Google Demos Modular Phone That (Almost) Actually Works 126
An anonymous reader writes Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group demonstrated Tango, a tablet with 3D cameras similar to Microsoft's Kinect and a version of the Ara phone that could almost boot to the Android home screen (it froze during the demo) at Google I/O today. Project Ara will give $100,000 to anyone who can create an Ara module that does something current smartphones can't. From the article: "Ara moved from concept render to physical mockup in about six months, and onstage today Google demonstrated a version of the phone that could just about boot to the Android home screen. In the demo above, the phone displayed a partial boot screen before freezing. The full boot time (had the demo worked as intended) would be about a minute, which would be a long time for a shipping phone but is reasonably impressive for such an early prototype. Software is the other thing that Ara's developers need to figure out. Current Android builds ship with support for the hardware the phone runs, but they don't include a whole bunch of extraneous drivers for other modems or Wi-Fi modules or cameras or SoCs. Current phone hardware doesn't change, so Android doesn't typically need to worry about this kind of thing."
Grappling hook module! (Score:5, Funny)
Well I've never seen any phone with a built in grappling hook before...
I'm going to make some comment (Score:4, Funny)
about sex toys, and then I will see child posts with links that made me wish I never did.
Re:hot dog grilling attachment (Score:5, Funny)
Great. I'll probably have nightmares tonight about it malfunctioning in my pocket.
Re:"Almost" works? (Score:5, Funny)
A phone that can get to the dialer to make a phone call would be "working"
And this is why QA hates devs.
Re:The cable (Score:5, Funny)