Yes, Project Ara seemed like an elaborate joke when it was first announced. Was it April 1st? No? Huh. The Ara modular phone was inherited by Google when it took over Motorola’s ATAP group before selling the rest of the company off to Lenovo, and it’s not hard to see why it held onto this division. Ara is one of those moonshot things Google loves so much, but Google has been talking about Ara becoming a real product in early 2015.I don’t know about that, but it’s almost certainly making an appearance at Google I/O 2015 in May.
The core of Ara will have a screen attached to a frame which accommodates a variety of hardware modules for RAM, storage, batteries, cameras, and more. Even wacky niche stuff like projectors could be attached. You will be able to build the phone you want, and upgrade it as new modules come out. To make this work, Google is developing a special branch of Android 5.0 that will support hot-swapping most of these components.
Project Ara will come in several sizes, including small form factors that could cost as little as $15 (before modules). This could be the next big thing.
OnePlus Mystery Phone
Chinese smartphone startup OnePlus has already announced the OnePlus 2, and it’s shipping to some countries already. However, the company has confirmed that another phone is slated for release later this year. We don’t know exactly what it will be, but we do know it won’t be a successor to the OnePlus 2 already. This is something different.
The smart money is currently on a smaller, less expensive phone. This segment of the market is exploding right now as inexpensive hardware catches up to the software requirements. Phones in the $200-250 range are finally good purchases, and OnePlus already has experience getting costs down to provide a premium device at a low price. It might be able to do the same for a “budget” phone.
The real selling point here isn’t that the phone will be cheap, but that it’s probably going to be smaller. The OnePlus 2 is 5.7-inches, as is the new Moto X. The OnePlus mystery phone is expected in late 2015.
The Next Nexus
This time last year we weren’t even sure there would be another Nexus phone, but now it looks like Google is fully back on the Nexus hype train with Project Fi and the Google Store. This year there might be not one, but two Nexus phones. This is still all rumor, but one devices is said to be from LG and in the 5.2-inch range, and the other is a Huawei phone with a 5.7-inch panel.
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It’s possible that only one or the other of these phones will be launched as Google’s flagship, but if it’s pushing Project Fi, having more Nexus-style unlocked phones is a good idea. If the Huawei device comes out, earlier reports claimed it would be based on a Snapdragon 810 and a 1440p screen. The smaller LG device is still hazy, but it might be running a Snapdragon 808. Any and all Nexus phones that come out in 2015 will probably be running the latest and greatest version of the platform, expected to be the M build unveiled at Google I/O.
Google tends to announce new Nexus phones in the late fall — October or November. They’ve previously been modestly priced devices, but the Nexus 6 was very spendy. If Google intends to continue working with carriers, the next devices will have to be expensive too. They won’t want Google undercutting their prices on the same device.
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Posted By Hummyon butt
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