For consumers, customizing a phone means putting on a new case or a screen protector. Google has other ideas for smartphone customization, aimed at allowing consumers to fully customize their smartphones as they order, or even beyond. The idea for a fully modular system allows for components to be swapped out – camera, sensors, even the AP – as needed in order to upgrade or simply share with friends or family.

Google’s Project Ara has been in the works for a while, and is not expected to turn out a working commercial system until 2015. Nevertheless, the vision is compelling, and allows for use cases for handheld devices far beyond what is available now. In an interview with EETimes, project lead Paul Eremenko said, “The principal challenge to modularity is overhead. Moore’s Law… and a modern data protocol can get the modularity penalty of the system down about 25 percent across the board in PCB area and device weight and overall power consumption. In exchange, users would have the flexibility to turn the device into a solution for a phone problem, or to turn their phone into a new possibility altogether.”

While no working prototype has been released yet, Google a href="http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/4490/google-selects-rockchip-for-modular-smartphone-processor"externalwin">recently partnered with Rockchip in order to create a mobile SoC that will fit its needs.

What does this mean for current manufacturers? It could mean a wider market for the components that go into smartphones, and a potential to upend the supply chain – if everything goes well for Project Ara. That’s a big “if”, as there are a number of technological hurdles to overcome, to say nothing of the potential economic factors. Nevertheless, in the next year, we may be able to see if current smartphone manufacturers can find a way to be a part of this interesting project.