Googlerola X-Phone: The phone that might make me wet my pants.

Yes, you read right – the prospect of a Google and Motorola collaborated ‘X-Phone’ are enough to make me wet my pants if this personal dream of mine finally becomes a reality.

I try not to get caught up in rumours a great deal, but I won’t lie, Motorola have always been my favourite OEM for the simple fact they have superb attention to design detail, and for the most part, incorporate brilliant hardware to match. I also won’t hide the fact that I couldn’t stand their MotoBlur UI. It was incredibly slow, and way too intrusive on the social media front. That’s not to say that I didn’t hate all of it, I actually loved the Connected Music Player, Universal Inbox and to a lesser extent, QuickOffice for viewing Word Docs.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed Blur tidy up, and since Google’s acquisition, Blur is virtually non-existent, save for the annoying homescreen arrangement situation, which I’ve tried to understand and grow accustomed to with a Moto ICS launcher on my Defy, but to no avail.

What’s bugged me more recently, and was the reason I bought a Galaxy Nexus over a RAZR was not only the bootloader issue (though I did return an Atrix 2 because of this), but the specs offered in newer Moto handsets. Save for the near identical dual-core processors between the Gnex and RAZR,  I couldn’t justify having a wider and just as taller phone  with a comparably smaller and pixel-less screen compared to something which would last with developer support and a larger, more active community to fall upon should anything go wrong.

Motorola did it again with their RAZR HD and RAZR M, which became a decision of price vs screen quality. On paper, it seemed as though both these devices ticked all the right boxes in terms of what they offered, but sadly they were released just before the S4 Pro quad-core phones entered with the likes of the Optimus G, Nexus 4, Droid DNA and now soon to be released Xperia Z. The issue this time had been a matter of poor timing, which in the past; Motorola had excelled in with release of the OG Droid, which threw Android into the mainstream market, and the Atrix 4G which was one of the first dual-core smartphones. Since then, the OEM has done little to show why it deserves to be a major player in the smartphone market, other than improving upon existing devices such as the RAZR with the power plant RAZR MAXX variant, which although was a hit in the US, was much more a niche phone in other markets without LTE where it saw a later release on more battery friendly HSPA+ bands.

This is why some sort of game changing device is exactly what a quiet Motorola needs to bring its voice back – and shouting. Now, I won’t go through all the wildly exaggerated rumours that others have conjured up (although a number of them would be great, but unlikely), rather, highlight that they should aim to improve on their edge-to-edge displays, implement the latest processors by the time of its release and some sort of 1080p display for the 3,300mAh battery on HSPA+, yes, HSPA+ bands to utilise. A separate LTE specific X-Phone should be renamed and rebranded as something outside of the AOSP because on a worldwide scale, LTE just hasn’t the same reach as the already existing 3G HSPA markets.

Motorola were onto it when the released the RAZR M,
though the world still waits for a full full screen smartphone

I know it would be all good to hope that an affordable price-point could be achieved with a Google owned company, and realistically, Google could very well cut all profits Motorola make from the sale of the device, which could massively boost its likeliness of being well received by consumers. On the other hand, if by the time this device is released it ends up being unlike, and I mean unlike any other phone on the market in terms of the overall package, then understandably a higher price would be justifiable.

It’s hard to say which way things could go. Given the release and subsequent handling of production of the Nexus 4 on both Google’s and LG’s parts, Google may not be daring enough to tempt crowds again, at least for now. Or maybe this mistake has enabled the search giant to be better prepared for another worldwide frenzy, and certainly the communication between Google and Motorola would require far less negotiations, even if they are “supposedly” run separately.


Edit: New thought - could it be the start of a line of a standalone Chrome OS/Android range of phones from Google and Motorola not connected to the next flavour of Android we expect? It would explain the Metallic Android statue put up recently at the Mountain View headquarters. Only time will tell.