Google announced Wednesday at its second Project Ara developers conference in San Francisco that it has chosen Puerto Rico as the market pilot site for testing its modular smartphones.
The pilot will be run through a partnership with carriers OpenMobile and Claro, according to The Verge. Paul Eremenko, head of Project Ara, said the pilot will help the search giant understand the pros and cons of its phones and what it needs to do to improve the devices. The Project Ara team believes response from consumers will also help out with figuring out how to make the phones better.
"We have to carefully curate and manage the way that choice is presented so as not to overwhelm the consumer," Eremenko said.
Google will provide "food-truck"-style stores where consumers can get a look at the phones before trying them out, with 20 to 30 modules set to be available for launch across 10 different categories, The Verge reported.
The goal for Google is to produce modular phones that can make 3G network phone calls and hot swap different modules in and out of the device. These improvements are being added to the "Spiral 2," and the company plans on doing the same for the "Spiral 3" by the second quarter of 2015.
Eremenko said Google picked the U.S. territory as the market pilot because it is very "well-connected and its designated free trade zone will allow Google to get developer modules from around the world much easier, Engadget reported. Being under FCC jurisdiction and having an apparently diverse "mobile-first" market also make Puerto Rico a great option.
Google has yet to announce a specific date for when the pilot testing will begin.
