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And right now they are all $100-$200 off. The X4 is $149 for the 32GB model. IP68, SD, 3.5mm, BT 5.0. I like my current phone but I may just order one!

I just bought a last years model Motorola Z2 Force ( https://www.motorola.com/us/pr... ) for $120 from Sprint. This is Mororola's flagship from last year.

Now granted the Z series isn't as great as Samsung's or Apple's flagships but it's not a bad phone by a long shot and isn't that far off. The only reason I can see for most people to be paying the current prices for the latest and greatest flagships is tech nerd status which I could care less about. I feel like Samsung is wising up here and realize they can't offer anything new that matters all that much and is reorienting itself for what I feel like is the market to come.

Keep in mind the context is expecting Intel's ambitions for x86 in mobile, and on that front mobile market is *very* mature.

To your points:
> Battery life doesn't fill a day.

This is a design choice that the vendors make. They prioritized thin over battery life. The processor role in this is so limited now that Intel can't even in theory 'fix' it with an awesome new processor.

> Displays are too small

For the class of device, this is the nature of the beast. The only potentially acceptable alternative would involve AR, which is a new class of device. Either way I'm not seeing a processor changing this.

> It's too big to hold. It's too thin to hold

This is subjective, and currently the manufacturers think this opinion is the minority and do not think they are 'wrong' about form factor.

> It can't do anything more than one thing at a time

The platforms are capable and do allow more than one thing at once. The form factor is prohibitive, and a default behavior is to suspend applications, but developers can opt out of suspending if their application has some need.

> It can't project.

Mine can: https://www.motorola.com/us/pr...

> It can't transfer peer-to-peer.

I have removable microSD card, but even beyond that the platform is very capable of sharing direct wirelessly, but the companies with control direct things to their servers for lock-in, though from a usability perspective that works well too.

> It breaks very easily.

Mine doesn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

because of the really impressive camera and the module system

If you like modules on your phone, take a look at the Motorola Z series. Current modules include an optical zoom camera, projector, speaker, batteries, etc.

Well, the moto g6 currently fits that bill:

https://www.motorola.com/us/pr...

As does the previous gen g5 plus.

In general, the microsd slot at least in motorola made a big comeback. I presumed across the market apart from Google branded devices they are easily had now.

The moto x ^4 is headlining Android One for Project Fi in the US is a mid-range device ~$399 with a Headphone jack, SD-Card slot, and Micro-USB.

See: Motorola Moto X4 - Full phone specifications

Even better

https://www.motorola.com/us/pr...

No phone contract to worry about and cheaper than a iTouch

The mainstream media seemed to have missed this, but this is the first production phone to be using the Project Ara module interconnect using the Greybus Protocol.

More information about how the thing actually works and what its good for here

https://www.motorola.com/us/Dr...

They did update the series, so I guess they became popular again. I had that one and it is still kicking, since I upgraded, my son is using it.

http://www.motorola.com/us/pro...

Even the US-spec Moto x pure (2015) has: 3gb RAM, the same hexacore snapdragon 808, a microSD card slot, larger, higher-res screen etc. All with a starting price of only $20 more (and you can usually find a $30-50 off deal if you shop around). And it has pretty much vanilla Android.

Looks like the Nexus magic (getting a great deal) is over.

Just buy the new Moto Razr!

http://www.motorola.com/us/Dro...

Moto X Pure Edition is a tremendous phone (or, at least based on the pre-release specs, it is).

Starting at $399 with no carrier lock-in. Pure Android experience.
microSD up to 128GB.

To hell with carrier lock-in.
To hell with the horrible crapware that comes pre-installed from Samsung and the carriers.

Avail Sep 3rd, according to TheVerge

once an android competitor comes out and hangs around in this artificial market long enough until people realize singing talking wrist watches are about as practical as google glass

Uh, I have some news for you.

This is correct. You can see for yourself on Motorola's site that it comes with "Qi Wireless charging support."

Google's page for the Nexus 6 doesn't list charging info, but it's really sparse with the spec information. Motorola's page has a lot more details, which include under the Battery information, "Qi Wireless charging support."

I agree with your points. I think what would work a bit more seamlessly is the Motorola Hint (also announced today). It's a tiny bluetooth device that sits in your ear. Much more discreet than a traditional bluetooth, with a fair bit more functionality. http://www.motorola.com/us/acc...

I think this is (currently) a better solution than a smartwatch.

