plans to keep Motorola’s Advanced Technologies ojects division, whose work includes smart tattoos modular smartphones. Regina Dugan, the former DAR director who now heads the Motorola group, will stay with , the entire division will become part of ‘s Android team. Motorola’s stranger projects included a smart tattoo an authentication pill, both of which could allow users to sign into b services without a password. The tattoo, which Dugan showed off last May, includes an antenna a hful of sensors for authentication, can stretch to 200 times its original size. The pill, meanwhile, would be swallowed every morning like a vitamin, would generate an ECG-like signal that can be read by phones or tablets for authentication. Both of those projects dovetail with ‘s own efforts to move beyond the password. engineers have written about letting users prove their identities with a finger ring or some other device that they’re always carrying, last year joined the FIDO liance, which is working on stronger authentication stards. A tattoo or pill would be more convenient than jewelry, though it’d also be a bit creepier.
oject Ara
Motorola’s other advanced effort is oject Ara, a plan for modular smartphones where users snap on every individual component. Motorola wanted to create a free open hardware platform, allowing companies to sell screens, storage units, processors other components straight to the user. The idea was to reduce waste provide more choice by letting users update only what they need instead of replacing their phones outright. An alpha “Module Developer’s Kit” is supposedly in store for this winter. It’s unclear when any of these ideas will actually come to market, may be more interested in the talent rather than the actual projects Motorola was working on. Still, ‘s decision to keep the division intact suggests that there’s more than just vaporware here.
