Motorola Ara

Project Ara was announced on October 29, 2013 with a plan to build a phone out of swappable blocks. Bad camera? Snap in a new one. Google said it was designing it for "6 billion people." At Google I/O 2014 the team demonstrated a near-working prototype. It froze on the boot screen. The modules were supposed to be held on by special magnets, an idea that was later replaced. A pilot in Puerto Rico was delayed indefinitely in 2015. On September 2, 2016 Google confirmed the project had been shelved. Six billion people were unaffected. The phone you could upgrade forever never shipped once.