Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It looks like Motorola and Verizon are getting ready to take a third crack at the Q9 form factor, following up the Q9m and Q9c — and this time around, there’s a little something extra in store. On top of the EV-DO Rev. A radio, the so-called “Napoleon” (codename, of course) features GSM, because — surprise, surprise — businesspeople who use Windows Mobile devices tend to do just a bit of traveling. It looks like Moto has taken this opportunity to give the Q9 meme a little nip-tuck job, too, with a rounded body and a tastefully-applied ring of chrome around the top edge. They’ve even tossed in a fingerprint scanner for good measure, a tip o’ the hat to the suits who’ll undoubtedly populate the upper 90 percent of this sucker’s client base. No word on a release date or price, but can we cautiously submit a thumbs-up for the design direction here?

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

Shoot, all Motorola had to do was change from pink mahogany to this nice, normal, compliant shade of black, and that would’ve been enough of an update to justify a model name change. There’s more, though: the V9x will officially offer AT&T Navigator, the Telenav-powered navigation system already found on the Z9, and we can see from these press shots that it’ll even work on the secondary display, which is pretty trick. This appears to be the same update that we’d originally heard would drop way back in January, which means we can likely expect Video Share support as well. Take a stroll on over to Engadget Mobile for the full gallery.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Remember that touchscreen Motorola Blaze we’d mentioned a while back that was on the hook to get Verizon’s visual voicemail service? It may not be in Verizon stores yet, but it’s all up in Boy Genius Report’s labs with a dark red body, MING attitude, and almost limitless mediocrity on board. The touchscreen apparently requires ridiculous amounts of effort to actuate, and that problem is compounded by a lame on-screen keyboard that makes texting tricky at best. EV-DO Rev. A is cool and all — and the visual voicemail support should be a pretty popular add-on feature — but that giant Motorola logo up front with the red ring and three pounds of chrome leaves the Blaze with a face only a mother could love. Let’s hope Verizon’s positioning this one as its low-end touchscreen offering, because we’re not seeing it cha-chinging many registers otherwise.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

As expected, T-Mobile has taken the wraps off its very own version of Motorola’s ROKR E8, a glossy black candybar offering a 2 megapixel camera, 2GB of internal storage (plus a microSD slot that’ll swallow up to 8GB more), stereo Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, and that so-called “morphing” keypad that selectively renders keys invisible depending on the mode you’re using. It’s missing 3G, but that’s one feature T-Mobile customers are all too well acquainted to missing out on — and considering that the just-announced flagship ZN5 doesn’t even do any WCDMA, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. Subscribers and would-be subscribers will be able to nab the E8 come July 7 for $199.99 on contract.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

Motorola hasn’t exactly been doing the best job keeping these two handsets under wraps, but it now looks like it can now rest a bit easier and let the details fly, as it’s finally gotten official with both the MING A1600 and MING A1800. As we’ve seen, the two handsets are nearly identical, with each packing a 2.4-inch QVGA touchscreen, a 3-megapixel camera, integrated Bluetooth, a microSD card slot, an FM radio and, of particular note, built-in GPS (but no WiFi, as previously rumored). The MING A1800, however, adds two SIM card slots, which will let you hop between GSM and CDMA networks with relative ease. Still no official word on pricing or availability, unfortunately, but we’d expect those details to be making themselves known soon enough.

[Via Navigadget]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones

While our homeboy Boy Genius may not be quite as well-known for his Moto scoopage as he is for his streak of RIM leaks, we’re totally intrigued by his report today that Moto is working on an 8 megapixel phone code named “Dark Project” that’s being internally described as the company’s “last stand.” The unit is said to feature an NVIDIA-sourced chipset for video and 3G graphics (Tegra, perhaps?), an integrated GPS chip, and “probably” running “UIQ 4.0 or higher.” It’s not confirmed whether it’ll have a touchscreen or what the final form factor will be, but release is set for October, and BGR says that if it’s a flop the Moto brass will give up and sell the company off. That’s a lot of pressure — but with Moto’s struggles lately, we can’t say there’s much to lose by betting the company.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones

First things first: this isn’t the first time (in the past quarter) that we’ve seen a handset vanish from Sprint’s website, only to get fanboys riled up and it reappear days later when stock refreshed. That being said, quite a few Q9 / Q9c users are thinking the smartphone may be gone for good from The Now Network. For starters, neither phone is listed on Sprint’s website. Furthermore, we’re hearing reports that “discontinuation” has been confirmed by a number of Sprint representatives, though no official word seems to have leaked out just yet. Curiously enough, the carrier just posted the Windows Mobile 6.1 update for the Q9c earlier this month, giving us at least a reason to believe the lights aren’t shut out entirely just yet.

