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Google’s Project Ara modular phone tests delayed until 2016

Google has announced it is delaying testing of its highly publicised Project Ara modular smartphones project until next year.

The newly christened Alphabet subsidiary had been plotting to trial the scheme in Puerto Rico later this year.

However, those tests have now been scrapped with Google tweeting its intentions (via Re/code) to find new locations to test in the United States.

https://twitter.com/statuses/633358044517154816

The idea behind Project Ara is to allow smartphone fans to piece together their own components depending on their user preferences.

For example, one-day photographers could spend more on a phone with a top-line sensor, but ease back on the processor speed and RAM.

The scheme could potentially allow users to update their smartphones as improved components become available, rather than buying a new phone every two years. There’d be no soldering or engineering involved, since the components would just slide together in a neat package.

SEE ALSO: What is Project Ara? The story of Google’s module phones plan

Late last year Google announced it would be selling components in an online marketplace, while in March this year Toshiba revealed a host of new components.

There’s no news on why Google has decided to halt the tests.

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