motoblur

BARCELONA, Spain--With the exception of the European versions of the Droid Pro and Xoom, it looks like Motorola will be light on the hardware announcements here at Mobile World Congress 2011, but there's still some news coming out of good ol' Moto.

Today, the company announced several enhancements to its Motoblur software, all designed to increase connectivity with your contacts and services.

The first feature is called Connected Music and it's a sharing and discovery tool for music. With it, you can share content with your friends and follow what they are listening to as well.

Connected Music … Read more

Motoblur, Motorola's user interface skin for Android, will come to its Xoom tablet --whether we like it or not.

In a briefing with Motorola's Jonathan Nattrass, the company's director of Android product management in Europe told us Motoblur is all about bringing the "social aspect" to Android. It will come to the Xoom as a software update.

At the same event, Dave Burke, director of engineering for the Android team at Google, told us the Xoom was its flagship device for showing off the tablet version of Android, version 3.0 Honeycomb.

That would usually … Read more

Today's smartphone market is overflowing with devices and their hardware specs (processors, screens, and so on) are becoming increasingly similar among the brands, so it's understandable that a company would turn to software to add its own unique spin to the devices.

For Motorola, its solution for Android was Motoblur. Introduced and heavily promoted on the Motorola Cliq, Motoblur was about instant connection to your social networks and contacts. At the time, the company saw it as a key aspect to its comeback, but now, Moto is shifting its focus.

During its Q2 2010 earnings call, Motorola's … Read more

New details have emerged concerning a handset we previously reported as being codenamed the Motorola Twist. According to Italian blog HDBlog.it, the phone will end up bearing the name of Motorola Flipout when it arrives in June.

With nothing officially announced from the handset maker, we only have rumors to work off for now. Hardware is said to include a 3.1-megapixel camera, a 2.8-inch touch display, and a QWERTY keyboard that flips out from behind the screen. The processor is listed as 700MHz with memory coming in at 512MB ROM and 256MB RAM. In terms of software, … Read more

A handful of pictures arrived online early this week with what appears to be two new Motorola handsets. Looking very similar to the Motorola Krave ZN4 found on Verizon, these phones are yet another unique design from Motorola.

By all appearances, both models appear to be ready for production, however, we don't yet know how well the operating system works. On a related note, we can see that at least one design has MotoBlur and possibly Android 2.1 under the hood.

We haven't come across anything in terms of specs yet, so your guess is as good … Read more

Motorola has shed some much-needed light on the timing for Android 2.1 updates to its product line. The Droid recently got its 2.1 update, but T-Mobile's Cliq has picked up only a minor maintenance release in recent weeks. As such, owners of MotoBlur-equipped devices are wondering when they'll get their turn. The simple answer is they will--at some point.

Looking through the chart, I find it interesting that AT&T's Moto Backflip isn't slated for 2.1 until the third quarter of this year, yet T-Mobile's Cliq XT, which was released a … Read more

A new Motorola handset made its Internet debut late last week, thanks to a leaked photo. The image, first appearing online at DroidDog on Friday, has since been pulled down, but it's impossible to unring the bell once it hits Android blogs.

As you can see from the picture, the device has a small, square design and it appears to run a version of MotoBlur with some new widgets. Thanks to Android-france, we already have some preliminary specifications.

According to documents obtained by the French blog, the phone goes by the codename Motorola Twist and is slated to arrive … Read more

Fragmentation remains one of the touchiest subjects for Google Android users and developers, with various official builds and different screen sizes all playing part in determining which apps your phone can handle.

Currently, four versions of the OS are available: 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1. Though the typical consumer and new Android owner may not know there are multiple iterations powering these phones, it's enough to drive the tech-savvy enthusiast mad.

Sure, we all love choice in our devices--that's what drew us to Android to begin with--but it gets frustrating when you can't get the Android OS you want in the phone you want.

Take, for instance, last week's Cliq XT launch. Here's a brand new phone from T-Mobile, the latest Android handset to hit the market, but it features OS 1.5. Indeed, the phone is a fantastic buy for the price, with its Flash Lite, pinch zooming, five-megapixel camera, and Swype keyboard.

After only a few days with the unit, I can say that I love the form factor of the phone, but I miss some of the apps from my T-Mobile G1 that ran OS 1.6. I've lost Google Maps 4.1, Google Maps Navigator, and a few other favorites from the last few months. Also, the new Google Buzz widget won't run on 1.5 phones. As much as I like that app so far, I've had to put it on the shelf with the G1.… Read more

Canadian Google Android fans got more good news this week when Motorola announced a trio of handsets were headed north of the border. The three phones--the Quench (known as the Cliq XT south of the border), Backflip, and Dext (aka the Cliq in the U.S.)--each run Motorola's Motoblur user interface on top of Android. The smartphones are scheduled to arrive sometime within the first half of this year.

Though we don't know which carriers will get the handsets, three major Canadian service providers, Rogers, Bell, and Telus, are mentioned in the official press release.

Between this … Read more