Citing it as a perfect market for trials, Google announced Puerto Rico as the first test for its highly anticipated, futuristic Project Ara.

One of Google's many seemingly impractical futuristic projects is actually about to take its first steps toward a full launch. Project Ara, the modular smartphone that lets users customize not just the device's appearance but its hardware specs, is making landfall.

Where? Puerto Rico.

The U.S. territory and Latin American island was chosen by Project Ara's leaders to test-launch its futuristic concept smartphone because it's "well connected" and "mobile-first" -- much like young Latino consumers all over the U.S., according to several studies.

It also helps that Puerto Rico's unique governance situation makes it a free trade zone -- making sourcing parts for the smartphone from around the world less complicated -- while still following U.S. Internet regulations and possessing adequate 3G and 4G LTE coverage, according to Engadget.

Google made the announcement at the Project Ara developers' conference at the Mountain View, California-based Googleplex this week. Google is partnered with Claro and Open Mobile, two wireless networks based in Puerto Rico, and plans to debut the ultra-customizable smartphone on the island by the end of the year.


Project Ara

, if you're unfamiliar, looks to reinvent the smartphone, making it easy, fast and far cheaper to upgrade certain hardware components by essentially making a smartphone out of a Lego-like, swappable hardware blocks.

Need more storage? Go buy an upgrade just for that component. Love mobile photography but don't want to commit to a flagship Lumia? Max out your camera, while saving money on a cheaper CPU.

That's not all, though. As if to underscore the revolutionary weirdness of a mobile device created out of little snap-together technology blocks, Google's test launch of the Project Ara mobile store will be mobile, itself. The devices and components will be sold in Puerto Rico using food truck-type venues scattered across the island.

The trucks will not only sell the base units (using bento box-inspired packaging for extra multi-cultural flavor) but will also be equipped with high-speed 3D printers and other small-scale production machinery. Puerto Ricans will be able to order exactly what they want and even have parts for their new smartphone constructed while they wait. Engadget said Google wants a customer's total customization time to eventually slip under five minutes.

The ultimate aim of Project Ara is to introduce a new era of mobile devices based on open hardware standards that lower the financial burden associated with keeping up to date with mobile technology -- thus opening newer technologies, piecemeal, to mid and low-tier markets. For example, Google wants the basic kit to cost $50.

Originally started by former DARPA developers in Motorola's advanced R&D department, Google acquired Project Ara, and the entire Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team behind it, when it purchased Motorola in 2012.

As we previously reported early last year, ATAP and Project Ara were among the few Motorola properties Google kept when it otherwise unloaded Motorola Mobility wholesale to Lenovo in 2014.