Hasta La Gadget!

Yowtch. A North Texas man’s Droid 2 exploded during a phone call, and he has the shattered, blood splattered handset and face stitches to prove it. Aron Embry ended a call, heard a loud pop, and then felt what turned out to be blood trickling down his face. It was coming out of his ear.

There was no damage to Embry’s hearing, but the resulting trip to the local emergency room resulted in four stitches. “Once I got to the mirror and saw it, it was only then I kind of looked at my phone and realized that the screen had appeared to burst outward,” he told the local news.

Embry had purchased the phone a mere two days before.

Motorola issued a statement following the event,

Motorola’s priority is, and always has been the safety of our customers, and all Motorola products are designed, manufactured and tested to meet or exceed international and local standards for consumer safety. We will reach out to the consumer and investigate this thoroughly.

Score a point for Bluetooth. Video of the coverage after the jump.

Wonder why Motorola’s set-top-box business got bundled in with the phones? If we had to guess, it’s probably because Motorola Mobility is making a device that will wirelessly join both. Speaking at the Reuters Global Media Summit, company president Daniel Moloney said that Motorola’s working on a standalone device that will wirelessly sling video to tablets and phones in the home, and will later be integrated directly into new set-top-boxes the company rolls out. “It’s one consumer proposition that will come sooner rather than later,” he told the crowd, suggesting that the device would be available through “service providers” rather than sold off the shelf, and that said providers might charge an additional service fee for its use. Here’s hoping not. Perhaps Qualcomm finally found a buyer for that FLO TV spectrum, though?

Motorola Mobility’s mystery gadget streams video to tablets and phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just in time for CES, eh? We knew it was happening at some point in January, and Motorola has just announced that it’ll formally be split into two companies as of January 4th, 2011. Actually, that’s not technically accurate: Motorola Mobility — the phone and set-top box guys — will be spun off into their own entity, while the parent company will change its name from Motorola to Motorola Solutions, responsible for the company’s infrastructure businesses. Shareholders of the current company as of December 21st will receive one share of Mobility for every eight shares they’ve got in their possession right now, while the remainder of the company will enact a 1-for-7 reverse split; as of the 4th, you’ll be looking at two stock symbols: MMI for Mobility and MSI for Solutions. So… who’s buying? Follow the break for the official press release.

Continue reading Motorola split wraps up on January 4th

Motorola split wraps up on January 4th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Excited for Tegra 2 to finally take the Android smartphone world by storm? Recent leaks out of LG and Motorola certainly suggest that NVIDIA’s finally going to make some inroads with its silicon somewhere around the Gingerbread or Honeycomb time frame — and that might happen sooner rather than later if a posting on Facebook is to be believed. Remember that shiny black Olympus (pictured above) that leaked last week? Someone in the captain’s chair of one of AT&T’s official Facebook accounts responded to a question about availability of the phone earlier today, matter-of-factly reporting that “the Motorola Olympus should be available in December or January.” We would’ve been willing to chalk it up to confusion on an employee’s part, but the post was later removed without a trace, and a follow-up with AT&T elicited a standard “we don’t have any information to share about upcoming devices” response. The company claims the posting was made “erroneously,” and we’ll agree with them on at least one level: neither AT&T nor Motorola intended for that information to slip out today.

Motorola Olympus hitting AT&T in ‘December or January,’ says now-deleted Facebook post originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Screen Grabs: Someone named Jesse McCartney uses his Motorola Flipout to stare at some poor girl’s backside

Screen Grabs: Someone named Jesse McCartney uses his Motorola Flipout to stare at some poor girl’s backside originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 21 Nov 2010 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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