
The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone - beansbeans
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/10/inside-project-ara-googles-revolutionary-modular-phone/
======
grizzles
Google mgmt fake releases and then subsequently cancels unlaunched products
all the time. They do it to assess market viability and also to stymie
competitors. Ara is notable because of the breadth of the project, but it was
really just about protecting the android cash cow's flank.

The strategy has worked pretty well. Android was released as open source
almost 10 years ago, and you still can't run it on any semi open hardware,
like you could with eg. Linux on a PC.

To this day, it still boggles my mind that Intel won't sell an open handset.

~~~
lnanek2
I worked at a startup producing an Android device funded by Intel and Intel
wouldn't even give us source code to all the parts of the OS. We had to deal
with binary blobs copied into the Android source tree for things like the HAL
(hardware abstraction layer) and fastboot. They were things we really needed
to customize too because their fastboot referenced buttons our device didn't
have and things like that. It was pretty ridiculous.

Previous to that I worked on a TI OMAP solution and the source for that was
much more open. We had a to extract a custom SGX package for the graphics
processing, but otherwise it was much closer to the Android Open Source
Project. At least we could customize their x-loader and u-boot as needed. Too
bad TI OMAP died.

~~~
djsumdog
So the Intel system they gave you didn't have things like standard UEFI or a
VESA/VGA subsystem? Could you install a standard x86/64 Linux distro or
Windows?

~~~
digi_owl
Intel's mobile oriented Atom variants are incredibly stripped down vs their
"desktop" line.

Back in the day Intel created a linux distro called Moblin to promote these
CPUs, because Microsoft balked at supplying a Windows variant for a X86
platform that didn't even have PCI device enumeration.

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onli
I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could
standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the
communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone
world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers.

I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the
OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just
add more, if he needs a new processor he would just replace the current, if he
needs a higher resolution display the old just would get replaced. Of course
that is not easy, of course in the beginning a tailor-made smartphone would be
slicker, faster. But then you support it some time and you get loyal users
upgrading their device instead of even considering something else.

I know there are limits to upgradeability, just as a PC reaches the moment
where all that remains from its old incarnation is the case. But still,
enabling upgrades and thus removing consumers from the market would be a huge
hit to all other smartphone vendors, probably spawning a more targeted parts
industry.

And no: The current module system from LG or what Ara was presenting in the
end is not it. Adding a new photo lense interests no one. You need to be able
to switch out the core components to make an impact. The Fairphone 2 comes
close, but I don't think you can drive real core upgrades without controlling
the OS, and thus it ends up with a core module. We'll see. If they manage to
add things like replacing the display with a better display, the core module
with a more powerful one, that might already be good enough.

~~~
femto
Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold
go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years,
it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old
motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current
cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply
connector has different number of pins, and if you replace the motherboard to
allow a newer component to be plugged in then all of the other old stuff needs
to be replaced due to the new motherboard. The most success with longevity
seems to be USB peripherals, with old/new stuff working together, and it's
worth noting that USB is external to the PC. (I'd contend that that USB's
success is largely due to the mechanical simplicity of USB, which is beginning
to disappear.)

With increased integration, there's also an aspect of the cost of a module
being almost independent of its contents, meaning that the cost of making a
device is roughly proportional to the number modules it contains. Under those
circumstances, it makes sense to minimise the number of modules, the lowest
overall device cost being a single integrated unit.

In my mind, the key to long life is freedom to modify the software. It's
amazing how far a well designed hardware platform can be pushed with software
optimisation over time. I do embedded systems in my day job and our current
product does things that weren't even thought of when it's hardware was
designed, by virtue of the original design keeping the hardware simple whilst
doing as much as possible in software, and current creative use the existing
hardware resources.

I think a fixed hardware platform can work well, provided an original design
goal is to do as much as possible in software and there is complete freedom to
rework the software going forward.

~~~
WalterBright
> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work,

It did in the early days (the first 10 years). These days, the mobo, CPU, ram,
power supply, graphics card all seem to need to be a matched set.

~~~
p1mrx
For the mobo, CPU, and RAM, I would agree, but power supplies and graphics
cards have been forwards and backwards compatible for roughly a decade.

~~~
WalterBright
Not in my experience. The disk drive power connectors have changed, the fan
connections multiply, and the mobo/graphics cards sprout extra needed
connections.

~~~
p1mrx
The SATA power connector is ~14 years old, and graphics cards often come with
adapters for the PCI-E power connectors. Some GPUs (like the GTX 1050 Ti) are
entirely powered by the PCI-E slot.

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general_ai
Even at Google most people knew this project was stillborn. It's a combination
of two factors: no one but a few geeks actually has any need for this, and the
overwhelming majority of profits in the industry is taken by a company that
builds the opposite of Ara, further underscoring the former point. It terms of
flushing money down the drain it ranks way up there with Google Glass and
Project Loon.

~~~
Traubenfuchs
I am still baffled that countless intelligent people deluded themselves into
thinking this could have worked well on a big scale for the longest time.

~~~
general_ai
As Alexander Pushkin(a famous Russian poet) wrote in one of his poems: "Oh it
is not hard to fool me, for I am eager to be fooled."

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ocdtrekkie
Ara was one of the most exciting things about Motorola, and I really wish
Google had at least done us the favor of letting Lenovo have ATAP along with
the rest of the company, where it might've had a chance.

> _“To us, it just felt like we had just kinda hit molasses. And I think, to
> Google, it felt like they were being uncomfortably sped up,” the source
> said.

