Google revealed new details about its plans for Project Ara, the company's highly anticipated Android-powered modular smartphone at its Project Ara developers conference Tuesday.
The conference aims to give developers a better understanding of how they can take advantage of the platform, and elaborates on the guidelines revealed to them last week when Google released its Module Developers Kit.
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Paul Eremenko, head of Project Ara, said two more developers conferences are planned for July and September of this year, and the first smartphones are expected to ship next January. Android will be updated in December, prior to the release of the phones, to support Ara's modular components.
Eremenko said the first phone released will be a generic "gray phone," which will cost developers about $50 to make. However, he did not reveal what the eventual retail price would be. The phone will be purposely designed to be "drab" to encourage owners to be creative, and personalize their devices, Eremenko added.
Users will be able to use the Ara Configurator to create their own custom look for each of the phone's individual modules. Onstage, Project Ara's team showed off a few examples of the design possibilities.
For example, users can import photos into Ara's Configurator, which will create a personalized design based off of the color palette in the images. Or, they can create customized 3D-printed textures for the surface of their device's modules. These textures, which can only be placed on the top surface of modules, are designed to be easily replaceable, so users can swap them out when they want a new design.
One of the advantages that Ara's platform offers is extending the period of time users can go without replacing their device, Eremenko said. Since users can swap out individual components, such as the processor or camera, Ara's devices will have a much longer lifespan.
Unlike typical smartphones, which most users tend to replace at least once every two years, Eremenko said Google expects Ara's devices will last between five and six years.
Day two of Google's Project Ara developers conference will kick off Wednesday at 12 p.m ET. The company will be live streaming portions of the conference, including a developer prize challenge, a panel on hardware and the developer inspiration track.
The conference's agenda is available on Project Ara's website.