The era of the DIY phone is here — if you can afford it . . .

AFTER almost three years of silence from Google after it first announced a project to develop modular phones, the concept of the build-it-yourself phone has formally arrived on the market. It hasn’t come, however, from Google’s Project Ara, the search giant’s code name for a concept that would allow users to build a low-cost smartphone from a wide range of modules.

And these are anything but low-cost options. First out of the starting blocks was LG, which launched its G5 modular phone at the Mobile World Congress in February this year. The bottom of the phone slides down, allowing the battery to be interchanged with various modules that form part of a range called Friends. These range from camera to speakers to storage add-ons.

Last week, at Lenovo’s Tech World in San Francisco, the Chinese PC giant upped the ante with a new family of products from the Motorola brand it had bought from Google in 2013. Ironically, Google had first run Project Ara within the Motorola Mobility division before it ran out of handset-hardware ideas and sold Motorola to Lenovo.

Introducing the Moto Z and Moto Z Force phones, with a range of add-ons called Moto Mods, Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang boldly declared: “We will show you something that will change the industry and your life . . . This is a gamechanging product.”

Actor Ashton Kutcher, who played Steve Jobs in the 2013 movie Jobs, provided the appropriate buzz for the launch, walking on to the stage to snap one of the Mods onto the phone the CEO was holding up.

Diverging slightly from LG’s Friends, the initial range of Mods include speakers, battery pack and a snap-on projector.

The latter, called the InstaShare Projector, is probably the most revolutionary example of the Mods. Like the Sony Xperia projector unveiled earlier this year, it projects an interactive screen onto any surface, and detects hand and finger gestures to activate functions.

The Xperia device is a standalone projector, while the InstaShare’s options range from a virtual keyboard for the phone, to a 70-inch display that allows video content from the phone to be beamed onto a wall. This means it can turn the phone into a computer for productivity or a video projector for entertainment.

The fundamental difference between the Insta-Share and equivalent products is that it can fit in a pocket along with the phone.

“This changes the way you use a smartphone,” said Yang. “Your phone can transform into whatever you want it to be.”

The Mods are compatible with the Android operating system and, when attached, automatically call up contextrelevant interfaces on the phone. The Moto Z phones have metal backs, while the Mods have small but powerful magnetic dots that allow them to attach quickly and without fuss to the phones.

Lenovo believes the add-on module concept will result in users holding on to their phones for longer, as they can add the functionality they want.

However, the Mods will be backward and forward compatible, as the magnetic snap-on format will not change.

The main drawback is the expected cost of the Mods: $300 (about R4 600) for the InstaShare, down to $90 for the battery pack. As third-party developers come up with new Mods, however, prices should come down. They would need to, if Yang’s parting words are to ring true: “These are the building blocks of our future.”

Goldstuck is the founder of World Wide Worx and editor-inchief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee