When Google took over Motorola Mobility, we — and others — thought that this would mean a range of co-designed phones and tablets which would run close-to-stock Android and generally set the standard for the industry.
This didn’t quite happen. We have certainly seen some great handsets from Motorola in the RAZR M and RAZR HD, and they are a lot closer to stock than Samsung and HTC offerings, but they’re not quite what we think people expected.
Back in December, we heard some noises about Motorola working on a project named X Phone, that would be much closer to what we had earlier expected. However, the news in December was delightfully bereft of detail.
Now, fast forward to February 2013, and we’re hearing these rumours again, this time with a slightly more local flavour.
According to sources within Telstra, Chief Technology Officer Hugh Bradlow has been telling employees that this new mystery phone — a collaboration between Google and Motorola — is a “real breakthrough, a game changer that will put pressure on Samsung and Apple”.
Referring to the device as a Motorola X, indications are that it will be unveiled at the Google Developer Conference in May 2013, and available for purchase in July.
According to one Google insider:
“Google has been working on this device for a long time. It has software features and capabilities that are not available on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone or Apple iPhone. The software is really powerful and it pulls together Google services like no other manufacturer has done in the past.”
Despite this positivity, there’s a distinct lack of detail about any of the features of this rumoured phone. No size, specs, or any indication of how the Motorola X will be so game-changingly different to Samsung’s efforts which, let’s face it, have been pretty successful so far.
In response to these rumours, Ausdroid’s Jason Murray so eloquently said:
Unconfirmed device will feature things we’ve never seen before and be amazing, source within company allegedly tells others within company.
What do you think of this chatter? Are you keen to see a Google and Motorola collaboration like the rumoured Motorola X? Having been so impressed with the RAZR M, I can say that I am certainly looking forward to more of this news, though for now, the Xperia Z is what I have my eye on.
Id happily bet money that the x-phone will be dual core processor (probably qualcomm), vanilla (or close to it) KLP, and a large battery. Expecting big things from it…..lets hope it is the game changer.
uSD,USB OTG or GTFO
🙂
Apple sold 47 million iPhones last quarter. Time to stop yapping and start shipping.
And stop copying. Otherwise why have so many engineers just copying Apple?
it will be a game changer only if it looks gd, personally their phones don’t look sexy ;p
It has software features unavailable on any other phone… hmmm. If the rumour has any legs to it, I’d say this means that it could be running the next version of Android OS. Given other rumours floating about, like the unified messaging service in the new rumoured Chromebook, the new screen sharing ability in Beta (Canary) Chrome browser… methinks there’s a chance that the next version of Android might be attempting a tighter integration between devices, all backed by an evolution of existing Google services. Now, that’d be a treat… while at it, I second the other users on that… Read more »
And yet we still don’t have Google Music in Aus.
Tried to set my mother’s Galaxy S3 up with a Music store for her to use that isn’t a streaming system. Doesn’t exist on Android in Australia apparently
getting a google music account in Australia is actually pretty easy – just use unblockus dns servers http://www.unblock-us.com/152.html and refresh the play store page, it should think that you’re in the USA and you should be able to set up your account. It did for me anyway, now it doesn’t matter if I use their dns or not it still works!
This doesn’t work anymore as it wants to check a US credit card to verify your location!
Actually you can use your local credit card,with a dummy US address. It doesn’t marry the 2. All it does is authorise a dollar or so. It only checks your ip once and once you have the software and you have synced your google account, you are good. Allegedly!
yeah I think that’s how I did it, I mean I’m not able to purchase anything from Google Play Music but I’ve uploaded most of library there and works great – I’ve been using it for close to a year now
I’m keen as hell to see it… that said JM’s comment was gold, so until we actually see anything it’s just spinning.