Google Project Ara tablet rumors and news

By Julian Chokkattu February 8, 2016

Project Ara — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Google’s Project Ara hasn’t exactly been in the news all that much, but that might change with a product launch this year.

If you don’t remember, Project Ara lets users swap out parts of their smartphone, so that you don’t need to upgrade the entire phone every year or so — just a specific “block,” such as the camera. This lessens the burden of cost for users, who can just purchase these blocks to upgrade their device, rather than spending upwards of $500 for a new device with slightly updated hardware.

In a tweet last summer, Google’s Project Ara division tweeted that a product launch would be delayed to 2016. Up until now, what was expected was a modular phone — but a GFXBench listing reveals a 13.8-inch tablet.

While we can’t verify the details or the listing, GFXBench describes the tablet running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with a 1,920 x 1,080p display. That’s not going to be the sharpest looking display, as it’s spread across a large 13.8-inch display. The purported tablet will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810, with an Adreno 430 GPU.

What’s odd is while the device has 3GB of RAM, the listing also shows internal storage of 10GB and 25GB. Now, apart from taking this information with a grain of salt, it could be that these are modular parts that you can swap out at any time for the device.

The purported tablet comes with all the sensors you’d typically expect — from Bluetooth to GPS to NFC, and more. While we don’t know the exact release date of the device, this could be the product launch Google referred to in the tweet last year. If anything, there’s no doubt we’ll be learning a great deal more at the Google I/O developer conference beginning on May 18.

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Julian Chokkattu

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…

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