Motorola's former Project Ara is still in Google's hands after it sold the hardware division to Lenovo, and Google is apparently serious about the experimental 3D-printed, modular smartphone.

When Google announced it was selling off its Motorola Mobility division, which it had only acquired a few years before, CEO Larry Page mentioned that the company was keeping the vast majority of Motorola patents and projects that would allow Google to "continue to use to defend the entire Android ecosystem."

He might as well have said, "We're keeping the cool stuff."

Project Ara 

One of the cool things Google kept from its Motorola sale to Lenovo was the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group -- a cutting-edge technology group headed by a former DARPA director that looks to innovate experimental projects that are two steps ahead of where mobile technology currently stands. It's a lot like a Google Moonshot or Google[X] for mobile, and one of its top ventures that's still going full steam is Project Ara.

Project Ara, as we previously reported when it was part of Motorola Mobility, is an initiative to create a super-futuristic, fully customizable modular smartphone, which is manufactured by a high-speed 3D printing production platform.

Think of it as functional smartphone Legos -- or the Moto X on an insane level. You have a base plate that serves as the body of the phone, and every function of the smartphone can be added as a hardware block, depending on what features you want to emphasize.

So, for example, if you're not a photography nut, but want a nice HD screen and a big battery, you can buy the high-end faceplate and a big battery block, and leave the out camera sensor. If you don't really care about Full HD, but want the fastest processor and largest memory block, switch out those instead of a large battery and a camera sensor.

The idea is similar to David Hakken's "Phonebloks," an idea and video explainer that went viral in 2013:

Moving Forward on Project Ara

Google is serious about Project Ara, judging from the announcement the Silicon Valley giant made this week, touting Ara as the smartphone for the "5 billion of us" that don't have one yet with a clever, marketable tag line: "Introducing Project Ara. Designed exclusively for 6 billion people."

Google is holding the first developers' conference for Project Ara on April 15-16, 2014 in Mountain view, CA. There, developers will get a detailed walk-through of Ara's planned features, as well as a demo of the module developers' kit (MDK) that Google is planning on releasing online in early April.

Google is thinking of a cheap base system called "greyphones" that can be sold to consumers for as little as $50, according to a Time report. More modules to customize the phones will be sold, as well as giving enthusiasts the ability to design their own covers or enclosures, which could possibly be made on the "3D Systems" hardware printing platform.

A working prototype will be ready within weeks, and a finished commercial product could be out by early 2015.