Google constantly gets a lot of credit for "innovation", but this is a story I
am seeing over and over. Skybox, also bought by Google, said much the same in
an article yesterday:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-09/alphabet-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-09/alphabet-
said-in-talks-to-sell-skybox-satellite-business)

> Skybox’s momentum seemed to slow following Google’s acquisition, while
> Planet Labs has continued to raise money and send many satellites into
> space.

And from Boston Dynamics: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/17/google-could-be-
selling-bo...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/17/google-could-be-selling-
boston-dynamics-because-even-google-thinks-these-robots-are-terrifying/)

> In December 2013, Google acquired Boston Dynamics and a few other robotics
> startups. The idea was to build a robotics engineering team inside Google
> and make them work with Boston Dynamics on robotics projects. Since then,
> not much happened.

As another point, NEST was regularly making large strides and releasing new
products, but that effectively ended with their Google acquisition. They
rebranded Dropcam after buying them, and that was it, there's been nothing
new.

Even for acquisitions Google claims to want to develop, it seems to be a
graveyard for tech's hopes and dreams.

~~~
euyyn
> letting Lenovo have ATAP along with the rest of the company, where it
> might've had a chance.

Who says Lenovo wanted ATAP, or would have given it a chance? And Google
bought Motorola almost 5 years ago. If you don't call that a chance, I don't
know what is.

~~~
mst
I think the point is that if you believe both (a) it had zero chance at google
(b) it might have had non-zero chance at Lenovo - then it would've been
preferable for it to go to Lenovo, since a possibility of >0 is still better
than a flat 0.

Personally, I'm reasonably sure the chances of Ara succeeding were
infinitesimal anywhere, but I think your "who says" isn't a counterargument to
ocdtrekkie's point.

~~~
euyyn
The point is clear; I'm questioning the assumption. "Who says (b)", is what
I'm asking.

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contingencies
Given that swappable storage already exists in a standardized form factor at a
tiny size, what are the truly functional components of a phone that should be
swappable?

All I can see are screen, memory, CPU, baseband mobile communications, wifi,
bluetooth, camera, local sensors, battery.

Observations: trying to put memory and CPU across disparate modules on the
same generic block-linking bus used by the other components smells like a
recipe for pain. Sensors and wireless connectivity are stupid-cheap and
therefore largely not module-worthy, they would probably be on the same unit
as the mobile comm's baseband.

Conclusion: Maybe retry with [cpu/memory]+[camera]+[comms]+[screen]+[battery]

Gotchas: Hardware profits lower, so where's the commercial carrot? I suppose a
cabal of governments (EU?) or a single big one (China) could regulate heavily
against throwaway devices entering their markets, which could provide enough
push, though it would be hard for China to regulate. Software experience
polish would suffer. Overall bulk would likely suffer, though we've already
reached too-tiny-to-hold-is-the-problem so that's less of an issue.

------
aceperry
I would've liked to see Project Ara continue. I never thought the phone idea
was good because the economics didn't seem to make sense. There's no way that
a low volume product using expensive parts can compete with the handset makers
and carriers on price and finished quality.

The real strength was in the maker space where you can put together components
to custom build your own product. Just like a higher level arduino system, you
can easily get a lot of functionality without the pain of low level
development. There is a lot of potential, especially from the healthcare
field, which had a lot of interest in this project. I know of a few people who
were working on projects around project Ara before they pulled the plug on it.

------
idreyn
From a layman's perspective, it sounds like they shot themselves in the foot
somewhat by taking modularity to a logical extreme — building a highly
generalizable bus system that would support connections of any kind of
component on any part of the device. I wonder what gains would come from
relaxing that requirement, so a certain sector is always reserved for a
camera, another for a battery, etc, one for each component that everyone is
obviously going to want on their phone but might be upgradable over time. The
idea of being able to attach a Geiger counter to your phone is intriguing but
that was always going to be a niche within a niche.

~~~
flukus
That's what these guys are trying to do:
[https://shop.fairphone.com/en/](https://shop.fairphone.com/en/)

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EdSharkey
HEY GOOGLERS! Please make a Google Pixel phone with a replaceable battery and
I'll go buy one! I'm stuck on a 4 year old Samsung Nexus until you do (or
until I can no longer get replacement batteries for it.)

I'd really prefer to get a phone with VR specs like the Pixel but not being
able to replace the battery makes it not worth the spend for me.

Thanks in advance!

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hpagey
It's interesting that the original Project Ara Moduino prototype became the
Moto Z. Confirms that the Moto Z was developed under Google, because Lenovo
sure as fuck wasn't throwing money at Motorola's R&D.

The split might've actually been good, for modular phones at least. The Z
might've been scrapped alongside Ara, but alternatively there might be a
Google Moto PiXel right now with Google Mods.

All the things that could have been...

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proee
Way back when the dinosaurs roamed, and we had "PDAs", Palm tried to do this
with their Visor "Springboards." These module would slide in the back and give
you all sorts of awesomeness like "more memory, temperature loggers, cameras,
printers, etc."

However, this expansion module came at a cost. The product itself had to be
twice as thick as the competition, and the marketplace was moving so fast that
it became outdated in just a few years.

Cool idea though - we actually made our own springboard module for our senior
design project as a EE.

[https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/511D5DYQQAL...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/511D5DYQQAL.jpg)

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digi_owl
Every time they made a public presentation of it, further away from the IBM PC
for your pocket it moved.

First it was that that Google was to be the only producer of endoskeletons,
and that it would house custom chips. OK, that's on par with the IBM BIOS.

Then they started talking about how modules would only be available via their
Play store, and tied to your Google account. They were not even sure if they
would allow the resale of used modules.

Then they started talking about moving the mobile radio into the endo.

Then, right before official cancellation, they talked about a complete rethink
where just a few small parts could be replaced.

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batbkw
:-(

