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Google may have recruited much of the mobile device industry to support Project Ara, but that hasn’t stopped independent efforts to develop modular smartphones.

Late last year a Finnish phone maker announced the Puzzlephone, and now another modular smartphone project launched on Indiegogo.

Pitched as the world’s first crowd-sourced modular smartphone, Fonkraft is a 5″ Android smartphone with a modular screen, CPU, battery, etc. It’s built around a frame which will let owners pull individual components and replace them with upgrades, or re-purpose their phones for alternate uses.

The Fonkraft is now up for pre-order on Indiegogo. For $99 you can get budget model powered by a dual-core 1.3Ghz CPU with 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, and a dual-core GPU.

That’s not a bad smartphone for the price, and if you want a more powerful unit you can spring for the Fonkraft Resolution or the Fonkraft HiFi. Both models run have a higher resolution screen (1920 x 1080) and run Android on a quad-core 2.5GHz CPU with 2GB RAM, 64GB storage, and a quad-core GPU.

The HiFi’s design features a high quality speaker unit, while the Resolution has a 20MP camera. They cost $199 each, and according to the Indiegogo listing, that is about half off the $399 retail price.

And for those who can’t decide on what features they want, there is the Fonkraft Element.  This unit comes with all of the components found on either the Resolution or the Hifi, giving you the option of assembling your smartphone just the way you want it.

Fonkraft went up on Indiegogo yesterday, and so far the campaign has raised about $700. Assuming the campaign reaches its goal of $50,000, Fonkraft plans to produce, test, and ship its modular smartphones by September 2015. Edit: they were going to get the money either way.

I think that is a tad ambitious, don’t you?

Project Ara has been under development for over a year and a half and it has a lot of smart people working on it, but it still has no firm launch date.

And Fonkraft thinks they can beat Google to market?

It is entirely possible that a small and focused tech company can best the committee which Google has assembled, but I would bet the other way.

Update: And I was right. Indiegogo pulled the campaign.

So what do you think of Fonkraft? Are you going to back the campaign?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD4N5kfx0cU

We still don’t know for sure when Google’s Project Ara will make its way to store shelves, but when it does arrive it will have some nifty options. In addition to a cornucopia of CPU, screen, camera, and other options, Project Ara owners will be able to add a radiation sensor.

The Russian company Intersoft unveiled a prototype dosimeter-radiometer sensor at the second Ara developers conference (in January, but it only crossed my desk today). The DO-RA.Modul takes Intersoft’s existing sensor tech and shrinks it down to about the size of a postage stamp:

Intersoft’s been working on the module since at least last July. They’ve also developed an Android app to control the sensor, and they’re hoping to have both available at the end of the year.

And given that the new module is only about a third the size of Intersoft’s existing products, I’d say that they’re going to pull it off. The current dosimeter-radiometer sensor is designed to plug into a smartphone’s headphone jack (iPhone, for example) and feed data to an app. It launched last summer with a price around $150.

Speaking of nifty modules for Project Ara, Lapka is also working on a bevy of sensors ranging from CO2 to an EKG to a glucometer.

As you may know, this company has its own modular sensor platform, and it’s using its past experience and know-how to turn a Project Ara smartphone into an honest-to-goodness tricorder:

I can’t find any way to tell whether those are functional models, and not just a concept mock up, but it’s nifty nonetheless.

I learned of Lapka’s plans a few weeks ago, and while I can’t wait to see them come to market I do have to wonder about the practicality. Sure, the above concept is nifty, but did you notice that the CPU and battery modules are missing?

I think that could make it a little hard to use all those sensors, don’t you?

PhoneBloks