As if we didn’t already have enough Motorola phones to wait for, Verizon showed off a trio of new Motorola DROID smartphones at a cozy event in New York City.
The flagship of the three is the DROID Ultra, which Motorola’s Rick Osterloh refers to as the thinnest 4G LTE smartphone out there with its and 7.18mm thick chassis. Motorola’s fascination with Kevlar is still in effect on the device’s rear (though the finish is glossy as opposed to matte like it usually is), and a 5-inch display occupies most of the space on the device’s front.
Motorola is continuing the Maxx line of power-conscious devices — it’s functionally the same phone as the Ultra except it’s a little fatter at 8.5mm, a features a sealed battery capable of up to 48 hours of continued usage.
Last (and certainly not least) is the DROID Mini, a slightly smaller take on the Ultra formula that’s eschews that giant 5-inch screen for a more manageable 4.3-inch screen.
Putting industrial design aside though, perhaps the most interesting thing tucked away inside these new DROIDs is what Motorola calls its X8 mobile computing system — it’s a eight-core system that encompasses that basically allocates computing power to graphics processing, language processing, and the like. The X8 system also enables touchless control for the device so users can make phone calls and ask for directions hands-free, and active display, which lights up just a portion of the screen to display notifications . Sound familiar? It should — those features were also prominently highlighted in a leaked Rogers demo video for the Moto X.
If those monikers seem to be missing a little something, you’d be right — that RAZR label that graced the nearly all the Motorola devices released on Verizon in the past year is gone. It’s DROID all the way now, and I have to wonder if Motorola is retiring one of its most famous mobile brands because it’s looking to reinvent itself with another release later this summer.
We’re still waiting on confirmation from Motorola and Verizon on specs, but the representatives on have said they’re just not talking about them today. That’s, for lack of a better term, pretty damned stupid.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
