구글 조립 스마트폰, 내년에 선보인다 Google's Modular Smartphone Will Ship to Developers This Fall:VIDEO

  구글은 20일 카메라와 스피커 등 부품을 블록 장난감처럼 조립해 사용하는 스마트폰 

완성품을 2017년 소비자용 판매하기 이전에 개발자용으로 올 가을에 선보일 것이라고 발표했다.

구글에 의하면 화면과 배터리를 갖춘 토대 부분에 원하는 부품을 직접 최대 6개까지 

조립할 수 있으며 부품은 카메라와 스피커, 마이크, 거치대 등이며 판매지역과 가격 등은 

밝혀지지 않았다.

구글은 그간  ‘아라’로 불리는 조립식 스마트폰 개발을 추진해 왔다.

황기철  콘페이퍼 에디터

ki chul, hwang conpaper editor 

Google's Modular Smartphone Will Ship to Developers This Fall

 

edited by kcontents 

Darren Orf

Yesterday 2:23pm

Project Ara, Google’s dream for a truly modular smartphone, has been a long parade of exciting visions of the future punctuated by disappointing delays. But Google just made a big promise that developers will be be getting their hands on a device this fall with a consumer version due in 2017. Finally!

Although Project Ara has been on Google’s mind for years now, it’s been hampered by hardware delays. The device was originally supposed to be part of a pilot program in Puerto Rico but that plan was axed in August.

After a year, Project Ara didn’t have much to show for all its talk of the future, but it certainly inspired the smartphone old guard to run with the idea. This year’s LG G5 adopted the modular phone principle with a removable “magic slot,” and the upcoming Moto X and iPhone 7 are rumored to have some kind of modular features. Because guess what, accessories sell.

But where those attempts are the cozy consumer version of what a modular smartphone can be, Project Ara is the rugged frontier: a patchwork of hardware with a number of different modules that anyone can decide how to mix and match. Finally, that dream sounds like it’s almost ready.

A Wired exclusive on the reasons why it took Google so damn long was that the half-dozen modular connectors really needed to not suck.

Over the last year or so, the team also worked to standardize the modules, so that developers could actually start to build them. The key bit was redesigning the connectors on the back. Each one has to support constant connecting and reconnecting, charge things when they get plugged in, and, you know, not break or fall off. They created a proprietary port, but one that uses an open standard, UniPro. The phone has six, and each one can push up to 11.9 gigabits of data per second, in both directions. Ara chief Richard Woolridge spits out crazy edit-video-while-you-computer-vision use cases, but says the spec boils down to this: It can handle anything. And it only consumes a third as much power as USB 3.

At Google I/O, the Ara team demoed its swappable modules, swiping in an camera and snapping a pic all without rebooting the phone, for example. Google’s also released a short teaser video showing Ara in action.

No word on what pricing would be, only that it will be “high end,” but if you’re feeling adventurous, you can sign up for the a Project Ara dev unit right here.

http://gizmodo.com/googles-project-ara-modular-smartphone-will-ship-to-dev-1777834543

kcontents