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The Kolibree smart toothbrush uses AI to help you clean your mouth
Be honest, you probably don't brush your teeth quite as often or as thoroughly as your dentist recommends. But that's OK: With the Kolibree Ara AI-enabled smart toothbrush, you can keep up with your daily dental routine and know exactly where you've missed.
Even smart toothbrushes have AI now
Before the likes of Oral-B started selling Bluetooth-enabled, app-connected toothbrushes, there was Kolibree. The startup developed one of the first smart toothbrushes that incentivized regular brushing and documented oral hygiene habits. We caught the first Kolibree brush at CES several years ago ahead of its successful Kickstarter campaign, and this year the company is back at the tech show with a new model: the Ara. So, what's the latest innovation in smart toothbrushes? AI, of course.
Project Ara's death is bad news for the weird side of Google
Last week, Google announced that it was killing Project Ara, the company's modular smartphone initiative. Ara was easily one of the coolest and strangest things Google was working on, but the project always felt like a bit of a longshot. In this world of carefully-built, sealed-up iPhones and Galaxy devices, it didn't feel like there was much room for Ara's intriguing but bizarre swappable hardware modules. But Ara was one of the best examples out there of "Weird Google," and Ara's death is the latest clue that the experimental side of the company might be in trouble.
Phonebloks creator isn't entirely happy with Project Ara
Dave Hakkens, the brains behind the Phonebloks modular phone concept, thinks Google could do better when it comes to Project Ara. In a blog post, Hakkens said he wasn't happy that the modular phone's latest version puts its processor, battery, antenna, sensors and screen in a single skeleton and that only add-ons like the camera, speakers and projector are available as swappable modules. When Hakkens dreamed up Phonebloks, he envisioned each component as a module you can replace. The Dutch designer announced the concept in September 2013 not knowing that Motorola was cooking up a similar project. The two later collaborated on Project Ara.
Google aims to launch its consumer Project Ara phone in 2017
Despite some grim portents last year, Google's "Project Ara" modular smartphone is far from dead. For starters, it now has its own business unit within Google's mysterious Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, and the nearly magical modular hardware we've been anticipating for years is indeed getting closer. ATAP Head of Creative Blaise Bertrand confirmed at Google's I/O conference today that a new developer phone will be available in Q4 of this year with a "thin, light, beautiful" consumer Ara phone to follow in 2017.
Swapping smartphone modules with Google's latest Project Ara prototype
Google's modular phone concept is one step closer to reality. With today's announcement of the latest updates to Project Ara and an upcoming pilot program in Puerto Rico, Google has made serious strides in bringing the unique swappable-module phone idea to market. Today, we had a chance to take a look at the latest version of the concept -- code-named Spiral 2 -- and it's certainly a much more polished version of the device than we've seen previously. Indeed, Paul Eremenko, Project Ara's lead, says that the look of the hardware here is "final," or at least very close to what we'll see come final release.
Google plans to let you design your own Project Ara phone with an app
OK, so far we know that Project Ara's Spiral 2 prototype is in good shape, Spiral 3 should be even better, and that devices will hit Puerto Rico before anywhere else. Now we turn our attention to how you'll configure your very own Ara device, a decidedly incomplete process that Google's Jason Chua demoed using an as-yet incomplete Ara Configurator app.
Google details Ara Manager app for wrangling all your modules
We've known that there'll be an Ara Manager app to help Android users grok their shiny, new modular toys, but we've just gotten a better sense of how it'll actually work when Ara devices trickle into the wild later this year. At its most basic, the app -- which should come pre-loaded on Ara phones -- allows users to lock and unlock the modules currently slotted into the phone by using a bit of current to disengage the electro-permanent magnets holding them in place. We knew that already, though: What's new?
Project Ara's next prototype will stand equal to a top-tier smartphone
Long ago, Google once said it hoped to get an official, final Project Ara device -- the so-called gray phone -- onto the market by January 2015. It doesn't take a math whiz to realize that window is rapidly closing, but that doesn't mean Google's taking the whole modular smartphone thing any less seriously. Project lead Paul Eremenko shed a little more light on Ara's future at Google's second Ara Developer Conference, and dropped a few juicy details about forthcoming Spiral 3 Ara prototype in the process. He also unveiled the latest design for the Ara, which you can peek in the gallery below.
Exclusive: Elsword's Ara becomes the Dark Fox
KOG Games is on the verge of launching new content for the North American edition of F2P sidescrolly MMO Elsword in the form of updates for character Ara. Ara is a speardancer with insane jumping skills, and starting tomorrow, she can follow a brand-new job path that ushers in the Masters of Darkness theme destined for the game. As the appropriately brooding Dark Fox, Ara can advance to Little Specter at level 15 and Asura at level 35, both of which roles feature phantom claws. "Explore the eerie side of Ara's mystical connection with Eun, the spirit of the legendary nine tail fox sealed in the ancient hairpin for centuries," hints the website. We've got an exclusive trailer below that shows off Ara's new path -- enjoy!
