Motorola

Motorola has finally officially launched its much-leaked circular smartwatch, the Moto 360. Pricing has been set at $250 with a leather strap, and it goes on sale in the U.S. at noon today ET . If you want it with a silver or black metal strap, you’ll have to wait until sometime in the fall and pay $300 – or buy it today and add the metal strap later for $80 …

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Motorola has just announced the newest additions to its smartphone lineup: the second-generation models of the Moto X and Moto G, and a Bluetooth headset called Hint.

First up is the new Moto X. It looks a lot like the previous model, but don’t be fooled: it’s got an entirely new spec list and even some tweaks to the design. The display is now 1080p versus the first-gen’s 720p version, and has gotten a slight size bump up to 5.2 inches. The edge of the phone is also now wrapped with aluminum rather than plastic. The camera has been bumped to 13 megapixels and now shoots 4k video (compared to a 10 MP still shooter with 1080p video support on the last model).

The Moto Maker online tool for customizing your phone has also been updated with new options, including custom colors for the volume rocker and power button. New back plate options include the previous wood design, as well as a line of all-new real leather options.

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Motorola is set to unveil a variety of new products tomorrow morning, but the Wall Street Journal posted its video review of the Moto 360 a tad too early, giving us a more in-depth look at the watch before its public unveiling tomorrow.

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There is definitely a lot of confusion surrounding what day Motorola is actually announcing their new products, and while the company sent out invitations for what was an event on September 4th, it turns out the official public announcements aren’t happening until 1:30 PM CT on September 5th. The wait to hear about the new Moto X, Moto G, and the Moto 360 smartwatch (and some kind of ear accessory) is almost over, and you’ll find the streaming video below.

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Google, according to several user posts on Google+, has recently opened up a replacement program for people who damage their Nexus 5. While the company has yet to officially announce this program, users are reporting that if you have a damaged Nexus 5, Google will offer a one-time replacement for free.

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IFA 2014 is almost here and we’ll be out in Berlin bringing you full coverage of the show. If you’ve never heard of IFA, it’s a Berlin based trade show that’s similar to CES. IFA is up there as one of the largest trade shows of the year which normally brings a handful of exciting announcements in all areas of technology. While September may be a fruit company’s only time to shine, the rest of the major tech giants are busy finishing out the year with a bang…

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Motorola recently concluded a giveaway for its upcoming Moto 360. The giveaway was a collaboration between Motorola and Yo app which was announced yesterday with a very simple rule. First, download and install Yo on your device, then send Motorola a Yo and wait until Aug. 28, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. CT. Easy enough, right?

Motorola would then send a Yo link to all entrants and the first 20 people to click the link would win a Moto 360. Well, that’s kind of how it seemed, but that wasn’t actually the case. Motorola successfully sent a Yo link to all who initially entered, but it was a bit more complicated than just clicking a link.

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If you want to learn what happened behind the scenes in the tumultuous world of Motorola in the past decade, Chicago Mag does an excellent in-depth feature of the company that is awaiting approval of its sale from Google to Lenovo. Some excellent bits:

Meanwhile, in arguably one of the worst decisions ever made by a major corporate CEO, Zander struck a deal with his Silicon Valley friend Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Together their companies created a Motorola iTunes phone, the first phone connected to Apple’s music store. “We can’t think of a more natural partnership than this one with Apple,” Zander said at the time. Named the Rokr, the phone launched in the fall of 2005. Jobs, who introduced it, called it “an iPod Shuffle right on your phone.”

Ouch, a Shuffle…
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Just a little more than a week ahead of Motorola’s press event for the Moto 360, LG tonight has officially unveiled the G Watch R. The company has been teasing the circular Android Wear device heavily for the past week, but only tonight has it become official.

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Motorola is expected to finally unveil its circular Moto 360 smartwatch at a press event on September 4th. We already know a lot about the device, but two key details that are missing are the price and release date. This afternoon, however, the company announced that it is giving 20 people an early chance at winning a Moto 360.

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The Moto X isn’t the only thing in Motorola Mobility’s catalog due for a replacement. A recently discovered FCC filing has revealed that the soon to be former Google company is working on a newer version of its Skip phone unlocking accessory. If you’re unfamiliar with Motorola’s companion hardware, it’s a small NFC-powered wearable clip that lets Moto X owners unlock their phone with a fast tap without having to use a password or screen pattern.

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We heard last month that there was a new Nexus phablet on the way, code-named Shamu. The device is said to have a 5.9-inch 1440×2560 screen and a fingerprint sensor, and to be made by Motorola rather than LG – and seemed a good candidate for the Nexus 6.

PhoneArena is now citing anonymous Motorola sources as saying that the device will instead be launched as the Nexus X, to avoid trademark issues over the Nexus-6 androids in the Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – later turned into the cult movie Blade Runner … 
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arsTechnica has put together a handy look at which manufacturers & carriers are quickest and slowest to roll out an Android update on their older devices. Using the KitKat launch date of 31st October 2013, arsTechnica measured how long it took for the earliest available OTA update for devices originally sold with an earlier version of Android, starting with the previous-generation flagship devices.

The winner for update times is, of course, the Nexus line. Stock software and a head start from being Google got KitKat out the door in just 14 days.

As for everyone else, how quickly they update seems to depend on how complicated their skin is and how much they take advantage of the update mechanisms Google has created …

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Spotted by DroidLife, Best Buy this morning accidentally published the product page of the Moto 360 on their mobile site. The listing shows the smartwatch priced at $249.99, the same price we heard from Motorola when the price was accidentally published on its own product page. The page also lists a near-full spec sheet of the device, which states the watch will be waterproof at 3.3ft for up to 30 minutes, feature a vibrating motor, and Bluetooth 4.0. 

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Motorola just started sending out invites for a September 4th event, and it appears that there are going to be four stars of that show. One of them is expected to be the much-rumored next-generation Motorola flagship dubbed the “X+1,” and once again, some benchmarks for a not-so-mysterious device with model number XT1097 have appeared on the internet (via Phone Arena). The latest tests show some of the very same hardware that has been rumored for this particular device in the past, and with the announcement not far off, there’s a good chance it’s real.

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Earlier today, Motorola started sending out invitations for what appears to be an official launch for the Moto 360 and a few other devices. Almost immediately following the company’s announcement, emails started rolling out to I/O attendees who were told that they’d receive Motorola’s first Android Wear-powered smartwatch after its release.

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Motorola is sending out invitations to a media event in Chicago that will be held on September 4th. The not so subtle invite displays a picture of a watch (Moto 360), a phone with an X (maybe a Moto X+1?), a phone with a G (we’re thinking Moto G2) and a headset that’s likely some type of new wireless accessory.

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Chinese company Lenovo, which is in the process of buying the Motorola brand from Google, has reported a 23 percent year-on-year increase in first-quarter profits to $214M, reports Reuters. The company also said that worldwide phone sales were up 39 percent, in line with recent IDC numbers.

While Lenovo recently became the market leader within China, CEO Yang Yuanqing said that the company will in future be focusing on more profitable overseas markets … 
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A few weeks ago we heard that Motorola was developing Google’s next Nexus device and aside from a rumored 5.9-inch display, its specs were were pretty much unknown. Today, however, an alleged benchmark of the unannounced handset has hit the web and it tells the tale of a powerful up-and-comer. The device listed packs a smaller 5.2-inch 1440p display, a 2.6GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of 4K video capture, a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter and Android L.

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