It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Project Ara, but Google has assured us that its modular smartphone initiative is still very much alive. Whether or not this change has anything to do with the Alphabet/Google restructuring that’s currently going down is unknown, but Puerto Rico may no longer be the first test market for Project Ara. We don’t know much else aside from that, but more details should be given to us next week. 

If this year’s current Android devices left you feeling a bit underwhelmed, you’re not the only one. While these newcomers do improve on older devices in a few select areas (while sometimes neglecting others), some of last year’s Androids are still going strong for many of you, fully capable of taking you another 6 or 9 months before feeling the itch to upgrade. For others, your current phone might only be lacking in a few areas, but nothing big enough to warrant purchasing an entirely new device. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could update each hardware spec on your phone individually, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater? That’s exactly the idea behind Project Ara. It was definitely one of the more interesting projects coming out of Google, one that rekindled our excitement about the future of mobile. What was odd was Project Ara sort of fell off the map. The last we heard from them, there were showing us was a working Ara prototype on stage at Google I/O complete with a hot swappable — functioning — camera module. After that.. nothing.