Archive for: Motorola
The constant back and forth fighting over old, outdated and common sense patents and IP is getting ridiculous. Seriously. Look no further than this morning’s news which sees Apple and Motorola currently battling it out in Germany over email push services (the biggest infringement claim, according to Motorola). The initial result of the two cases is a permanent injunction on Apple’s iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and iPads in their German online store. (It’s worth noting that Apple retail stores and authorized Apple resellers can still sell the banned Apple gear because of how Apple separates their businesses.)
Florian Mueller from FOSS Patents believes the new injunction is actually the result of a case that took place back in November of 2011, and is coincidence that the new lawsuit(s) and their outcomes are being announced at the same time iPhones and iPads are disappearing from Apple’s German online store.
Motorola is now deciding on whether or not to enforce a patent on high-end, highly advanced pieces of mobile gadgetry (iPhones/iPads) with a patent that pertains to pagers and push services like email. Yes. Fucking pagers from the dawn of the mobile industry. The fact that a company (regardless of who it is) can stop another company with a patent, that by this time should have been invalidated/rendered a museum artifact, is mind boggling and troubling to me. Even more disturbing: Motorola is looking to use the same patent(s) in question to sue Apple in U.S. court, too.
In order for Apple to comply, they’ll have to either (1) license motorola’s pager technology or (2) remove the feature in question. So Germans will have to either get non-push iCloud email or Apple will have to figure out another way to push email to devices — all stuff that should be common IP not “owned” by anyone at this point.
Innovation around the world isn’t being hampered by copying between companies/people. It’s being hampered by useless and unnecessary lawsuits that do nothing but fund IP lawyers’ fancy houses and extreme vacations while the rest of us suffer.
This has got to stop.
Update
The same German court that issued the injunction be enforced beginning this morning has pulled it (for now). If they haven’t already, expect Apple’s online German store to once again see iPhones and iPads available for order and shipment.
Image Source: LaptopMag
The current race in the smartphone world is two-sided. On one side of the coin you have handset manufacturers pushing the envelope in regards to screen size; just how big can they build a phone? On that same note, at which point does a “phone” transition to “tablet”. On the flip side, manufacturers are also hellbent on creating the thinnest phone possible and throwing out all common sense and functionality out the window. Finally, add in the plethora of battery sucking features such as high-res displays, LTE compatibility, and super high megapixel cameras and the state of smartphones has become a sad affair of locker room size comparisons.
I stumbled upon this article over at LaptopMag today and found myself pretty much disgusted. Handset manufacturers are not catering to customers in the slightest, and in fact, I’d argue they’re doing us a disservice. An average of 3-5 hours of battery life with moderate to somewhat heavy use is atrocious and inexcusable. The worst offender (as we’re discovering first hand) is the Galaxy Nexus. The battery life is seriously border line the worst we’ve even had on any device.
But as the Droid RAZR MAXX shows, there is hope. Motorola finally woke up and realized the sad state of the smartphone world, more specifically, the Android smartphone world. Let’s be honest with ourselves. Apple and Microsoft’s group of WP7 partners have been pumping out phones with good to awesome battery life. The answer, as Motorola has finally discovered, was there all along — slap a gigantic battery in a phone to combat the battery sucking features. Actual component size is constantly shrinking yet the battery size of most high-end devices has remained the same.
Why all Android manufacturers can’t put their weapons down and start some actual innovation in regards to smartphone runtime themselves (cross suing each other off the list too) is beyond me. Here’s to hoping Motorola has had their fill of locker room-esque boasting and manages to bring LG, Samsung, HTC, and everyone else with them. If they’ve managed to make Windows Phone 7 quite the battery sipper that it is — And Apple has managed to make iOS quite efficient even with dual-core processors as well — there’s no reason they can’t do the same with Android.
What you’re looking at above is the first (unofficial) look at Android 4.0 ICS for the Motorola Droid RAZR. From the looks of things, the lack of complete and utter destruction points to this being a very early build. Don’t worry. There’s still plenty of time for Motorola to muck it up. But if it were our choice, we’d love to see the company push out ICS and forgo the heavy-handed UI customization in favor of a more complete, and graphically pleasing stock experience.
The source code over in the DroidRAZR Forums isn’t flashable — We know you were thinking that… — but is at least something for eager RAZR owners to poke around in.
Thoughts?
