Motorola Uunveils DIY smartphone 'Ara' project with Phonebloks

WHAT if you could build a phone exactly to the specifications of your lifestyle? Motorola wants to revolutionise the mobile market with an Android phone made out of modular hardware.

Motorola Aura Phonebloks

MOTOROLA has taken the wraps off Ara, a project to create a smartphone with easily interchangeable parts that could, if successful, revolutionize a device market dominated by Apple and Samsung.

The secret sauce? An online community courtesy of the recently-viral Phonebloks.

The company's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team went public Tuesday with its one-year-old Ara Project, after agreeing earlier this month to partner with Phonebloks, a web-based campaign started by Dutch designer David Hakken. Based on a short video that's racked up 16 million YouTube hits in the last month, Phonebloks has been pushing the concept of a modular smartphone whose components can be swapped out like Lego bricks.

Now with Hakken as its new community evangelist, Motorola's Ara project aims to bring some substance to Hakken's arguable pipe dream, and "do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software."

Motorola won't say how much money it's putting into Project Ara, only saying that it's manned by an internal team and more than a dozen external contributors. The ATAP team, run by Motorola's Regina Dugan, contacted Hakken earlier this month. At first they offered him a job at Motorola's HQ, which he declined. "I wanted to keep the vision alive," he says. Then he proposed an open collaboration, and the following week he was on a plane to San Francisco.

Motorola Aura Phonebloks

The project is still in its early stages, and Motorola will rely on Hakken to help create a community that can propose ideas for the phone's name or answer questions about technical issues such as protocols and overheating.

Motorola already has some experience selling its latest Moto X phone "bespoke" through its Moto Maker website, which lets customers choose colors and textures. The Google GOOG +2.13%-owned company said it would invite developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform "in a few months," and added that it would release a "Module Developer's Kit sometime this winter."

Hakken says his partnership with Motorola is not exclusive. If another device manufacturer wants to work in concert with what is essentially an open source effort than, "the more the better," he says. Motorola is also not funding Phonebloks, which is relying on donations to hire developers and rent servers so that it can establish a web forum for supporters to up-vote proposals, and offer feedback on Project Ara.

"The community can control the direction," says Hakken. His role will be to act as a spokesperson for the network, and present the most popular ideas next time he comes back to the Bay Area to meet with Moto's ATAP team.

The project may sound vague, but Hakken has clearly struck a nerve with his video and campaign, receiving 6,000 emails about Phonebloks in the last month, and from a wide ranging demographic. "When I started this project in the beginning I thought it would be people who care about the environment," he says. "But then whole group of the Internet came who like customizable phones. Who don't want to throw anything away."

Tellingly, Hakken has also received enquiries from more than 30 components manufacturers, including ten recognizable names he did not wish to divulge; many were asking how far along he was in the process of building a modular phone, or were asking how they could contribute. "I think these large companies don't want to rely on Apple or Samsung," he said. "They just want to have it open."

It's even unclear at this point if the phone will run Android. The community might say no, Hakken says, and Motorola will have to listen. That could leave the door open for more web-based operating systems like Ubuntu, Firefox OS or even Samsung-supported Tizen to get a place on a future Phonebloks/Motorola device.

This also won't the first attempt to create a gadget that users can assemble themselves. A few years ago an open-source hardware company called Bug Labs became known for selling a portable Linux computer onto which you could "snap" modules to create different kinds of gadgets. The company worked with carriers Verizon and AT&T T +1.97% on wireless devices, never made a splash among mainstream consumers. Motorola is likely looking for something with more mass market appeal, and using Hakken as both an evangelizer and sounding board may be a smart way to go about it.

The obvious challenge — assuming they ever get this far — will come in creating a phone that is of a palatable price point, and looks and feels comfortable to use, says Jefferson Wang, a technology consultant with IBB Consulting. Smartphones are now down to 7 mm in thickness, he points out. "Is it going to compete?"

Hakken thinks the key task before him and Moto is even more fundamental than that: "The challenge is to make it actually work."

Watch Hakkens' original Phonebloks video above, and the follow-up below.