Motorola not interested in playing the phablet game for its latest phones
In a time where companies are racing to bring out the biggest smartphones they can, Motorola is sitting back and taking a different approach. The company doesn’t believe in this whole phablet movement, as it will apparently stick to its guns in making a phone that has a size that’s “just right.” Those were the words of Jim Wicks, the chief of design for Motorola, as spoken to PC Mag.
This news came as Jim Wicks revealed Motorola is finally working on smartphones that has Google’s influence. The smartphones that have come out since the acquisition — such as those in Verizon’s DROID line — were projects that had to be fulfilled and pushed through the pipeline before Google could help Motorola pump out something it can be proud of. Motorola says its new smartphones embrace Android in its unadulterated form, which would hint that it is going with pure, stock Android ala the Nexus phones we’ve come to know and love.
This is great news, because as great as Motorola’s hardware has been it was always the software holding them back. Things greatly improved with the latest skin being used on top of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but it still paled in comparison to the smoothness and cleanliness a stock experience provides.
Motorola is also sticking to its belief that the current arms race in mobile phone specifications is silly, saying it will focus on user experience more than how many megapixels, gigabytes, gigahertz and megabits it can market. That’s a fresh change of space for the Android world, for sure, and it’s one route we wouldn’t mind seeing other OEMs take.
All of these qualities will shine in a new product line that will be slim in terms of device count, a strategy that HTC has employed for 2013 and the HTC One line. Motorola will focus on fewer devices in order to ensure they get the proper attention they need in both quality assurance and marketing. It sounds like a new day at Motorola indeed, and if we’re lucky it might not be long (we’re expecting to see their latest, what we know to be the “X” phone, by the time Google I/O kicks off) before we see the fruits of Google and Motorola’s great new relationship.