- January 10, 2012 11:12 am
The Droid RAZR MAXX we talked about yesterday lacked one very critical detail: battery size/life. While we’re still waiting on official word from Motorola whether by way of email confirmation or later today on the CES show floor, it appears Droid-Life has already scooped the number.
Are you ready for this…3,300 mAh! The figure is allegedly straight from a Motorola rep’s mouth. If it is in fact accurate, that’s an insanely large battery for a smartphone, though a size that arguably should ship with every device.
Looking at some of the press shots, we’re not exactly sure how they managed to add so much capacity to the battery with relatively little change in size. (Magic?)
Update: Motorola just confirmed the 3,300 mAh figure via their Twitter account.
We recently reviewed the Droid RAZR MAXX and found it to be an overall decent device. The thinness wasn’t are particular favorite as, well, we hate super thin phones that require a claw grip to use normally. But shortly after our review, it was revealed that Motorola was working on a slightly thicker, longer running variant, the Droid RAZR MAXX — the differentiating feature of course being a thicker battery.
Today, the MAXX was officially outed. And as expected, the old 7.1mm design couldn’t be kept. Instead, the larger battery has caused the RAZR’s backside to swell out to 8.99mm in total thickness. Oddly enough, the MAXX was announced without specific details regarding the larger battery within. As such, we’re searching for a concrete number.
In the meantime, Motorola also outed their constantly leaked Droid 4. As far as internal specs go, the Droid 4 isn’t anything special as it shares the 1.2 GHz OMAP4430 processor of the RAZR/MAXX and pretty much every other hardware feature too. That includes 1 GB of RAM, LTE, and plenty more.
The sliding 5-row QWERTY keyboard is of course the star of the Droid 4′s show, however, and features a yet again re-worked design. From what we’ve seen thus far, the keyboard on the Droid 4 is perhaps the best yet in terms of tactile feedback, depth, and size.
Look for Gadgetsteria’s hands-on treatments to accompany this post in the coming days once we begin crawling the show floor.
It looks like Motorola Mobility will be debuting some sort of wireless charging at this year’s CES. The Motorola Mobility YouTube channel just gave us a little teaser video showing a USB plug sitting on the counter crying. The tag-line reads; “Stay Unplugged.”
We’ll be there front and center and will let you know the second we see what they have in planned. Anyone excited yet about CES this year? Only a couple more days and we’ll be in the thick of it. Be sure to follow us throughout the week as we’ll be hitting as much as we can!
Hop on in for the sad, sad video!
Apple has just lost a major court battle with Motorola in Mannheim Regional Court in Germany that could see the iPhone and iPad banned from public sales across Europe. The patent in question, European Patent 1010336 (B1), involves a “Method for Performing a Countdown Function During a Mobile-originated Transfer for a Packet Radio System”
The “preliminary enforceable injunction” (as noted by FOSS Patents Florian Muller) currently affects products sold by Ireland-based Apple Sales International. With that said, the ruling could have a devastating ripple effect for Apple in other lawsuits and markets should tides start turning against them.
Apple will almost certainly appeal the ruling to the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court, though how they will act if the injunction ruling is upheld is uncertain. Having the injunction upheld will more or less allow an entire Europe-wide ban on the iPhone and iPad product lines. For their defense, Apple can either remove the offending technology from the products in question (unlikely) or license the technology from Motorola.
The latest ruling comes roughly one month after Motorola won a formal injunction over the same patent(s) in question, though at that time it was seen as largely “for show”.
- December 1, 2011 11:58 pm
Did you really think Motorola was going to let a brand name attached to one of the hotest mobile gadgets ever — EVER! — to simply die off?
Motorla could be in the early stages of getting back on the “RAZR” marketing machine…
- November 11, 2011 10:12 am
The Droid RAZR; a name that both excites and worries us. The old clamshell RAZR was once a great phone that set the bar for all feature phones of its time. But a reluctance by Motorola to move on from the basic shape cast them into near bankruptcy as each and every new phone became a simple repeat of the last. Now many years later the “RAZR” name is back with an indistinguishable face and a feature set that demands respect. On that same note, many would argue Motorola is once again falling into old habits — releasing the same basic phone many times over with but a simple physical alteration and fancy new name.
This RAZR is a very different beast from that of its distant clamshell sibling. Everything from the list full of top-end specs to the (sorry)…razor thin design oozes sophistication and speed, but is it enough to hold the Android crown considering the Android platform’s flagship device, the Galaxy Nexus, is due in just a couple of weeks? Catch the full review after the break…
