Does your phone need to be customized?

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Wouldn't it be cool if when buying a mobile phone, you could choose hardware with different functions and customize your phone according to your needs, just like you can download apps with different functions in the Apple Store to give your iPhone different functions?

Google's modular mobile phone project Project Ara is doing just that. The project hopes to develop a mobile phone that allows users to configure accessories by themselves, and install, update and uninstall hardware like using apps. This can effectively reduce the new costs brought to users by mobile phone upgrades, while extending the use time of other hardware on the phone and reducing the waste of electronic resources. To give an inappropriate example, users only need to pay for a lens and a battery to upgrade from Samsung S4 to S5.

This may remind you of the deep customization function that Moto X provides to users. Compared with Project Ara's hardware modular customization, Moto X's customization service is slightly simpler, providing users with customized services such as front and back body colors, wooden back shells, button colors, accessory styles, body engravings, and storage capacity versions.

In fact, Project Ara was developed by the original Moto X development department. After Google acquired Motorola, Project Ara was incorporated into Google's ATAP department and was not included in Lenovo's acquisition. ATAP also led the Tango 3D mobile phone. Compared with Google X, ATAP is more pragmatic and requires the rapid realization of technology into products in a short period of time.

Project Ara, which was launched a year ago, has already produced actual products. In April this year, they recently released the first modular prototype Sprial 1. Sprial 1 is already able to run Android 4.2 and has some basic functions of a smartphone. Some hardware developers have already received the prototype of Sprial 1 and started development. Currently, the development of Sprial 2 is also underway, and developers will receive Sprial 2 prototypes at the second developer conference at the beginning of next year.

Project Ara hopes to cover nearly 6 billion mobile phone users worldwide. This includes not only 1 billion smartphone users, but also 5 billion non-smartphone users. The Sprial series of phones can be priced as low as $50 or as high as thousands of dollars. Project Ara will create an ecosystem similar to the Android and Apple app stores.

Project leader Paul Eremenko said in an interview with the media

The question is simply, can we do something in the hardware market similar to what Android and other platforms have done for software?

He also described the vision of the Project:

Project Ara is going to build an open and free platform. We don’t want to just manufacture or sell our hardware. The profits of Project Ara should come with the success of developers.

Therefore, Project Ara has been encouraging more developers to participate in the development of Sprial in the early stages. Project Ara has previously held a developer conference, and the second development conference will be held in Mountain View and Singapore in January next year.

But are things really so beautiful?

Before Project Ara actually launches Sprial, Paul Eremenko may need to answer these two questions first:

Is there such a great demand for deep customization of mobile phone hardware?

Sprial is likely to be like Google Glass, which was well-received but not popular. With the iPhone already offering all-around features, will mainstream users really choose to customize their own phones just because they need a better camera, a better display, and a more accurate fingerprint recognition system? It's likely that everyone will praise this product, but only enthusiasts will actually pay for it.

The situation of Sprial's pioneers is not very optimistic. Although the customized Moto X has helped Motorola successfully compete with Samsung, HTC and other manufacturers in the US market, it is still difficult to shake Apple's dominant sales position. Most importantly, the popularity of Moto X is not due to its customized attributes, but more to its excellent touch and Google Now voice control.

HTC also tried to customize the HTC E1, where users could choose 8GB or 16GB memory, 5MP or 8MP camera and 6 body colors according to their needs. However, the phone was not released for sale for several months.

Remember that the public's enthusiasm for innovation is sometimes far greater than their actual needs. Is there any obvious demand that users have that is not met by the iPhone? Yes, it may be the price, so Xiaomi was born.

Can the software development model be replicated in hardware development?

The difficulty of hardware development is not at the same level as that of software development. iOS app developers only need a few computers and a few months to launch an app. However, the hardware development cycle on Kickstarter is often half a year to a year or even longer, not counting the failed cases. Under such circumstances, the number and quality of hardware developers may be difficult to meet the customized needs of "6 billion" users. Recall that one of the reasons for the failure of Google Glass was that there were too few applications that could be installed.

But at least, crowdfunding has solved the funding problem of hardware development to some extent. However, without a mature 3D printing industry chain and supporting hardware incubation facilities, it is impossible for developers to complete hardware works only through their own creativity.

Paul Eremenko also admitted that the most difficult part of Project Ara was making the hardware for developers.

We greatly underestimated how difficult it would be to create a device that was flexible, worked well, and was easy to develop on, so the Sprial 1 development board didn't ship to developers until this fall.

Well, even Project Ara, which has plenty of people and money, thinks prototype development is difficult, so what can ordinary developers do?

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