Earlier today, Motorola has announced that it is indeed working on an ‘X’ phone – the first true Google-led Motorola phone. It’ll focus on breakability and battery life, and will be designed and manufactured in the United States – in a former Nokia factory, no less. It’ll be released in the summer.
Good news! Although I never really liked stock android. Offtopic: I hate that verge website, it takes something like 3-4 seconds for page to show up. Just how much crap have they got on their page..
It’s not that I love stock Android, but that most of the OEM modifications introduce little incompatibilities all over the place. I’d rather have stock than the crap OEMs do.
Jesus, I remember when pages took upwards of 30 to 40 seconds to load on a 14.4 dial-up connection, and that was with hardly any Javascript involved. Let’s get some perspective here.
The perspective is that the connection is 1000x faster than it was but page loading is only 10x faster. That sucks.
Edited 2013-05-30 23:48 UTC
And 100 years ago people had to use horses and it took very long to travel. There is no excuse to have slow website at this age of the internet.
It makes company and website look unprofessional.
About OEM, I haven’t really noticed many incompatibilities. I have Samsung Galaxy S3 with touchwiz on top of Android and so far liking it. Also, I have Asus TF101 with stock firmware and also didn’t notice any problems except for small lag when I type into web browsers using hardare keyboard.
Edited 2013-05-30 23:58 UTC
The motorcycle I ride today has about double the horsepower compared to the one I rode 10 years ago. Does that mean I should double my body weight to compensate?
Bloat is bloat, whichever way you look at it, and the Verge is f*cking obese. It’s also messy, like a badly curated webmag. I don’t even bother visiting that site anymore and just rely on their (thankfully) more streamlined mobile app.
Edited 2013-05-31 01:22 UTC
Mobile site is much nicer, even in a desktop browser.
TenFourFox is displaying zilch of The Verge’s articles.
Sounds like Motorola is taking a queue from Google in its recent assault on power users by removing as much control as possible from the end user and trying to guess at what you want, and failing spectacularly at it most of the time.
http://www.slashgear.com/google-now-tells-me-who-i-was-making-me-du…
Edited 2013-05-31 00:59 UTC
Excuse my ignorance, but what is “breakability”? Is this the first honest admission from a manufacturer that most smartphones these days are built like junk and made to break?
But seriously, I don’t get that term.
Apart from that, I want to know if this thing has a removable battery. If so, I might be interested. But if not, no chance.
And please, Google, Moto, somebody, keep making QWERTY sliding keyboard Android devices with a removable battery.
“Focusing on breakability” could mean either dev-friendly unlocked/unlockable phones or more QA on the hardware.
Stock Android is good, “breakability” is good, but will “built in the US” translate to a $2000 price tag? Or will it be built by illegal Mexican immigrants?
There will be only 2000 people working at the place, many of them engineers. So hiring illegal Mexican immigrants for the low-skill jobs will save money, but not much.
I guess the logistics will be the greatest burden – sourcing the parts from all over the world when they are readily available in China.
Edited 2013-05-31 09:45 UTC
You can ship the parts, or you can ship the phones. Moto decided to ship the parts. Happily, Houston is just down the road – most international waterborne tonnage handled in the USA, and second in total cargo tonnage.
And Texas is notoriously business-friendly. We do that primarily to drive Californians crazy, of course…
they wont be illegal by then. they will be citizens…and wait for it…they wont be working there I guarantee. they will be on public assistance”legally” have fun with that
The factory they are using is less than two miles from where I currently work! I checked their open job positions over there but didn’t see anything suitable for me yet. Though I’ve been with my current employer over 10 years now I haven’t been feeling real secure as of late.