Google teams up with Marvell and Nvidia for Project Ara chipsets

Gearing up further on its Project Ara, Google said that the company has now teamed up with chipset makers Marvell and Nvidia for its Project Ara handsets. Earlier this year, Google had announced that Rockchip could be one of the companies for supplying processor to the Project Ara handsets. Quanta who is a hardware manufacturing partners of Google had created a Project reference design based upon the Nvidia Tegra K1 and the Marvell PXA1928 processor. However, the company hasn’t been releasing this designs as of now.

The concept behind this project was initialized by Motorola and Phoneblocks which was later acquired by Google while buying out Motorola mobility in 2012. The Google Project Ara is basically a concept for making Android-based modular smartphones which parts that are swappable which would give users a truly customized hardware experience.

Google is expected to release more details regarding the project by next month of January when it is expected to roll-out its first Project Ara device. The good thing is that the handsets released under this Project would be costing as low as $50. Things would be finalized by next month. In the meanwhile, check out the video below showing the Project Ara prototype. For more details on Project Ara click here.

source: Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group

Google teams up with Marvell and Nvidia for Project Ara chipsets

Even before launch, Project Ara gets a new competitor Vsenn

Till date, we have heard quite a lot about the modular smartphone Project Ara from Google and now it would be surprising for you to know that even before the project that is expected to get official next year in 2015, it has now got a competitor working on a similar project like this. The name of the first competitor for the Project Ara is Vsenn.

The landing pages of the new company Vsenn shows the company to be founded by an ex Nokia X Product Manager. The plans for shows to be having a modular hardware but seems to offer some limited customizations compared to Project Ara. Vsenn would allow to have any design customizations but limits swapping of only three hardware modules that include the processor/RAM, battery and camera. Reports show that the hardware would be running pure Vanilla and would receive guaranteed updates for the next four years. However, there is no news to it whether Google Apps and Play services would be included or not. Vsenn is said to be focusing largely on the security with “triple layer encryption” and “free access to a VPN network and secure Cloud”.

There is no word yet when we would get to see the first glimpse of Vsenn hardware or what would be pricing like. Well, one thing is sure that the competition for Google for its new project is certainly onn.

source: Vsenn

Even before launch, Project Ara gets a new competitor Vsenn