Being a tech blogger means your friends are always sending you emails with a subject line similar to “Have you seen this?” Sometimes, it’s news to us. Sometimes, it’s old hat. What’s interesting is when multiple people send us the same information over and over. That’s usually a good sign that something has captured the imagination and attention of the public. This entry into the zeitgeist has certainly happened with with PhoneBloks.
Helmed by Dave Hakken, PhoneBloks attempts to create a sort of meta-device that can be configured to the end user’s taste. This isn’t the first time someone has pitched such a concept; IBM’s MetaPad was a small box that could be a laptop, desktop, or PDA (don’t laugh, this was 2002). The idea caught fire with tech pundits, but the only real devices to launch based on it were UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs) like the OQO, which failed spectacularly. This was the era of the netbook and UMPCs were just too big, too pricey, and suffered from being neither fish nor foul.
But can it run Windows 8?
PhoneBloks, however, takes the MetaPad concept and applies it to a product that people have come to consider indispensable: The smartphone. Being able to adjust a “blank” phone to your personal tastes with more than simply altering the cover is a brilliant idea, and it’s not just the general public who has taken notice. Yesterday, Motorola announced a new project, codenamed Ara.
The basic concept is to build an endoskeleton (yes, like in Terminator) that serves as a base device and assorted modules that can shape the device to what they desire. If that sounds a lot like PhoneBloks, there’s a good reason for the similarity. Google and Motorola will be working alongside PhoneBloks to create Ara devices, with the goal of openly creating an open phone with an open source OS. That’s a whole lot of open openness.
It likely won’t look like this, unless you want it to.
Most impressive of all is that Motorola anticipates having dev kits in the hands of developers by winter of this year, which is right around the corner.
Time will tell if Ara becomes something the average consumer can buy, but the tips we’re getting certainly indicate the desire for it is there.
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