Cheaper Version of Motorola Moto X is Coming to Prepaid Markets

When Motorola announced the much-hyped Moto X smartphone a few days back, it made it clear that the device certainly isn’t for the masses. It further made that fact clear by deciding not to release that phone in Europe, a decidedly important market.

That last step wasn’t without a reason though. Very soon after the launch, the company’s CEO revealed in an interview to CNET that a phone carrying the Moto X brand name will be released soon and that the Moto X is just the first smartphone of this lineup.

Motorola hinted that its relatively low-priced – i.e. under USD 200 – Moto X smartphones will be designed and priced to appeal to international customers in markets where people generally don’t buy subsidized devices.

“Moto X is the brand that we are most focused on,” Dennis Woodside, CEO Motorola Mobility, said. “And there is more to come. You will see additional products within months. The experience of devices you can get for less than $200 is subpar right now. We want everyone to have access to affordable smartphones.”

While he didn’t reveal the date of the phone’s release, it should hit the market later this year. Woodside made it clear that that product will be targeted towards prepaid markets. That’s undeniably important for Motorola which is currently bleeding money at an alarming pace.

Google Reveals the Motorola Moto X

Google’s acquisition of Motorola happened quite a lot of time ago and nothing serious had been achieved from the partnership yet, but the two companies have finally done something unique with the Moto X. The much-hyped smartphone is not the most high-end smartphone you’ll see but is undoubtedly the most customizable.

To start with, the Moto X comes with a 4.7 inch AMOLED display with 720p HD resolution. The reason why the flagship-norm 1080p wasn’t chosen was because “it would just suck the battery and nobody would know the difference”. That’s right to some extent, especially since anything more than 300ppi is useless. It is protected by a new breed of Gorilla Glass dubbed “Magic Glass” and is a bit curved on its edges.

Under the hood, the phone packs a Qualcomm SnapDragon S4 Pro SoC, dual-core 1.7Ghz Krait CPU and Adreno 320 GPU. Motorola’s new power-efficient X8 chip is also there. The amount of RAM in the phone is 2 GB and the storage capacity will be 16 or 32 gigs, non-expandable.

The back boasts a 10 megapixel camera with 1080p Full HD video at 30fps, LED Flash and HDR. A 2 megapixel Full HD camera is at the front too. Talking of fronts and backs, the phone is really customizable.

Firstly, the phone is made of high-quality plastic. The back is curved which makes the Moto X fairly usable with one hand. It’s 10.4mm at its thickest point and 5.4mm on the edges. It weighs 130g.

The phone’s front panel is either black or white but the back comes in a mind-blowing range of 18 colors. Three special versions made of wood will be available later. The further customizations are done via the Moto Maker site. You can also customize the accent colors and the color of the charger & NFC speaker there. Overall, 2000 customizations can be made with Moto Maker.

But wait, the software is also a beneficiary here. You’ll be able to choose the color of the phone’s wallpaper and add your Google ID via Moto Maker. Still, if you don’t like the end result much, Google will also replace your phone within 2 weeks. The service won’t be available until next year though.

Here are the specs of the Moto X:

• Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
• 4.7 inch AMOLED display with 720p resolution
• 5.4mm thick at its thinnest point and 10.4 on its thickest
• 130g heavy
• 1.7 Ghz dual-core Krait CPU with Qualcomm SnapDragon S4 Pro SoC
• Adreno 320 GPU
• 2 GB RAM with 16/32 GB non-expandable storage
• 10 megapixel camera with 1080p Full HD video
• 2 megapixel 1080p camera
• Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band Wifi, microUSB 2.0, GPS
• Mind boggling customizations via Moto Maker
• 2200 mAh battery

The phone will be available via a contract in late August. International availability will start from Canada later on. While this phone is lacking a bit of pace on the hardware side, the great customizations alone will find it customers. The Moto X makes even the Lumia series look dull.

Mediatek Announces World's First True Octa-Core Smartphone Processor

MediaTek, usually reputed for manufacturing low-priced ARM processors on mid-end and low-end smartphones, has announced their world’s first true Octa-core mobile processor which is based on ARM architecture. Which means you’ll be able to use 8 cores simultaneously on your mobile devices with 2X performance of what you get on your current Quad Core processors.

