Motorola at CES 2011: (M)powered Devices
It's Day 0, one day before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 officially opens the halls and Motorola is already busy with new announcements, including the first Honeycomb equipped tablet.
(Motorola)-powered Devices
With the start of the new year comes new things, and Motorola has formally split into two separate companies, Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. The latter will now be focused entirely on the mobile side of things, while leaving the former to government and enterprise business. So it's apt that Motorola Mobility starts off their Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 events with the launch of four new products together with their new "Life M-Powered" slogan.
Sanjay Jha, Chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility, on stage and introducing the new products that Motorola will be launching (or have launched).
The Motorola Atrix 4G
First up is the Motorola Atrix (which if you do the maths, it's Matrix, get it?), a 4G phone that's exclusive to AT&T in the US. It's not limited to just the US market though, as the phone will also be launching for Bell in Canada and for Orange in the UK. This is interesting though, since the phone has 4G capabilities while the UK doesn't have a 4G network at all. This means there will be a 3G version. Which also means there will be a good chance we will see the Atrix 4G in Singapore some time in the future.
One of the main features of the Atrix 4G and in our opinion, one of the coolest features we've seen so far, is that the Atrix 4G can be docked and turned into a desktop computer. That's right, the phone has a hidden OS that we're guessing is Linux-based and has a desktop version of Mozilla's Firefox included. You can even install add-ons from what we've seen.
When docked, the phone turns into a control device for your new larger screen.
The UI makes it quite easy for watching videos when docked on to TV set.
When docked and in Webtop mode, you can use the desktop version of Mozilla's Firefox browser. You can even install add-ons!
If a desktop version is not for you, then Motorola has a notebook dock that features a 11.6-inch screen and a battery for 8 hours of use. It also charges your phone when its plugged in, and allows you to type with a physical keyboard and use the phone with a larger screen when you need to do some work. Crazy as it sounds, it's a pretty cool concept that we've only heard before in the now dead Palm Foleo (though in the Foleo's case, the companion smartphone wasn't docked).
Once docked into the Laptop Dock, you can now control the phone with the trackpad. Also, you can still access your phone functions as seen on the screen.
You dock the Atrix 4G at the back. Like this.
Xoom and More
Next up, is the tablet that we've been hearing so much about since Motorola made a commercial about the other tablets and how their tablet will be changing things. The Motorola Xoom is here and ready to change things. Sporting Google's latest Android OS 3.0 (Honeycomb) which is designed for tablets, the 10.1-inch Xoom sports a dual core processor (NVIDIA Tegra 2), 1080p output, a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and a 5.0-megapixel rear camera that can take 720p videos. Sadly, we can't really tell you how the unit handles, as Motorola noted that the unit was not yet ready and we could only watch demos instead of trying the unit ourselves.
This is but a glimpse of the UI that we were allowed to see.
The Xoom will launch early Q1 for Verizon, and while the device has 4G LTE support, it only currently supports 3G. However, all current units will be upgraded to have 4G capabilities in Q2. Since the tablet can support 3G, it's likely that you'll see the tablet outside of the US soon, and though Motorola acknowledge that they are also looking at the international market, they don't yet have any dates confirmed.
The new revamped YouTube UI.
Motorola Cliq 2 and Motorola Droid Bionic
Lastly on the list are the Motorola Cliq 2 with Motoblur for T-Mobile and the Motorola Droid Bionic, a 4G phone for Verizon. Both phones are running on Google Android 2.2. The Cliq 2 uses only a single core 1GHz processor while the Droid Bionic uses a dual-core processor (NVIDIA Tegra 2) for a speedy good time.
The Motorola Cliq 2 sports a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM and runs on Android OS 2.2. It also has Motoblur for all your social networking needs. The phone is tied to T-Mobile in the US.
The slide-out keyboard of the Cliq 2 makes for easier typing than if you were to use a touch screen keyboard.
The Motorola Droid Bionic. Runs on a dual-core 1GHz processor (NVIDIA Tegra 2), 1GB RAM, Android OS 2.2 and only for Verizon's 4G network at the moment.
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