Google, Linaro Develop Custom Android Edition For Project Ara 46
rtoz writes with this excerpt from an IDG story about the creation of an Android fork made just for Google's modular cell-phone project : A special edition of Android had to be created for the unique customizable design of Project Ara, said George Grey, CEO of Linaro. ... Android can already plug and play SD cards. But Grey said additional OS functionality is needed for storage, cameras and other modules that are typically inside smartphones, but can now be externally added to Project Ara. A lot of work is also being done on UniPro transport drivers, which connect modules and components in Project Ara. UniPro protocol drivers in Android will function much like the USB protocol, where modules will be recognized based on different driver "classes," such as those for networking, sensor, imaging, input and others. Some attachable parts may not be recognized by Android. For those parts, separate drivers need to be developed by module makers through emulators. "That will be need to be done in a secure system so the device can't do damage to the system," Grey said. Project Ara is a very disruptive concept, and it turns around conventional thinking on how to build phones, Grey said.
Re:im happy google took this on (Score:4, Interesting)
If this catches on, I hope we'll see bigger-than-Ara but still compatible modules based on the same A-size-paper-style specifications for bigger devices such as tablets and laptops. Buy a new camera, put it on your cellphone, put your old cellphone camera on your laptop and sell your old laptop camera.
Re:im happy google took this on (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm looking at this from a different perspective. If I have a "mobile" base that I can build off I have an extremely versatile micro pc that I can custom build to fit a purpose. It may be too clunky to be your daily driver phone replacement - but ara screams to be the base of things like media centers, nas boxes, remote camera setups - a million embedded systems I can't even think of.
I see this as a way for android to make the jump to desktop OS replacement