The company has not revealed a lot about their “True octa-core processor”, not even the official launching date yet.

The processor has been codenamed as MT6592, that will feature a 28nm eight-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU that would be clocked around 2.0 GHz, with an unspecified GPU and radios that support up to HSPA+ mobile networks.

LTE modem would not be included in this processor.

Now the word “TRUE” actually means that it uses all of its Cortex-A7 cores for CPU tasks, unlike what we’ve seen in Samsung’s Exynos 5 processor that has an eight core CPU which is actually a hybrid, made of 2x quad core processors which doesn’t take advantage of its all 8 cores simultaneously instead 4 cores work at a time.

Surprisingly MT6592 power consumption would be same as the quad-core processors available in the market.

A graph given by MediaTek shows that, while decoding a video the power efficiency is the same on MT6592 clocked at 2GHz and its competitor clocked also at 2GHz, while the decoding speed is twice the quad core on MT6592. Which means you’ll have some battery smooth performance with faster processing power.

MT6592 would show real benefit in multitasking as every task is allocated to a different core, as per application.

HP Announces the SlateBook x2 PC Running on Android

Android PCs aren’t exactly a new idea, by far, but not many of the bigger manufacturers are actually using it on their computers. HP, however, has dared enough to take up the challenge and has announced the SlateBook x2.

The SlateBook x2 is a convertible with a detachable keyboard and runs on Android Jelly Bean.

The Specs

The display of the tablet is of 10.1 inches and also boasts a Full HD resolution. The LED display is also multi-touch.

The SlateBook x2 runs on the latest Nvidia Tegra 4 processor clocked at 1.8Ghz and Intel HD 4000 graphics. It features 2 GB RAM and 16 GB SATA SSD. The Android 4.2-running PC uses Wifi, DLNA, Bluetooth and microSD card slot for connectivity.

The screen/tablet part of the PC can also connect with a keyboard through a magnetic mechanism. The keyboard houses the battery as well so connecting the keyboard will partly improve your battery life too. It also increases the no. of ports by adding a USB 2.0 port, another micro SD card slot and HDMI.

There are also 2 cameras at the front and back of the tablet for occasional snapping and video-calls.

The tablet will be launched this August for $479 without the keyboard, and $649 with one. That will put it in the Windows 8 laptop range, lots of whom can be found cheaper and that is far from an ideal situation to be. The thing is, that it wouldn’t matter much to you if all you want is a decent Android-running tablet, along with a processor. The real question, though, is that how many people want that?

Toshiba Announces New Mid-Range Laptops

Toshiba is one of those Windows manufacturers which have faded away a bit in the past few months, after announcing PCs which didn’t sell all that well and failed to give some tough fight to the competition (one laptop is an Amazon bestseller though).

So here they are, giving the idea another go by announcing new mid-range Windows 8 laptops. The new laptops have taken design inspiration from the higher-end laptops of this series and come in multiple configurations.

They are powered by both AMD and Intel processors. Unfortunately though, they all come with the very basic 1366 x 768 resolution.

Toshiba Satellite E55

The first among the new laptops of the popular Satellite series is the E55D which comes with a 15 inch display. It comes with an AMD A6 CPU & 750 GB HDD and is priced at $579. The E55Dt version with AMD CPU, 1 TB HDD and touchscreen costs $679.

The most higher-end offering with the 4th generation Intel Haswell processor and a touchscreen costs $899. They all come with the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard for connectivity and the number pad.

Toshiba Satellite E45t

The other laptop announced by Toshiba was the Satellite E45t which comes with in a single specifications list. It comes with a 14 inch display with touchscreen and Intel Core i5 processor. For storage it will have a 500 GB HDD.

The laptop will be priced at $818. It also supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi for connections.

While all these laptops come with striking designs for a relatively affordable price tag, the display is a bit of a disappointment, especially for the higher-end models.

The Satellite E55 will be available this September while the E45t will be brought to customers only next month.