Project Ara has a new teammate now that Google has partnered with Rockchip, a budget smartphone processor maker, according to 9to5Google. Ara is Google’s initiative for a modular smartphone, a device that can be updated with configurable or interchangeable hardware, such as a zoom camera lens or higher-capacity battery.
Rockship a Perfect Fit for Modular Technology
Rockchip is not widely known in the United States or Europe for its processors, as the company produces CPUs for low- and mid-range smart devices in China. Currently available processors from the company run on the older ARM Cortex A9 architecture—which most smartphones today still use—with speeds of up to 1.8 GHz for quad-core processors.
Considering modular phones must offer opportunities for upgrades, it makes sense for Google to partner with Rockchip. “We view this Rockchip processor as a trailblazer for our vision of a modular architecture where the processor is a node on a network with a single, universal interface . . . ” Google posted on its Google+ page.
Intel Integration
Rockchip also recently joined forces with Intel, which has purportedly been readying mobile-friendly hardware. It’s unclear whether Rockchip will build its UniPro processors for Project Ara using Intel’s chip architecture. But if that is the case, it could potentially revolutionize the hardware landscape for smartphones, both because it is a hardware-customizable device and also because Intel will finally have processors in a smartphone on US soil, even if it is through a third-party manufacturer.
Project Ara
Project Ara is already incredibly exciting as it is. The promise of swapping hardware components while maintaining a basic device framework is something the Internet has rallied behind since Phonebloks revealed its Thunderclap campaign in 2013 and found nearly one million supporters. The promise of Project Ara is that a modular phone can be as inexpensive or feature-packed as you want, offering users the option to get just the basic phone for cheap, or buy as many extra bits and pieces to suit their every fancy. Project Ara is currently expected to release early next year.
Would you buy a modular smartphone? If so, what would you want to put on it? Let us know in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Flickr
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