if Google Glass has proved anything, it’s that Google isn’t afraid of pushing out a product before it’s ready. The same goes for Project Ara, its modular smartphone, as G has announced the first 100 beta testers are about to get a handset for free.
Over 90,000 people applied to become Project Ara “scouts” and Google has whittled it down to just a select few that’ll be taking its transformer phone for an early test drive.
The announcement also says “over the next 8 months, Google will continue to refine the Ara prototype”. After consulting several expert mathematicians, we’ve concluded that this pegs the release date on March 2015 – slightly later than the original January target.
Scout’s honor
Still don’t know what Ara’s all about? The phone will be formed of parts that users can swap out individually, allowing them to make incremental updates rather than buying a brand new phone each year.
The customisation doesn’t end there: we’ll even be able to choose the type
s of materials used to build our Ara phones.
Essentially, it’s Google’s way of bringing smartphones to the masses. But are you one of the lucky 100 to taste it early? Go see if your name has appeared on Google’s dscout page.