For a number of motorola phones, this feature is already available. For $10, you get a clothing clip and 3 RFID stickers. Tap the phone to any of them, and it unlocks.

http://www.motorola.com/us/mot...

Since Google killed it I am keeping my eyes open for the my next smart watch for when this one dies. If it can even do half of what my motoactv can do it end up being my next smartwatch. http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79070,en_US,pd.html

If they offered that with stock android or at least an unlocked boot loader I would have considered it.

If you're willing to buy it off-contract (and thus unsubsidised) such a thing exists, in the US at least.

It's LTE so it should theoretically be global. Slide-out keyboard and all the other bells and whistles...1.2GHz dual-core A9, 1GB RAM, microSD slot. Slightly lower-res screen (4" 960x540, still entirely reasonable) but other than that it's entirely adequate. Runs 4.1 stock, I'm sure Cyanogen or AOSP is up to date though.

Specs

It's coming, at least for cable:
http://www.motorola.com/mediaexperiences2go/2009/09/the-transport-gateway-ip-and-qam-in-one-box/

I scanned through various product pages, and couldn't find anything about display resolution. I'm not interested in sitting through videos. Can anybody summarize some actual specifications?

From one of the links:

Display type

Full color, SVGA, Transmissive TFT (800 x 600) micro-
display with an adjustable backlight; Field of view: 32
degrees (diagonal); Virtual image size: 15 in. diagonal

Pictures

Hideous Contraption 1

Head Crab 1

Heavy Crap 1

Horrifying Cranium 1

Headborn Casheater 1?

Wasn't there an entire section in Snow Crash about 'Gargoyles' who had embraced wearable computing in a big way, and how everybody hated them and thought that they were freaks?

Pictures

Hideous Contraption 1

Head Crab 1

Heavy Crap 1

Horrifying Cranium 1

Headborn Casheater 1?

I suspect Microsoft made the Surface expensive for the same reason that companies make sneakers so expensive. In theory cognitive dissonance will make people assume that anything that pricey must be good. Not that sticking a keyboard on a tablet is exactly unique. Even my cell phone has a keyboard.

Checking between the Apple iPhone 4, 4s, 5.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/

Standby time has gone from 300 hours (4) to 200 hours (5).
While browsing on 3g has gone from 6 to 8 hours (4 to 5).
Wifi has stayed the same, but diped with the 4s to 9 (from 10).

Checking the Motorola droids:
And the first Droid listed talk time 385 minutes (6.4 hours)and standby time: 270 hours
DROID RAZR listed at 750 minutes (12.5 hours) talk time and standby time: 205 hours
DROID RAZR MAXX is listed at 21.5 hours of talk time and 380 hours of standby time.

So if we are talking about Apple, they don't seem to be getting better relative to their loss of standby time. With Motorola at least you can by a phone that get's a much longer talk time and standby time.

From the other quick searches I did, it seems like the earlier iPhones used to be leading the pack in battery life. Clearly, not the case anymore..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-MAXX/better-battery/96406,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-RAZR-BY-MOTOROLA/78281,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab

Checking between the Apple iPhone 4, 4s, 5.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/

Standby time has gone from 300 hours (4) to 200 hours (5).
While browsing on 3g has gone from 6 to 8 hours (4 to 5).
Wifi has stayed the same, but diped with the 4s to 9 (from 10).

Checking the Motorola droids:
And the first Droid listed talk time 385 minutes (6.4 hours)and standby time: 270 hours
DROID RAZR listed at 750 minutes (12.5 hours) talk time and standby time: 205 hours
DROID RAZR MAXX is listed at 21.5 hours of talk time and 380 hours of standby time.

So if we are talking about Apple, they don't seem to be getting better relative to their loss of standby time. With Motorola at least you can by a phone that get's a much longer talk time and standby time.

From the other quick searches I did, it seems like the earlier iPhones used to be leading the pack in battery life. Clearly, not the case anymore..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-MAXX/better-battery/96406,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-RAZR-BY-MOTOROLA/78281,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab

The droid line has nothing to do with Google directly.

Had to followup after I found this at the motorola link:

Motorola Droid.

GottaBeMobile's Best smartphone CES 2012.... Buy it link works.

So how again does it have "nothing to do with Google"?

Point stands, now unaltered.

That's the last time I doubt my understanding of the Smartphone market over a post from some random guy on Slashdot...

The droid line has nothing to do with Google directly

I was off in my timing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid

But Motorola did make a Droid, that was what confused me...

