Toshiba shows off Project Ara Camera Modules

Published: 16th February 2015 | Source: petapixel | Author: Mark Campbell

When the "Phonebloks" concept was announced in September of 2014 it was met with equal praise and ridicule, with many praising the concept for trying to address the throwaway nature of the design of the many mobile phones on the market today and others claiming that such a device could be created affordably or in a reasonable size/form factor. This concept is what eventually became Google's Project Ara, a fully modular smartphone.

We already know a few of the companies that are currently working on the phone's CPU SoCs, but today we have something a little bit different to show you, Toshiba's prototype camera modules.

Toshiba shows off Project Ara Camera Modules

As we can see in the above and below pictures the camera module is swappable, like almost all the modules in Project Ara, allowing a smartphone photographer to quickly and easily upgrade their phones camera without the need to change the entire handset. This also gives the possibility that a family of users could share one high end camera module and allow each family member to take high quality photos when required and eliminating the need for all the family members to own a phone with a high end camera.

Toshiba shows off Project Ara Camera Modules

Right now Toshiba have 3 models, a 2 megapixel front facing camera and a 5 megapixel and a 13 megapixel rear facing camera modules.

These modules mark the end of stage one of Toshiba's 3 stage development plan for these camera modules, which is pictured below.

Toshiba shows off Project Ara Camera Modules

Project Ara will run on Android, though Android will need to change in order to accommodate Ara. Google developers said that it will be a true "stress test for the OS to see if it is flexible enough to be able to facilitate the complexity of Ara.

Project Ara is set to hit the world by storm, hopefully within the next year, until then we can only speculate.