[Via GearDiary]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

In the most thorough examination you can expect this side of mobile-review, SMAPE just put text to phosphor and slapped out a nearly 9,000 word review of Motorola’s new 5 megapixel MOTOZINE ZN5 with Xenon flash. They’ve also pitted it head-to-head with Nokia’s own 5 megapixel N82 for a good ol’ fashioned photo shootout. While the ZN5 is a smidge thinner, features a dedicated image processing unit for quickness, and optionally stores images in lossless TIFF format for a lower price than the N82, there’s one small catch: the N82 (and K850 for that matter) has already been on sale for more than half a year. Nevertheless, as the first model of the new MOTOZINE series, the ZN5 hints at the possibility of a promising future. Assuming of course Moto’s phone division lives to see the day.

Update: Speaking of mobile-review, they just posted their detailed thoughts. The following quote pretty much sums it up, “It’s no RAZR of our time. It’s just a decent, well-rounded phone.”

Read — SMAPE review
Read — Mobile-Review review

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones

Hints of Motorola’s new MOTOZINE series of devices have gone back as far as last year, but today marks the first time that Moto’s officially spilled any beans on the goods. The headlining feature on the first model, the ZN5 candybar, lies on the backside: a 5-megapixel sensor courtesy of a partnership with Kodak, featuring autofocus, a xenon flash, image stitching, and on-device integration with Kodak Gallery. Otherwise, you get WiFi (score), Motorola’s so-called “ModeShift” technology for morphing the keypad depending on device mode (a la the E8), and a run-of-the-mill quadband GSM radio with EDGE. China’s the first country to get the hookup starting next month, but Moto expects to take the ZN5 on a world tour over the course of the remainder of the year.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Not that Motorola’s had an abundance of innovative consumer products in the last few years, but what forward movement the company’s research labs has been making is about to be severely stunted. Moto announced today that it’ll be cutting its research group in about half — down to about 300 employees — as well as moving 180 others employees and dropping some unnamed projects. We don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, though; given Moto’s state right now, they need development a hell of a lot more than they do research.

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Original post by Ryan Block

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment

Another month, another round of layoffs over at Moto. This time, we’re seeing 120 out of the 600 positions in Motorola Labs — the unit responsible for researching pretty much everything ranging from handsets to radio technology — slashed; another 180 are “being reassigned to work in individual business units.” According to the company, the moves from Moto Labs “will help R&D teams work with their business partners to optimize R&D investment and focus on projects that deliver the greatest value for Motorola,” though your guess is as good as our as to what that actually means. Granted, we wouldn’t normally support hacking off a good part of your innovation department, but considering that it’s been stuck in fail mode for far too long, maybe this really is for the best.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Amazing to think back to a decade ago when Motorola introduced its StarTac flip phone — great design that has been repeated over and over again until this day.

You can’t even imagine how big and bulky cell phones were up until that time — like putting a brick to your ear!

And thank goodness that will great design is timeless battery power has been improved from those days of 60 minute talk time?

Thanks to MotorolaFAQ for the shot.

Tags: flip phone, Motorola, Startec

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

Great, just great. Soon after Western Digital made a fool of itself by introducing an external hard drive “certified” for use with DISH Network HD DVRs, along comes Seagate to further fuel the hype machine. Announced at this year’s Cable Show (after being mentioned at CES), the Showcase storage solution is “designed” to extend storage capacity of DVRs and media centers. In a similar vein, the outfit’s newest drives are “compatible with Motorola’s s-SATA-capable HD DVRs,” and they also come with USB 2.0 ports and up to 1TB of space. No word on a price or any of that jazz, but those who can’t figure out that an external hard drive is an external hard drive can look for ‘em to land in Q3.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Seriously though, how many are surprised to hear that Motorola’s Chief Technology / Strategy Officer Richard Nottenburg is jumping off the sinking ship? Apparently dude “left to return to the New York area to be with his family and pursue other opportunities,” which is code for a) he was passed over for CEO of the new mobile devices company, b) he was fired, or c) he finally wised up to the direction the company’s taken. Either way, we can’t really blame him.

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Original post by Ryan Block

Filed under: Robots

We know that you love swarming bug-bots as much as we do, so of course we were thrilled to tell you about BAE Systems’ MAST project the other day. Luckily, the Army-contracted company didn’t stop at mere photos to scare the living daylights out of humanity, they also created a really cheesy, yet deeply frightening video to go along with them. Enjoy a glimpse of the Skynet-controlled / shredding-guitar future of warfare after the break — and don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Continue reading Bug-bot video reveals swarming drones, extreme rocking

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky