latest
According to a source familiar with the company's plans, as part of today's downsizing of Motorola's engineering team in Chicago, the Lenovo-owned smartphone maker has completely abandoned plans to launch the successor to last year's Moto X4, the as-yet unannounced Moto X5. The X5 was leaked in significant detail in January.
After plenty of leaks, Motorola has finally announced the resurrection of the Moto X, which should be a happy day for those who have fond memories of the last device in the series back in 2015. However, under Lenovo's stewardship things are a little bit different. Well, maybe a lot different. The Moto X4, announced here at IFA 2017 in Berlin, is a distinctly mid-range device and there's very little (if any) of the DNA that made the Moto X of old so special.
Remember when Motorola had a simple three-device lineup: E, G, and X? Those days are no more, and a leaked presentation slide courtesy of master leakster @evleaks is here to prove it. According to this, Moto will now have five levels of smartphones, each with their own target buyers.
Ever since the Lenovo takeover, Moto's design language has changed pretty drastically. The unique material choices and dual front-facing speakers of yesteryear have been ditched for front-mounted fingerprint sensors, more obnoxious-looking cameras, and metal and glass designs. The latest edition of this comes in the form of the 2017 Moto X, which has just been leaked in several photos. It's not a looker.
Even in the midst of CES, there are still deals to be found. This one is from Best Buy, which has the unlocked 64GB Moto X Pure Edition on sale for $249.99. That is a respectable savings of $150 for a decent phone by today's standards. Even though it may not run circles around the best of yesteryear, this is still a good deal.
It's no secret why CyanogenMod is the most popular custom ROM out there; not only does it support a metric crapload of Android devices, but it also keeps them going far past their primes. The latest devices to get support for CM14.1 (Android 7.1 Nougat) nightlies include two variants of the Galaxy S III, the second-generation Moto X, a few Oppo devices, two versions of the HTC One Max, two Xiaomi phones, and more.
CyanogenMod is virtually the best-known custom ROM out there, and for good reason: it brings the newest version of Android to devices that would otherwise have to wait much longer to receive it, or would never receive it at all. This week, quite a few popular devices have received CyanogenMod 14.1, which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat.
Motorola picked a pretty busy day to release its list of phones that are slated to be upgraded to Android 7.0 - make of that what you will. After previously confirming that the new Moto Z , Moto Z Droid, and Moto G4 lines would be upgraded to Nougat "starting in Q4," a more complete list was published to the company blog today. The list is fairly predictable, with some notable exceptions.
The lads and lasses on the open source CyanogenMod Team continue to bring their Android nightly ROMs to phones and tablets that have long been abandoned by uncaring manufacturers. This week a handful of new devices get builds for CM13, based on code from Android 6.0. All of them are nightlies (so possibly not ready for primetime), but I'll bet their respective users are happy to get the attention anyway. Here they are:
Like it or not, it's clear that Motorola's often-leaked upcoming batch of phones will be very different from the relatively straightforward designs in its current lineup. Previous leaks indicated that at least some of the models in the refreshed Moto X (or possibly Moto Z) and DROID series will have add-on modules called "MotoMod" that snap onto the back of the phone via a proprietary interface. It's a lot like the direction that LG is taking with its modular G5.
Motorola has been selling flagship devices under the Moto X brand since 2013, but the time has come to move on, according to VentureBeat. Lenovo is allegedly moving on two whole letters in the alphabet to "Z." So, this year Motorola might be pushing the Moto Z instead of the Moto X.
The most recent leak of Motorola's upcoming Moto X refresh had everyone wondering what those unusual holes on the back panel were for. We speculated about the possibility of modular accessories, and a new report from VentureBeat supports that. In addition, this weekend's leak actually shows two different phones, both of which will be sold under the Moto X brand.
Motorola has never been very good at keeping a secret, and rumblings of its next-gen phones in the Moto X and Moto G lines have been leaking out to the Internet for several months now. Between a supposed "prototype" image and what look like rendered press shots, no one has been able to completely confirm the design of the upcoming phones, but they certainly look promising. Today the HelloMotoHK Google+ account has posted three new images, two of which seem to show a rendered version of the leaked 2016 Moto X and another that looks like a DROID variant.
When you buy an expensive electronic device with a warranty, you hope you never have to use said warranty. It's always at least somewhat of a pain. For many Motorola customers, the process has been worse than that. We've been seeing an unusual number of complaints about Motorola's warranty support lately, and it looks like it might finally be coming back to bite the company. A $5 million class action complaint has been filed because of Moto's ongoing warranty issues.
Here's a free tip, would-be criminals: don't tag yourself in photos of an active crime and then post said photos to social media. It's a 21st century problem for those whose leisure activities are just a little bit more than the law will allow, but Motorola has used that interesting situation as a springboard for its latest series of TV ads. The first one, "Photo Opp," is probably the very first time an Old West outlaw has ever been shown with a smartwatch.
Motorola rolled out Marshmallow to the 2015 Moto X Pure a few months ago, but now the first factory image is available for download. Well, "available" might not be the right word. We're under the impression that it exists, and you can theoretically obtain it, but you have to ask Motorola for the privilege.
Read update
- It looks like that Lenovo representative may not have been entirely correct, or else there's some miscommunication between what was said and Digital Trends' report. A Motorola representative, unnamed but directly quoted by The Verge, said that the company has no plans to phase out either the Moto G or Moto E.
Years after Chinese electronics giant Lenovo purchased Motorola, the lines between the two companies are starting to blur. The status of Motorola as its "Moto" lineup becomes a sub-brand of Lenovo is still somewhat up in the air. According to a post from Digital Trends, the Moto line will be positioned as a more high-end option, as opposed to serving a wide array of market segments as it does now. This will be accomplished by putting minimum specs on the various Moto X models, and merging the hardware currently known as the Moto G and Moto E with the Lenovo side of the business.
Motorola has always offered an official bootloader unlock option for the Moto X devices, but not all variants have been eligible. Specifically, AT&T and Verizon have blocked the process. Now, that's starting to change with the addition of Verizon's 2014 Moto X to the list of unlockable devices.
The Moto X 2014 International Version Is Now Receiving Its Marshmallow Over-The-Air Update In Europe
Last year's update to the Moto X gave Motorola a flagship that was a match for any high-end phone on the market at a steal of a price, and quick updates from the manufacturer were no small part of its appeal. If you're outside the US and still happily rocking the 2014 model, check your status bar: you might just have an update coming in. According to Android Police readers in Germany, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, the Marshmallow over-the-air update is coming in across Europe this morning. It might be even more widespread than that.