Even though that was before the Google purchase of Motorola Mobility, it does not mean Motorola does not continue to make many Android phones, all of which compete directly against other carrier phones.

So my point stands.

Microsoft is not going to be buying handsets and branding them

Are you sure? Them making the phone at all is only a rumor, why would Nokia for example not make one to spec?

what google does with the nexus line and what verizon does with the droid line.

And not what Google does with any Motorola Mobilty Android phone which they make directly.

I have a waterproof phone. I don't use it under the shower though... It does survive my rather boisterous life style, from forest stream to stubble field to that rainy day on my bike. It even runs the latest incarnation of Android so if you really feel the need to inhibit your creativity under the shower there is not much stopping you...

Don't you mean a RAZR?

The users generally don't have a choice. Eg: a number of Motorola phones released in 2011 (Droid 3, Droid X2) will never see ICS, and while most released in 2012 will, the upgrades are still being rolled out. https://forums.motorola.com/pages/00add97d6c

Or you can talk to the Motorola dealer about the Mesh Networks products. They work pretty good in EM situations, but they're not cheap. Which is what I think the original poster is looking for.

If you could stop switching topics for three seconds, it might help. We were talking about Motorola, not android. Google is liable for Motorola, period.

Putting in a separate management structure has exactly "0" to do with legal liability. You are pulling this out of your ass.

It's not just a separate management structure. Motorola still legally exists as it's own entity and company. Google owns the majority of shares, but Motorola is still a separate company. You already admitted they have their own CEO, and that's because legally they are distinct.

Motorola is a subsidiary of Google and is therefore legally distinct. It's basically a shell company which should not be a mind boggling concept, companies do this all the time to legally protect themselves.

Except that's not what google did. Other than that, great use of wikipedia. If you took three seconds to look at a balance sheet, you'd see that google includes Motorola's assest and liabilities under it's own umbrella, because it isn't operating it as a separate corporate entity. It isn't on the stock market because it no longer operates as a separate entity:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=MMI

Huh? Stock market doesn't mean squat for legal standing. That just means Motorola is privately held.

Motorola still exists as an LLC owned by Google. What is an LLC? A limited liability company. An LLC means the owners (Google) are not necessarily liable for anything the company does. LLCs do not have to be listed on the stock market (as if that was at all a reasonable argument.)

http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/home

Look at the title on their homepage. They can only say "Motorola Mobility LLC. USA" if they've actually filed as an LLC in the US. Again, that does not mean they aren't owned by Google. That just means Google, to the US government, has declared that they are a separate organization and that the owner, Google, is not libable for anything they do.

It's in the NAME OF THE COMPANY that Google isn't liable. I'm not sure how much bigger of a cluestick you need to get. Even though it's not publicly traded and privately held, it's still held as a separate company. Because they're not public, Google can put them on any balance sheet they want, but that doesn't change they're not LEGALLY part of Google.

There are virtually no Android handsets with keyboards, and most of those that do have keyboards are low to mid range phones.

Really? Is that a fact?

Patents are OK as long as you actually invent and market/license something.
If you take some exiting idea, patent it and expect other companies to pay you for it... then you must be living in the US...

This is virtually the same thing as laptop docs... not to mention existing mobile docs (Motorla Lapdock)
Anyone claiming license fees or royalties from this "invention" is actually hindering innovation and it's widespread adoption

Why YES I believe they are.

Why YES I believe they are.

I suspect that carriers have a somewhat mixed view of encouraging Microsoft to not fail.

In their competition with other wireless carriers, the carriers do want spiffy devices that will sell contracts and data plans. However, in the fight between telcos and tech companies over how the money gets divided, having strong handset and internet-based-services entities is Very Much Not what they want.

The AT&T/iPhone case is the most blatant: AT&T had an exclusive on what people wanted, and scored substantial sales despite constant whining about how their network sucked. However, Apple demanded a nontrivial slice, and their expansion into 'iMessage' and 'Facetime' and whatnot, never mind the annihilation of carrier download stores in favor of their own, shows a distinct disinterest in protecting the carrier's future gouging for SMS and other such services.

Given Microsoft's strong control of their platform and(while currently rather larval) strong potential for future integration with MS-controlled services to the exclusion of carrier ones, it isn't obvious that a carrier would want to encourage them.

