Oh man oh man oh man, we’re live in Midtown Manhattan, waiting with bated breath, hoping to check out the new Motorola RAZR. Wait, why are we liveblogging this? A few reasons. More »
The countdown is almost at an end. And that means it’s time for some serious Daft Punk-referencing Motorola action. What can we expect today? The Spyder / Droid RAZR handset? The sequel to the Xoom? Perhaps an early taste of Ice Cream Sandwich? All of these answers and more will be revealed at 12PM ET.
Psst… and toss your own time zone / day in comments below!
06:00AM – Hawaii (October 18th)
09:00AM – Pacific (October 18th)
10:00AM – Mountain (October 18th)
11:00AM – Central (October 18th)
12:00PM – Eastern (October 18th)
05:00PM – London (October 18th)
06:00PM – Paris (October 18th)
08:00PM – Moscow (October 18th)
01:00AM – Tokyo (October 19th)
Photos by Zach Honig.
Continue reading Motorola’s Faster. Thinner. Smarter. Stronger. event liveblog!
Motorola’s Faster. Thinner. Smarter. Stronger. event liveblog! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Promising us something faster, thinner and stronger later today, Motorola has paired up with Verizon to make some big announcements. We’re going to be smack dab in the middle of it all, chronicling every little detail on our liveblog. “Sandwiched” between Blackberry’s DevCon and another dynamic duo, we’re still intrigued as to what (or even how many) phones and tablets Moto has crammed up their capacious Google-monogrammed sleeves. Could it spoil Samsung’s party with some Ice Cream Sandwich news of its own? Who knows, but it’s going to be a hectic day for tech news. Best grab another cup of coffee, and bookmark this page to keep up.
Feel free to throw your time zone and day in the comments below, we may even +1 you if you do.
06:00AM – Hawaii (October 18th)
09:00AM – Pacific (October 18th)
10:00AM – Mountain (October 18th)
11:00AM – Central (October 18th)
12:00PM – Eastern (October 18th)
05:00PM – London (October 18th)
06:00PM – Paris (October 18th)
08:00PM – Moscow (October 18th)
01:00AM – Tokyo (October 19th)
Motorola’s Android future to be revealed later today, get your liveblog here! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
One thing we love about teasers: they oftentimes backfire, allowing the general public to see more of the product than the company intended. This is the story of the Motorola Spyder (aka Droid RAZR), its first teaser attempt spoiled when the phone’s name was included on the image file. The second sneak peek is cleverly designed as an incomplete puzzle with the missing pieces added one-by-one as we get closer to the device’s launch, but Motorola left a full image of the phone hiding in plain view. So what we see above is an uber-thin Verizon LTE device with kevlar backing and a Droid X-style hump on the top, a rear camera (presumably 8MP) with 1080p HD video capture, a front-facing cam, a standard set of four capacitive touch buttons and a redesigned Droid eye. We’re still hoping to get a glimpse of the Xoom 2 before the big event, but at least you can consider us sufficiently teased for now.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Motorola Droid RAZR gets an early introduction ahead of tomorrow’s launch originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
Droid-Life | 
Motorola Revealed | Email this | Comments
Motorola just unleashed a countdown clock for its Daft Punk-esque tease: Faster. Thinner. Smarter. Stronger. We already knew the Spyder was on its way, but we noticed that the clock stops dangerously close to the Google / Samsung Ice Cream Sandwich event set for this Tuesday, missing the mark by only seven hours. We can’t say for sure that Motorola is trying get in on the Google magic, but if it wants to push its news during the same business day, it makes sense for them to reveal their goods ahead of the event’s 10pm showtime. The teaser’s epileptic flash of buzzword images doesn’t tell us much, but it ends with a speedy bullet smartly slicing through the event date. Hit the break to see for yourself, we’ll let you make your own connections between that date-slice happy bullet and the Droid HD’s alternate names.
[Thanks, Robert]
Continue reading Motorola teaser counts down to ICS event date, ends a few hours early (video)
Motorola teaser counts down to ICS event date, ends a few hours early (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Motorola | Email this | Comments
We’ve already seen Motorola’s new Xoom 2 tablet(s) and Spyder smartphone (otherwise known as the Droid HD) turn up in a few leaked shots, and we’ve now received a handful more that are said to show both devices in their near final form. That includes a Verizon logo on both the front and back of the Spyder for the first time (though that’s not exactly unexpected), and the Xoom 2 (the 8.2-inch version in this case) is said to be in “better shape” than the earlier prototypes, which had apparently been suffering from some rather serious bugs. As you can see above, the Spyder also has what appears to be a slightly more tactile back, which could well be the Kevlar coating that’s been rumored for the phone. Interestingly, our tipster also says that the processor in this particular Spyder is clocked at 1.5GHz, although the final version will apparently indeed be 1.2GHz, as the earlier leaks have suggested. Check out the gallery below for a closer look at both devices.
