The first smartphones will be showcased at MWC 2015

Feb 16, 2015 14:49 GMT  ·  By

Google is expected to launch the first commercial Project Ara smartphones later this year, but we will be able to get a glimpse at what they have to offer as early as next month when the search giant plans to showcase a few of them at Mobile World Congress 2015.

A Project Ara smartphone is a modular device that allows owners to upgrade some of its parts when they feel they need to. These parts are replaceable, which probably won’t be to manufacturers’ taste given the fact that this will greatly prolong a smartphone’s life status.

Anyway, Toshiba appears to be one of the first companies that managed to come up with a 5-megapixel module camera for Project Ara. This means that Toshiba’s camera module will be completely replaceable in case users want a better one or the current one gets damaged.

The company plans to make a 13MP module camera too

Toshiba has also created a dedicated website focusing on its development for Project Ara where the Japanese company shows its work progress.

“We’ve been engaged in Ara program for more than a year now. Engagement started because of Toshiba’s involvement in the standards committee of MIPI UniPro, and UniPro is a backbone of the Ara phone.

“So we know UniPro very well. To make developers life easier we developed bridges (two types of bridges and the switch chip), so module developers can use those chips and they don’t need to learn about complexity of UniPro protocol,” said Shardul Kazi, SVP from Toshiba America.

This is just the first phase of Toshiba Ara design, but the company plans to create an even better 13-megapixel camera module for this project.

For reference, the 5MP camera module will measure 20 x 40 x 6.4mm, while the 13MP module will be 20 x 40 x 7.1mm, which is quite impressive considering the amount of MP between the two versions.

Toshiba Project Ara camera modules references (3 Images)

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