People all around the world want to be a part of the mobile Internet so
they can access the world’s information, share, and connect with the
things that matter to them. But the smartphone industry has relegated
hundreds of millions of smartphone buyers to second-class status,
preventing them from experiencing the mobile Internet at its best.
A brilliant 4.5-inch HD display – the sharpest in its class – that
goes edge-to-edge so you can enjoy movies, photos, video chats and more.
The newest Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 400 quad-core processor for
seamless multitasking and enjoying the web, videos and games, with
all-day battery life.
Android 4.3 Jellybean, the most up to date Android of any phone in
its class, with a guaranteed upgrade to Android 4.4 KitKat at the
beginning of 2014. No skins to clutter or slow the experience, and great
performance with Google’s unbeatable mobile services such as Gmail,
YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome and Hangouts.
Stylish design with a comfortable curved back and 19 customisation
options, including interchangeable Motorola Shells, Flip Shells and Grip
Shells in seven colours.
What makes a "perfect" smartphone? Some of my fellow journalist buddies and I wrestled with the question, and here's what we came up with:
What goes into the "perfect" smartphone? (Image: ZDNet)
First, some part of "perfection" depends on the person. For example, I love QWERTY keyboards, so my personal favorite phone is a Motorola Droid 4. Most people could care less about QWERTY keyboards.
You can also spend a lot of time arguing over which is the best smartphone operating system — Android, as far as I'm concerned — but as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes recently pointed out in his piece on Android vs. Apple's iOS, for most people, most of the time, there's no significant usability difference between the two major mobile operating systems. I know, I know; we can argue about the virtues of one OS over another until the sun goes out and the oxygen freezes out of the air, but practically speaking, most users can't tell the difference.
The real key operating system-related question is: "Are the applications you need available on your platform?" If they are, you're good. If they're not, who cares how great the underlying operating system is?
On the big two, that's not really an issue. Even if a specific app isn't available on a platform — say Adobe Flash on iOS — there's usually a way to get to its functionality. But if you're looking at a less mainstream OS, such as Windows Phone 8 or Blackberry OS, or the still developing mobile operating systems, such as Tizen, Firefox OS, or Ubuntu Phone, that is a real concern.
We can also argue until the cows come home if the Samsung Galaxy S4, iPhone 5, or HTC One is the best phone.
But you know what? This time next year, we'd be having the same discussion about whatever that year's new, hot phones are. Hardware is always evolving. We can take it as a given that the best smartphone of 2014 will have a better display, a faster processor, and more memory than 2013's finest model. So we can skip including hardware specifications in our perfect phone.
There are also some things we can never have. Jason Perlow, for example, wishes for a phone that "his relatives can use without calling [him] at 7am in the morning to teach them how to use the Google Maps function to find the nearest Starbucks, because they've never used their expensive, complicated Droid to do anything but make calls and peer at Gmail". As I told him at the time, we're looking for the perfect phone, not a miraculous one!
Finally, a smartphone itself is only part of the package. The perfect smartphone must also have the perfect service behind it or it's just an expensive piece of plastic, glass, and silicon.
All that said, here's what we came up with for the "perfect" smartphone.
1. Universal access
We don't care if we're in the United States, the United Kingdom, or the Ukraine, we want one phone that will work with any country's cellular infrastructure. If we have to do that by having two SIM card slots in our phones, we can deal with that. But what we'd rather have are phones with integrated Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobiles (GSM) built in.
So long as we're at it, we'd also like our 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phones to use the same frequency bands. And please, we don't even want to hear about 4G technologies other than LTE. WiMAX never really took off, and T-Mobile? We really don't want to hear anything more about Evolved High-Speed Packet Access, ie, HSPA+.
2. Unlocked phones
OK, we can tolerate being locked to a service if you've sold it to us at a great price with a contract. But if we pay full price, then we should be able to unlock it, or better still, have it unlocked in the box. Are you listening, AT&T?
3. All we can eat bandwidth
Stop playing games with our bandwidth. We want unlimited bandwidth. If you have to charge us an arm and a leg for it, we're willing to pay. Sure, give us options for 2GBs a month, 5GBs a month, whatever, but some of us really do need all the bandwidth we can use, and the carriers should at least give us the option.
And so long as we're talking bandwidth, do us a favor and stop charging us for wi-fi tethering. Listen, we're already paying for bandwidth, so why should carriers be tacking on an extra fee just because we choose to share it with our other devices?
4. Dump the shovelware
As freelance writer, Tom Geller commented: "My newish Android phone has literally dozens of apps that exist only to take up space and sell me crap. There's no obvious way to delete them." Amen, brother!
OK, we get it. You want to squeeze a little more profit out of your phones, so you put extra programs on it for a fee. Fine, but if you do that, could you at least make it easy for us to dump the stuff we don't want? Please?