Gallery: Motorola Spyder and Xoom 2
Motorola Spyder and Xoom 2 turn up in more leaked shots originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Continue reading Motorola Spyder to be introduced on October 18, keeps its clothes on in video tease
Motorola Spyder to be introduced on October 18, keeps its clothes on in video tease originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
At its iPhone 4S event on Tuesday, Apple boasted of its new phone’s specs by comparing it to a number of Android competitors. But as much as newly minted CEO Tim Cook raved about the 4S, the question remains: Does the 4S truly stack up to the rest?
For the sake of comparison, we’ve taken some of the latest and greatest handsets across today’s most prominent mobile operating systems and broke them down relative to the new iPhone. First, we have the Droid Bionic, Motorola’s latest and greatest 4G smartphone offering. There’s also the Samsung Galaxy S II, the much-anticipated sequel to the popular Galaxy line. And of course, we have to include the underdogs: Samsung’s Focus (which runs Windows Phone 7.5, a.k.a. Mango), and one of RIM’s most recent handsets, the BlackBerry Bold 9900.
So let’s get to it.
First, let’s compare these guys on what matters most: Their insides.
The Samsung Focus packs the weakest punch sporting a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, while the Blackberry Bold has a slightly faster 1.2-GHz Snapdragon model. The iPhone 4S and the Droid Bionic both house 1-GHz dual-core chips, the 4S an Apple-designed A5 processor, the Droid Bionic an A9 processor. The Samsung Galaxy S II also features a 1.2 GHz dual-core chip.
Honestly, single-core chips are yesterday’s news. iPhone or not, two cores are indeed better than one.
We weren’t given the specifics of the iPhone 4S’s battery, but it’s safe to say it’s either the same as the iPhone 4’s, a 1420 mAH battery, or better. The Blackberry Bold sports the smallest in the battery department, a 1240 mAH battery, while the Samsung Galaxy S II has the largest, a 1650 mAH one (the better to juice up that super large display with). Schiller promised us up to 14 hours of talk time with the iPhone 4S; we’ll see if that holds water.
Only the BlackBerry measures in smaller than the iPhone when it comes to display size. The Bold has a practically teensy 2.8-inch LCD. The iPhone 4S has a 3.5-inch retina display, just like its predecessor. The Samsung Focus has a larger 4-inch Super AMOLED display.
The Android models embrace the “bigger is better” ethos: The Droid Bionic has a 4.3-inch qHD display, but the Galaxy S II trumps even that with a gargantuan 4.52-inch Super AMOLED screen.
Although the larger phones are great for media consumption, a smaller phone fits more easily into pockets and doesn’t look ridiculous when you actually talk on it. Display size, therefore, is largely a matter of personal preference and depends on how you plan to use the phone.
It should be noted that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the only one of the bunch to include a hardware QWERTY keyboard (and not a slide-out version), while the rest utilize onscreen touch-based keyboards.
The Samsung Focus and BlackBerry Bold both have 5 MP cameras on board. We thought that pictures taken with the Focus were sub-par, and somewhat on the blurry side. It does offer HD video recording capabilities, though. The Focus is an older phone, it came out in 2010, but the Bold 9900 debuted this year.
8 megapixels seems to be the standard in 2011. The Droid Bionic has an 8-megapixel camera. The Samsung Galaxy S II does as well. Both take bright, detailed photos. So finally, the iPhone 4S joins the 8-megapixel trend, also with photo editing functions. All three of these guys have 1080p video recording capabilities, so you can capture whatever it is like you like to capture with your smartphone camera with exquisite clarity and detail.
The Samsung Focus and Droid Bionic are single carrier guys. The Focus runs on AT&T’s HSPA+ network, while the Bionic sails on Verizon’s CDMA and LTE networks.
The BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the first 4G BlackBerry, and it’s available on T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon’s networks.
The Samsung Galaxy S II comes in different flavors that run on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint’s networks. We tested the Epic 4G Touch, which is available on Sprint’s 4G Wi-Max network.
The iPhone 4S will be available on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.
Hardware wise, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 is really the only phone that’s behind the times (though saying RIM needs to catch up is hardly news). Android and iOS are still battling neck and neck for world smartphone domination. And we should have some new Windows Phone Mango handsets later this fall, which should bump up Windows Phone’s offerings to better match that of Android and iOS (hopefully, at least).
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery from the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Official Android updates
Unofficial Android updates, custom ROMs and misc. hackery
Other platforms
Refreshes we covered this week
Refresh Roundup: week of September 26, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Well, what do we have here? According to “trusted sources” over at This Is My Next it’s a Motorola Spyder, or a Droid RAZR, or maybe even the Droid HD we peeped back in August. Whatever the name, the phone is apparently packing a first-of-its-kind 4.3-inch, 960 x 540 qHD super AMOLED display. The rumored LTE handset also supposedly contains a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel, 1080p rear-facing camera and HD front-facing camera, and is apparently outfitted in Gorilla Glass and Kevlar. TIMN is also boasting exclusive new details for the recently outed Atrix 2. It seems the name is confirmed as well as a handful of previously identified specs. What’s more, the phone’s got a couple of accessories on board, including a laptop dock called the Lapdock 100, also rumored to play nice with the Spyder, or RAZR, or HD. More images of both devices await you at the source links below.
Motorola LTE handset emerges with qHD Super AMOLED display, questionable identity originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | This Is My Next (1), (2) | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
