The smartphone has revolutionized our style of living, with clicks that have changed our world. The devices have also forced each user to work within the boundaries of its attributes – the look, feel, design and features are all chose by the manufacturers.
With Google’s Project Ara, the users will have an actual say in what their phone would do and how it would look like – and a revolution is about to happen.
Project Ara, Google’s DIY Phone, which marries modularity with utility, is soon going to be launched. It is a development effort for creating a modular hardware ecosystem to enable users to create a smartphone that will be tailored to individual functional and aesthetic preferences. The revolutionary change is expected to affect 5 billion people who do not yet have a single smartphone!
Exploring functions beyond the regular smartphone, analysts presume the device to be the ultimate IoT (Internet of Things) phone. I believe that it is actually working out to be an open hardware device with a free rein given to the electronics industry and the tech-savvy users to experiment and innovate, as far as their imagination runs wild.
Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) recently unveiled the ARTOS12 Development Kit at the Project Ara Module Developers Conference 2015 in collaboration with eInfochips, a highly experienced chip design and development company. Devices based on Project Ara are expected to transform the smartphone experience drastically
Just imagine this: Ara will be able to pick up any camera, integrate sensors to test if water is clean; utilize a battery that lasts for many days and so on. One can integrate a louder speaker, a full-functioning gaming console, or even use the phone as a car key. The list of possibilities is endless and the ARTOS12 Google Ara Development Kit, which makes use of Toshiba bridge chip technology, is geared to take these attributes to another level. What’s more, it is said to feature some interesting 3D printing breakthroughs that will fetch you trendy covers with just a click!
Shardul Kazi, Senior Vice President at TAEC, unveiled the Development Kit at the Project Ara Developers Conference. He said of the concept, that smartphones literally double up as HD displays, music players, personal computers, cameras, and even wallets today. It can be used as a video conferencing tool and soon it is going to be a watch, blood-pressure monitor, memory drive, TV remote, video projector and one’s own car key. He mentioned that Toshiba chips would be providing the connectivity between modules, the Development Kit and services so that the new and innovative designs to reach the market, quicker than ever.
The ARTOS12 development kit will feature MicroSD and USB slots for developers to store data and also have high-speed interfaces for connection to the bridge.
eInfochips, the development and support collaborator for the ARTOS12 Development Kit, will provide its expertise on Google Ara modules with its comprehensive custom design and engineering services. The company will provide services for platform porting, multimedia integration, application development, and performance optimization, along with many other services. eInfochips will utilize its decades of experience to accelerate development cycles for Google Ara modules, and even address gaps in the development of module hardware and software.
The world’s first Ara smartphone will be commercially available in 2015!
The solution from eInfochips is a part of the Top-10 Product Innovations for 2015, published here. You can also view the video below.
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