Imagine your phone as the ultimate Swiss Army knife, the perfect all-in-one toolkit. What would you want on yours: A mini screwdriver, a fingerprint scanner, a bottle opener? With Project Ara phones, the attachment possibilities are boundless.
Ara's mix-and-match nature lets you upgrade components a la carte, and play around with leftover ports.
Google's current design for an Ara handset -- the endoskeleton, in Ara-speak -- features 12 connection ports for snapping on rectangular modules like the battery and processor (really!). The main point is that Project Ara's somewhat radical (and provocative) approach to smartphone-building is also one that for the first time gives buyers a form of creative expression not just over what their device looks like, but also what it does.
For instance, when your phone is fully charged, you could swap out the charging port in favor of a near-field communications (NFC) chip to make mobile payments. Or maybe it's the regular camera module that gets the boot, in favor of one with a specialized infrared nighttime lens.