5. Give us high-security phones
As we move our online lives from PCs to smartphones, we need security — real security. Our companies, especially those who have bought into Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), also need us to have high levels of security. As Perlow recently reported, the security technologies to make this happen are out there, we just need to get them deployed — the sooner, the better.
Last year, Motorola launched the powerful Droid Bionic smartphone, exclusively for the Verizon subscribers in the US. This handset comes with a 4.3 inch qHD display, 1 GHz dual-core processor, 8 megapixel camera with full HD (1080p) video recording and much more. Motorola Droid Bionic was originally shipped with the old Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) Operating System.
Motorola has promised the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update for this smartphone. On the other hand, the owners of this device were eagerly waiting for the Android 4.0 update from the last 6 months. Today, Verizon finally started rolling out the last major update for the Droid Bionic. You guessed it right!
The latest update comes with a new home screen which includes a customizable launch bar, enhanced notifications window, direct access lock screen, data usage monitor, recent apps feature, improved settings and so on. Check out the complete changelog after the break.
Changelog:
Application Updates:
Mobile IM has been removed
New versions of the following applications have been added:
Google said today it has agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, giving the search giant valuable intellectual property and getting it directly into the handset business.
Google will pay $40 a share in cash for Motorola, a 63 percent premium over the company's closing stock price on Friday. The acquisition will "mildly" add to earnings once the deal closes by year's end or early 2012, Google said.
The deal simultaneously lends stability to and shakes up the Android world. With Motorola, Google gets a treasure trove of patents to defend itself and its partners against a rising tide of legal opposition. Over the past few months, major technology players such as Apple and Oracle have sued either Google or its partners in an attempt to slow down their competitors and extract licensing fees.
"We believe we'll be in a very good position to protect the Android ecosystem for all of our partners," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said today during a conference call. He declined to provide specifics on the company's future legal strategy.
At the same time, the deal puts Google in the awkward position of competing against many of its partners. For the first time, Google will have a direct hand in the mobile business that it fostered from a distance. While Google creates the Android operating system critical to running millions of smartphones and tablets, it has yet to get into the design and manufacturing business itself, aside from a few experimental models with handset partners such as HTC and Samsung.
Google Chief Executive Larry Page said during the conference call that Motorola will be run as a separate unit and reiterated Google's commitment to keeping Android open. He declined to get into specific dynamics of how Motorola will compete with other Android vendors such as Samsung, HTC, or LG Electronics.
Instead, Google focused quite a bit on the protection it will gain from the deal.
In the same vein, Motorola Chief Executive Sanjay Jha had talked up the strength of his company's patent portfolio during its most recent quarterly conference call and suggested that he was willing to step into the legal fray as well. Motorola already has an outstanding dispute with Microsoft and Apple. Last month, billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn disclosed that he was pushing for Motorola to sell its patent portfolio because the need for intellectual property has reached at an all-time high.
On today's call, Jha touted the company's 17,000 patents and 7,500 pending patents. They include many non-essential patents that aren't core to a phone's operations but can be used to improve features such as voice quality. It's unclear whether Android partners will get access to those patents, or whether Motorola's patent portfolio will simply offer legal cover.
Motorola, along with HTC, has been a major early supporter of the Android operating system. Jha chose to scrap Motorola's other projects and focus solely on Android, which paid off immensely when Verizon Wireless chose the original Droid to push as its flagship phone during the 2009 holiday-shopping season. AT&T more recently chose Motorola's Atrix as a flagship phone. Motorola has also renewed its ties with Sprint Nextel. Last month, it reported better-than-expected second-quarter results and hinted at a strong fourth quarter.
But the company has struggled recently too. While the Atrix was heavily promoted by AT&T, it wasn't a breakout hit. Motorola's first tablet, the Xoom, failed to make a dent in the market, even after a price cut. The 4G capability for its Xoom is still unavailable despite hyping the feature at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. And the company's long-delayed Droid Bionic for Verizon Wireless isn't expected until next month.
Page, however, said that Motorola continues to have "tremendous opportunity for growth," adding that he likes Jha's vision for future products. Beyond smartphones and tablets, Motorola has a television set-top box business and has relationships with carriers and cable providers, an area where Google can push its connected-TV ambitions. Likewise, Jha said he sees the opportunity for more convergence between the set-top box and mobile devices.
"We'll be able to deliver products that will delight customers," Jha said.
Drummond said he expects that the deal will require regulatory approval and added that he is confident it will be approved.
"Android is clearly adding competition, innovation, and user choice," he said. "Protecting that ecosystem is pro-competitive almost by definition."
Google, meanwhile, will be attempting to maintain its neutral stance in Android land even after the deal.
"Our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community," Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google, said today in a statement. "We will continue to work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute innovative Android-powered devices."
Rubin added on the call that the other major Android vendors showed "enthusiastic support" for the deal.
Google offered a Web page listing comments from other vendors.
"We welcome today's news, which demonstrates Google's deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem," J.K. Shin, head of Samsung's mobile division, said on the page.
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