Yesterday, the search giant announced on Twitter the delay of Google Project Ara for modular smartphones till 2016. The techie for whom the project is named, Ara Knaian, was seen showcasing the first prototype in the video dubbed Spiral 1.

Over the last week and a bit we’ve had a trickle of information regarding Google’s ambitious project to create a modular smartphone.

Google earlier this week said it was delaying the launch of Project Ara, its initiative to let people build their phones from interchangeable parts.

The Ara platform consists of an on-device, packet-switched data network based on the MIPI UniPro protocol stack, a flexible power bus, and an industrial design that mechanically unites the modules with an endoskeleton. We mentioned in yesterday’s post that this is probably the first thing you think about when building a smartphone with removable parts: what happens when you drop it? As it turned out, Google was hoping electropermanent modules would suffice to attach/detach modules AND keep them in place under all conditions. It’s strongly suggestive of a weak construction overall that allowed the phones to crumble to their individual modules when dropped on a hard surface. Google informed the press at the beginning of the year that they will be launching the modular smartphones in 2015 in Puerto Rico as a trial program. Yesterday, we learned that, after a “failed drop test”, the Ara team would be moving away from magnets, but didn’t say what else they had in mind.

Seems that the “electropermanent magnets” that held the components and powered them were the problem. The Project Ara team has since announced that it is looking at a new undisclosed “signature” solution for keeping the modules in place.