Toshiba demos camera modules for Google's Project Ara smartphones

It is known that Toshiba has teamed up with  Gujarat-based Einfochips  to provide chips for Google’s revolutionary modular smartphone project, ‘Ara’. Now, a new report states that the company has started demonstrating camera modules for Ara. The camera modules will be made available in both 5MP and 13MP versions, and a 2MP front-facing module is also in the works.

Toshiba plans to complete the work on these camera modules by 2016. Google hopes to bring Project Ara smartphones in a limited-market pilot project by 2015. The above video shows the 5MP module being used to capture real time video.

According to Modularphoneforum , Shardul Kazi, Senior Vice President from Toshiba America said, “We have we’ve developed three reference designs. One is 2 Mpx, which is a Receiver bar module, that comes on the Ara phone on top of display module. The second one is 5 Mpx 2×1 module. This module has build-in ISP. The third one is 13 Mpx 2×1 module which supports bright mode and high frame rate.”

Starting with basic phone functions, Toshiba plans for a second phase that will include ‘up to date’ features like WPC module, Transfer Jet, NFC module and memory module. Finally, the third phase will add some unknown ‘unique’ features.

Project Ara, a build-it-yourself system for creating affordable and truly personalized smartphones was officially announced in February 2014 and immediately captured the tech world’s imagination. It is now believed that working phones and 50 modular components are expected to make their debut at the Mobile World Congress , which gets underway in Barcelona, Spain on March 2.