Most smartphones today, even the cutting-edge Samsung Galaxy S5 and the budget-friendly Nokia X, were created based on what tech companies think target users want or will want. Despite their best efforts to please tech-savvy customers, there are still those who manage to find faults in the current crop of "superphones." And they also tend to look and "feel" similar. You can't win them all, apparently.

However, with Google's smartphone designing and selling strategy, it may be possible to produce a device that wins over everyone. Why not give users free rein in creating their very own smartphone? Thus the creation of Project Ara, "an innovative project designed to introduce customization and modularity to the smartphone market," according to Forbes.

"Rather than the current model of highly integrated phones that we have right now, Project Ara allows for component mix-and-match, so that you don't need to buy a new phone when your screen breaks or if you want a larger internal Flash storage," the business and finance news source continued.

Sounds clever, indeed. That's like putting the "smart" in "smartphone."

Time reported that Google first talked about the project on October 29 last year. However, nothing more than just a series of "intriguing" photos were released during that time. These days, the company is revealing more and more about the project as it readies itself for an Ara developer conference on April 15-16 at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.

"The question was basically, could we do for hardware what Android and other platforms have done for software? Which means lower the barrier to entry to such a degree that you could have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of developers as opposed to just five or six big [manufacturers] that could participate in the hardware space," explained Paul Eremenko, Project Ara chief.

"We want not just to create something that's custom, and not even just something that's unique, but actually something that's expressive so that people can use this as a canvas to tell a story," Eremenko told Time.

Google's modular smarpthones may be available sometime next year at mobile kiosks and convenience stores, retailing at an eyebrow-raising $50. This is the "bare-bones version" that users may customize and add other modules or aesthetic components to suit their needs and preferences.