Android, by contrast, is fairly closely controlled by Google if you want the full, blessed, all-google-goodness, flagship; but Google's very weak control over the periphery of the Android ecosystem means that it is trivial to get just about any company that makes cellphones to puke up an Android handset for you, complete with carrier branding and crapware, at cutthroat commodity prices. There is also some flexibility when it comes to hardware design. Consider something like the 'Motorola Admiral'(known to its somewhat reluctant users as the 'droidberry'). Not a wildly compelling phone; but the fact that you can get hardware that looks like that churned out probably helps the next time you and RIM go to the table about Blackberry service pricing...

Why do they claim to be "modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs" instead of using the standard APIs?

That's a completely legitimate concern. PC game developers come across issues like this all the time, and it sounds like it's the same on mobile platforms. Some GPUs have quirks that manifest in certain shaders. Some have quirks that you develop to, only to find that others don't have those quirks. I don't know what you mean by "standard APIs", but if you're trying to do anything serious with the GPU, you're going to be writing GLSL shader code. This isn't wrapped up in pretty abstracted Java for you.

Texture formats are another thing that varies by GPU. Motorola has a page here that describes the different texture formats and which GPUs support which. Ideally, you'll build support for this into your build pipeline and won't have to worry about it once you have. There are issues that might manifest depending on the format though: e.g. ETC1, the one that every OpenGL ES 2.0 device supports, lacks Alphas; you either need to not use it on textures that need alphas, or write another shader to deal with those textures (with the alpha channel in its own texture or such).

The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone

The Atrix was launched with Android, HDMI output and Webtop, which is certainly not a full-featured desktop Operating System. If Motorola said it was running Ubuntu or any other full-featured GNU/Linux desktop OS, they were lying.

And within a few months of its release the fine hackers at xda-developers.com unlocked the webtop to work as a fully-featured desktop operating system. Hence, this is not new. This is simply Canonical claiming credit for re-packaging what's already been done.

OT: Come to think of it, what has Canonical done in Ubuntu Desktop lately besides forcing Unity, adding an installer and a few configuration GUIs that isn't already in Debian? (Note: I do think Ubuntu does a great job of neatly packaging Linux for new users with user-friendly installers and such, but for myself I've been a lot happier since I switched over to Debian Squeeze.)

Thanks for supplying more evidence for my assertion that Motorola did not provide a full-featured GNU/Linux destkop system on the Atrix as shipped. I'm not surprised that others have succeeded in getting a real GNU/Linux system working on the Atrix despite Motorola's attempts to prevent it.

I think Canonical has done a lot of good by polishing Debian and making it easier to use in some ways, which is why I still use Ubuntu. I am not terribly impressed by Unity and am currently using GNOME Shell, but I'm sure Unity is a good choice for some. The suggestion that Canonical may be trying to keep some of this Android development proprietary is deeply disturbing. Despite a number of mistakes, I thought they were pretty committed to keeping all their contributions to Ubuntu Free Software.

The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone

The Atrix was launched with Android, HDMI output and Webtop, which is certainly not a full-featured desktop Operating System. If Motorola said it was running Ubuntu or any other full-featured GNU/Linux desktop OS, they were lying.

And within a few months of its release the fine hackers at xda-developers.com unlocked the webtop to work as a fully-featured desktop operating system. Hence, this is not new. This is simply Canonical claiming credit for re-packaging what's already been done.

OT: Come to think of it, what has Canonical done in Ubuntu Desktop lately besides forcing Unity, adding an installer and a few configuration GUIs that isn't already in Debian? (Note: I do think Ubuntu does a great job of neatly packaging Linux for new users with user-friendly installers and such, but for myself I've been a lot happier since I switched over to Debian Squeeze.)

The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone

The Atrix was launched with Android, HDMI output and Webtop, which is certainly not a full-featured desktop Operating System. If Motorola said it was running Ubuntu or any other full-featured GNU/Linux desktop OS, they were lying.

It doesn't have to be that way. Battery life has all but dissapeared in discussions/debates/religious wars about cell phones. The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.

We're missing a battery life per functionality unit in the tech wars debate.

You're out of date.

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/DROID-RAZR-MAXX-by-MOTOROLA-US-EN
4g droid with insane battery life.
Motorola says: On one full charge, you can host a marathon (as in more than 21-hour) conference call. Whip through the web for 7 hours straight. Get your movie fix with 15 uninterrupted hours of flick watching. Jam out all weekend. That’s right — on one full charge, you can listen to music for two and half days straight.