Taking apart Google's modular smartphone
What do you want to know about Project Ara? Does a modular smartphone actually work? Yes. Is it very different from Android phones? In a basic how-a-phone-all-works, yes indeed. Paul Eremenko, Technical Project Lead on Google's modular phone project just called in at Expand NY, and he brought along the latest working prototype. Modular phones do indeed work: you can take out a component without bricking the device, it can already run Angry Birds and we just got to play with one.
Five questions for the creator of Google's modular smartphone
It's been just over a year since Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division announced Project Ara, a full-scale effort to produce the world's very first modular smartphone. The team has been working hard and fast to get a unit on the market before the end of its two-year mission, and it's progressing quite nicely: We recently saw a functional "Spiral 1" prototype running on Android, and the next version -- "Spiral 2" -- should be getting into developers' hands later this year. Paul Eremenko, who heads up the Ara team, will be onstage at Engadget Expand with me for a live demonstration and fireside chat. We'll catch up on how things are progressing, how Ara has evolved since its inception, the most interesting use cases for a modular smartphone he's seen so far and also discuss the next Developer Conference, scheduled for January 14th, 2015, in Mountain View, California. In anticipation of his appearance at Expand, I reached out to Eremenko for a quick Q&A about Ara.
Toshiba's vision for Project Ara extends to wearables and beyond
Project Ara is primarily focused on building a modular smartphone in the hopes of changing the industry, but is that the only type of mobile device on the drawing board? Absolutely not. An executive at Toshiba, one of Google's partners on the project, just revealed that his company's vision of the concept goes beyond smartphones. Shardul Kazi, Senior VP and Technology Executive at Toshiba, posited that devices like smartwatches (and beyond, he says) could also take advantage of Ara's blocky component modules, which allow you to mix and match whatever features and components you want to have.
Google's Project Ara wants to revolutionize the smartphone industry within a year
The night before Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division was supposed to show off the one and only functional Project Ara prototype to a room full of eager developers, someone dropped the phone and broke the display. At any other product reveal, this worst-case scenario would be a nightmare come true. Not to Google: The company made lemonade out of a lemon by turning it into a selling point for the modular smartphone. A year from now, painful situations like this might be easily fixed by simply buying a new display and swapping out the broken one. Not that it would've made much of a difference if last night's fiasco never happened. Attendees at this week's Project Ara developer conference wouldn't have been able to boot up the prototype and play around with it like any typical smartphone -- in this case, "functional" is not the same as "functioning" -- but at least it would've made for a better presentation. Regardless of how it looked, however, we were able to briefly handle the Project Ara prototype and some of its first modules. To be clear, this is an extremely early model and there's a long way to go before it sees the light of day, but it at least allows us to get a good glimpse of what's to come over the next year as Ara continues to prepare for launch.
Google's Project Ara developer conference is live, watch it here
Google's modular smartphones have come a long way since that kooky Phonebloks concept video went viral last year, and now the company's digging deeper than it ever has before at its first Ara Developer Conference. Couldn't jump on a flight to Mountain View? Never fear -- Google is streaming it, and you can watch the whole thing right here. Here's the rub, though: as the name implies, the event is meant to get would-be module developers familiar with the process of designing and making physical bits that pop into a phone that seems yanked from the pages of a pulp sci-fi novel. That means it'll be a perhaps a little heavier on the technical detail than one might like, but we'll be keeping out eyes and ears open for all the spiffy details you should know about.
Google's modular phones: hot-swapping batteries is just the beginning
Google teased us with a behind-the-scenes look at Project Ara's progress last week, and now it's giving would-be module makers some meat to dig into with its new Module Developers Kit. As the name implies, this release really isn't meant for laymen: it's a set of guidelines for how those bits should look and interact with the endo (Google's pet name for the phone skeletons you pop those modules into), along with schematics and code samples to play with. That said, there still a few neat morsels worth noting! Google has some awfully flexible plans for how future Ara phones will handle battery modules, for instance: Users of an Ara phone will be able to power their device with one or multiple batteries; they will be able to swap a depleted battery with a fresh one, without powering off their phone; they will be able to charge one or more batteries in their phone from one or multiple charging devices.
Lenovo gets Motorola, but Google gets to keep its skunkworks
Lenovo may be buying a brand to help it sell smartphones across the world, but it's not getting everything that was under Motorola's umbrella. In addition to the "vast majority" of Motorola's patents, Google will also hold onto the Advanced Technology and Projects division and fold it into its Android team. That group is responsible for some of Motorola's more wild-eyed projects, like the authentication pills and tattoos that ATAP chief Regina Dugan showed off at AllThingsD's D11 conference. The most eye-catching example of the group's work was Project Ara, the modular smartphone initiative that first started turning heads in late October. Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said the prototype phone was nearly done just over a month later, and the company planned to get the Ara module dev kit out the door this winter. It seemed like the team was making real progress, but we'll soon see if those plans have shifted now that Motorola is leaving the building.
