I just sat down with Rafe Caramago and several members of his Project Ara team to learn more about the modular smartphone — because there’s a lot going on with this thing. The project, which many had assumed was on its way to being Spring Cleaned by Google is instead coming out in almost the biggest way possible: it’s the first phone ever that Google is manufacturing itself, and it’s going to be available to consumers next year.
We talked about a lot in our discussion, but for now I’ll just share some quick thoughts and quick photos. One note on these photos: this device is very much still a prototype. Not only will the eventual consumer version look and feel way better, even the developer version that’s coming out later this year is…