You should have bought a Motorola Defy. It's not waterproof as such, but water resistant. There is a defy + (faster and with an IP67 rating) but I cant find the specs now. This worries me for I have ordered one this week, and not yet recieved it.

If you buy an Android phone, there is a decent chance you'll never get an update for it - often phones are sold long after they get their last update, and it is rare to get an update even one year after it FIRST goes on sale.

There are two caveats to this:

• Only applies to low-end devices. Historically, flagship devices have always had a clear-cut and well-supported upgrade path for at least one or two iterations.
  
  For example, this chart highlights the upgrades available for Motorola devices. All of the flagship devices they've sold, such as the Droid, Droid X and Xoom, have gotten carrier-supported upgrades to Gingerbread. I know that flagship HTC and Samsung devices, like the Droid Incredible, Desire HD/Inspire and Galaxy S (Vibrant, Epic, Captivate, Fascinate and International i9000), have all gotten similar treatments as well. This is, in part, because of:
• Lack of customer demand. People that purchase lower-end devices usually get them to have a phone more capable than a regular phone for a decent price. Many of these folks don't know what upgrades are. Additionally, it takes real effort for these carriers to update and test every single CPU and/or GPU, sound DAC and USB controller (some of which run on hacks, as some ports to Cyanogenmod et. al. demonstrate) on top of updates to the UI (which some of these devices can barely run). Consequently, they focus those efforts on the higher-end devices and let the others have cake.
  
  It's sort of messed up, but when you consider that the point of Android was to give "the masses" a better alternative to smartphone computing, it's a lot better than shelling a few hundred bucks for a shiny iPhone or waiting a few years for the hand-me-downs to drop price.

Fortunately, and unlike iPhone, because of Android's strong community support model and its openness, lower-end devices usually get upgrade options anyway.

Was there not a time when Slashdot used to recognize and auto-link URL's? Gahhhh! Annoying. Anyway, here's the links;

Motorola Atrix
Motorola Atrix Lapdockx
Webtop2SD
Ubuntu on Webtop
Atrix Multimedia Dock
BMW Performance Center Delivery

As an aside; Moto is just about to release the Atrix 2 which does apparently make it faster with more memory, thus fixing the couple of issues I do have with the Atrix. However, I don't know how long it'll be before all these hacks are available... I figure not long given XDA-Developers turnaround time on this stuff :)

http://mediacenter.motorola.com/Press-Releases/Motorola-Mobility-Sues-Apple-for-Patent-Infringement-344d.aspx

They're owned by Google now.

And if I'm not mistaken, the lawsuit hasn't been called to a halt by Google.

Can be found here:

https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/55402?start=0&tstart=30

The atrix phone, which "does everything", cannot play music without the sound micro-pausing.
The fix is in faux's kernel. The CPU isn't ramping up fast enough when there is a sudden large cpu load.

What is the #1 cause of random large CPU loads on the atrix? Motoblur. If you break motoblur by signing into a different phone, 95% of the random cpu spikes go away. You're not allowed to have two phones with the same account, so it disables the functionality on your old account. Except the phone seems to work perfectly fine without it. It also reboots a lot quicker with motoblur broke.

If you listen to music your phone will eventually randomly reboot
If Android kills the built in music player app when it is idle to conserve memory, it will go into a state where shuffle is stuck on and your playlist will be corrupted

Motorblur's big feature is that it keeps the state of phone saved.

Except it doesn't. I've gotten 6 phones and in my most recent restore, it was 6 months out of date. My home screen arrangement was old and wrong, and my sticky notes were out of date.
Oh yeah, Motorola doesn't actually test their phones with a working SIM card and motoblur account.

In fact motorola doesn't even turn their phones on for more than 15 seconds. A lot of refurbished phones get sent out with a defective screen that would had been caught if someone actually went to the set-up screen.

Also the hard reinstall only deletes the /data directory, so it will not fix a corrupt upgrade, OS installation, or user who dicked with their phone

Worth mentioning all those companies also have suits against Apple, or in Amazon's case licensed patents like 1-click to them which are hardly different from Apple's patents. This graphic should be well known by now and shows nobody is exactly blameless in this patent war. (People will argue about defensive vs offensive which is about as useful here as it would be in a nuclear holocaust.)

What I was getting at is that AFAIK, only Samsung has been taken to task over the much ridiculed "rectangle LOL"-patents. All the others were over obscure technical patents which were the proverbial "stick to beat a dog."