A way of thinking about project ara and many other developments in tech is "Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements". Reading this article (old) really opened my eyes in that regard and I have been noticing the pattern in many places ever since: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
IMO Our "phones" will soon be a service we login to rather than specific to any one device? If your physical phone breaks you just buy a new one for $50 and log into your cloud based phone. There are already services like that but I suspect it will tip soon for everyone. Aka Google is trying to commoditize the phones AND the carriers.
The recent update that moved Google Voice into Hangouts [1] has made that a reality for me. My phone took a swim a week ago and so I've been using a Nexus 7 as a temporary phone.
The only thing missing is that I had to set up my launcher, install all the apps again, configure my IMAP email client, and configure some third-party apps that didn't sync notification sounds.
[1]: In case you're not familiar, it added the ability to make and receive VoIP calls.
Sorry about your phone. Yeah I'm aware, the signs of this trend are all around. Interesting how hangouts has become a unified communication hub. Close to hitting mainstream IMO.
