Can a Motorola X Phone keep up with Apple and Samsung?
When Google purchased Motorola last year for $12.5 billion, there was lots of speculation about what was behind the deal. Was Google only interested in Motorola鈥檚 portfolio of patents? Or did it hope to put the company鈥檚 engineers to work on its own projects?
New rumors suggest that it鈥檚 largely the latter: The Wall Street Journal Friday that Motorola is hard at work on a flagship Android phone known internally as the 鈥淴 Phone,鈥� to be released some time in 2013. Citing 鈥減eople familiar with the matter,鈥� the Journal says the X Phone is designed to stand head and shoulders above current handsets, although engineers are running into some early obstacles.
Motorola and Google apparently have big plans for the X Phone: Motorola is investigating materials that would make the display more flexible and less likely to crack or break under pressure, and the company wants to include better camera software and gesture recognition while simultaneously boosting battery life. It鈥檚 too early to speculate on the size of the phone or the features it will include, but the Journal鈥檚 sources say Motorola will also begin building an X Tablet once the phone has been completed.
The X Phone would run what鈥檚 known as 鈥渧anilla鈥� Android: a pure version of the OS that comes directly from Google. Right now only the Nexus line of phones, including Samsung鈥檚 popular Galaxy Nexus, run vanilla Android; all other handsets have extra code added by manufacturers, like Samsung鈥檚 鈥淭ouchWiz鈥� UI or HTC鈥檚 鈥淪ense.鈥� Lots of users find these additional features helpful, but others prefer the flexibility of being able to use a version of Android that doesn鈥檛 have the manufacturer鈥檚 鈥渟tamp.鈥�
But along with developing the X Phone, Google and Motorola have to carefully navigate their delicate relationships with other companies that make Android handsets -- especially Samsung. Samsung has become the biggest smart phone maker in the world, thanks in no small part to a warm relationship with Google -- but it鈥檚 also a rival to Motorola. Google wants to boost Motorola鈥檚 sales (Motorola commands an anemic 3 percent of the Android phone market, compared to Samsung鈥檚 40 percent) but doesn鈥檛 want to jeopardize its relationship with Samsung or other manufacturers.
By the way, if you own one of Motorola鈥檚 existing Droid phones, don鈥檛 worry: the company will continue to produce them for Verizon, its carrier partner, as well as devoting resources to developing the X Phone. In spite of poor sales, many of the Droid phones Motorola released in 2012 were well-received by critics.
What are your thoughts on the X Phone? Do you think Google and Motorola can design a handset that stands apart from everything else on the market? Let us know in the comments section below.
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