Project ARA: Future of Smartphones

Ever wished you could modify/upgrade parts of your smartphone according to your needs? Just like you would do a PC/Laptop? Well, Google's just working on that, and presented us all with the prototype of such a modular smartphone in the recent Project Ara Developer's conference, held this year, in California. The project initially began in April, 2014. It has come a long way since then.
The smartphone seems to be made of a metal frame which has built in electro-magnets which will hold the phone's modules/parts such as the radio, RAM, camera, processor, memory, and other components of your choice, together. There was no slippage of any module from the main metal frame when the prototype was displayed.
According to the latest from the Ara Conference: these phones will first be released, and tested in Puerto Rico. Why "Puerto Rico", you ask? Well, that's because Puerto Rico has a diverse mobile user base with almost all major US telecoms operating there and not to forget the fact that 75% of all internet users based in Puerto Rico access the internet from a smartphone.

It's still a long way from being hitting completion and getting into the hands of mobile users worldwide, but, the project has given us all a new hope, that is, cheap, affordable smartphones which would be made of parts we choose! :) Awesome, isn't it?
Google's said to be developing a different form of operating system for the modular smartphone. Is it going to be Android, or a new OS all together is yet uncertain. But as far as I have heard, the OS for this modular smartphone will have strict licensing terms, in short -- Google wants to avoid all the "BAD" that happened to Android by taking necessary steps for Project Ara.
The price - according to rumors, is going to be somewhere between $50-60 of the initial kit, which Google will ship after the smartphone's introduction.

With things heading in the right direction for smartphones, there was another aspect that made "Project Ara" a reality - which was: "electronic waste". With all smartphone makers coming up loads of models every year, electronic waste was hitting an all time high, contributing to overall waste and pollution. With Project Ara things are expected to go green for the good of our planet.