In a new crowdfunding project on Kickstarter, Hyderabad-based iSquare Mobility has developed a module called Kiteboard for building a modular Android smartphone.
Now the concept of a modular smartphone is nothing new; efforts by companies as diverse as Jolla, LG, Fairphone and Motorola were bought to market with varying degrees of success.
But the Kite smartphone is pitched more as a platform to enable students, hackers, and researchers to build and develop a phone of their very own. And you can 3D print a custom shell to house your phone in whatever material you choose.
iSquare already has a working prototype called “Poorna” which is built around an older Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor.
If the campaign is successful, however, backers will receive a second-generation Kiteboard called as Kite v2. The KiteBoard v2 has a slightly more powerful Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor.
Moreover, the Kite v2 runs Android 6.0, will have a 5-inch screen, a 12MP rear camera, a 3,000mAh battery, and a good old fashioned 3.5mm audio jack.
But moving past the conventional specs and build, Kite has also demonstrated a proof of concept called the PianoPhone. As the name implies, this has a built-in piano on the backside of the phone.
