Expanding on my previous post about modular smartphones (and a modular smartwatch), here’s a roundup of probable release dates.
tl;dr
- January 2015: Project Ara Smartphone
- March 2015: Vsenn Smartphone
- Second half of 2015: Puzzlephone and Blocks Smartwatch
Here’s the details:
January 2015: Project Ara
After Dave Hakkens proposed the idea of a modular smarthpone with his phonebloks concept, Motorola showed up seemingly out of nowhere and gave us Project Ara, with the goal of a real Ara Smartphone in January 2015! Like Wired writes, we’ll get cheaper phones, better phones, more environmentally friendly phones.
March 2015: Vsenn
According to digitaltrends.com, the Vsenn modular phone will be released before the end of March 2015. Vsenn teases all kinds of fancy features on its Facebook account, like Qi wireless charging, pure and powerful sound, etc – but there are no concept drawings, no photos, only a statement by the Vsenn spokesman that the phone will have three swappable modules: camera, battery, and processor/RAM.
Second half of 2015: Puzzlephone
Poised for release in the second half of 2015, the Puzzlephone by Finnish startup Circular Devices will be composed of three parts that can be exchanged independently. Not quite as modular as Ara or Vsenn, but we’ll see how it works out.
Status unknown: ZTE Eco-Mobius
Easy Upgrade with Low Cost is the promise of the ZTE concept phone Eco-Mobius. The concept won a Red Dot “Best of the Best” design award in 2013 and a prototype was presented at CES 2013, but as of today, there are no release dates available.
Status unknown: Xiaomi Magic Cube
Everything about this modular phone is speculation based on one image posted by Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun on his Weibo account in December 2013. Nothing is known about specifications, prototypes, features, release dates.
Second half of 2015: Blocks smartwatch
The Blocks smartwatch, on the other hand, is a product we can believe in. Created by a UK startup, this is a modular smartwatch where individual blocks of hardware are linked together to become the watchface and watch band. A prototype already exists (although it looks a lot uglier than the shiny pictures on the website), and a release in 2015 of this modular smartwatch seems likely.