Motorola moves beyond the box, builds phones with blocks

Remember when you were young and used Lego to make houses and cities with your imagination? Some people never moved on from playing with blocks, and Motorola might even have a phone coming made with the same principle.

Coming out of Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is a neat idea that will allow people to customise their phone the way they want to.

It’s all well and good being told you can get a new phone with Near-Field Communication, 4G, a fast processor, and a big battery, but what if you don’t need a few of those things and want two batteries powering it?

That’s the idea behind Project Ara, which also has something in common with Phonebloks, an idea that popped up earlier in the year by Dave Hakkens which encouraged a system where people could build their smartphones the way they wanted to with technology blocks.

There’s a frame that holds everything together, and then you pick and choose the parts you want on the back, adding in a different part as you choose, whether it’s a processor, more battery, extra storage, or even another screen.

Motorola will apparently be working with Phonebloks to create a stronger system, and while there is no actual product ready for release yet, Motorola anticipates more activity on this front later this year.

Source: Motorola Blog