Camargo, lead engineer on Project Ara, is quoted as follows:
“When we did our user studies, what we found is that most users don’t care about modularizing the core functions,” Camargo explains. “They expect them all to be there, to always work and to be consistent.”
“Our initial prototype was modularizing everything...just to find out users didn’t care,” he adds.
This quote is cited by many tech blogs and news, but no one is asks about the studies! Where and when did they do it? How many participated? Of which age, nationality, ethnicity and education were the participants? Were they technical experienced? Which smartphone OS were they used to?
It looks like “we did our user studies” is unquestionable! I would ask, how representative their studies are? If not, someone only has to mention the term “studies” to hide economic reasons.
The quotes also don’t explain, why the display will be non-swappable! Is it to make the ARA more slim, to be more competitive with other flagship phones? If the users don’t care about swapping a Full-HD display against a e-ink screen, why can’t it be screwed to the frame to be DIY-fixable, like the Fairphone 2?
To be fair, I read a lot consumer comments on web-articles related to Project ARA over the years. And there were many who weren’t interested in an upgradeable smartphone. They just wanted the best performing smartphone they could buy within their budget. And they won’t buy a phone they fear, it may fall into pieces. But those were also the ones that couldn’t imagine the possibilities of ARA. They talked about a modular smartphone, not a mobile modular platform which enables you to phone, to surf the internet, to take pictures and watch videos, and most important: let’s you plug in electronic devices that wasn’t seen on a smartphone before! E.g. glucose meter, radiation meter, fluid analyzers, walkie talkie modules, infra-red cameras etc.
I don’t think Google will sell ARAs to this clientele at all. They will sell it to those who can imagine the added value! And these ones welcome upgradebility! In my opinion full-modularity and upgradebility is something we are not used to, but will be quickly used to!
I remember discussions in Germany when the iPhone entered the market. How complicated it is to install and run Apps. And that an App supporting smartphone is only something for tech nerds. Today all age groups are using smartphones with Apps, and someone using a naked cellphone is stigmatized as tech-averse, or worse a criminal.
Are there other obstacles for modular smartphones?
Yes, I think so! On the 2nd ARA developers conference, they mentioned that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) regulations do not fit to modular smartphones. When I’m right, it’s because todays FCC regulations see a radio wave emitting and receiving telecommunication device as functional whole. Antennas and the radio wave processing parts (e.g. CPU) must be certified as a whole product. So it’s not possible with today’s regulations to certify a smartphone with customizable transmitting parts. And to certify every possible configuration between antennas and AP-Modules is to complex. This would be hundreds of configurations globally, because it’s not a problem for today’s FCC regulations. Every country, Google wants to sell ARA, has his own telecomunication regulations and certification process. And I bet, almost all see a smartphone as one product to be certified, not modular parts of it.
So if I’m right, it’s not as easy as it sounds, to bring a full-modular smartphone to global markets, while national regulations are not up to the state-of-technology. Maybe someone from ARA’s project team will comment on this issue.
Project ARA is not what I’m expected, not the optimum of modularity, but I’m looking forward to it’s release in 2017! (And hope they fix the display issue!)
