Motorola's Made-in-America Moto X Smartphone to Be Announced Today

Motorola's Moto X hasn't exactly been the company's best-kept secret, but later today the official details of the made-in-America smartphone will be released.

The much-hyped Android phone from the Google-owned company is said to have a few differentiating features, many of which the company is hoping can give it back some edge against smartphone giants Apple and Samsung.

Here's what we know so far.

This much Motorola has said. The company's CEO, Dennis Woodside, announced in June that the Moto X would be made at a new 500,000-square-foot production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. More than 2,200 employees have already begun to make the smartphone, which will be assembled and will ship right from the factory.

It is highly customizable with different colors.

Being close to home is going to allow Motorola to make the Moto X a highly personalized device, ABC News first reported last month.

Through a website, buyers will be able to select from a palette of different colors, sources told ABC News. One color can be used for the back case and another can be selected for the trim of the phone. Users will also be able to engrave a name or message on the back cover, as well as upload a personal photo through the site to be used as the wallpaper on the phone's screen. Various reports say the phone has a larger 4.7-inch display.

It has advanced software features.

Similar to the phones just released by Motorola for Verizon, the Moto X is said to always be waiting for your command and will leverage the same "OK Google Now" commands as the Droid Ultra. With the Ultra, similar to how you navigate Google Glass, you can say "OK Google Now" and the phone will be woken up. Say "OK Google Now Call John" and it will dial up John's number.

Given that the phone will be the first that the company has worked on from start to finish since being acquired by Google in August 2011, the integration with Google's services makes sense.

There are some other tricks, too. Our sources said that instead of having to fumble for the camera icon or button, you will be able to flick the phone to launch the camera faster. Sources who were testing the phone said it was running Android 4.2.2. Google, however, released Android 4.3 last week.

It is coming to the major U.S. carriers.

Pricing and availability are still the two big missing pieces, but Motorola has said that it will be available at some of the largest carriers in the nation. Given that the launch is happening today, we assume it will be available soon.

# Motorola, #Moto X
Source: ABC News

Nexus 7 Trade-Ins Suggest Lots Of Upgraders To New Model

Source:http://techcrunch.com

The new Google Nexus 7 is a big improvement over the original with a bunch of additions like LTE and a super high-resolution display – the best in tablets, in fact. And that’s driving a lot of first generation device owners to trade in their old Nexus 7, according to gadget buy-back site Gazelle. There was a 333 percent spike in the number of Nexus 7 tablets traded in compared to the same day last week, for example.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, that spike was even higher – a 442 percent jump in Nexus 7 tablets happened between the day before Google’s official unveiling of the new model, and the day of. The Nexus 7 trade-in activity spiked so high that it made up nearly a quarter of all trade-ins for non-iPad tablets since the site began accepting them earlier this year.

Wednesday, the day Google made its announcement, was also the biggest Nexus 7 trade-in day at Gazelle to date, beating the next biggest day by 380 percent. That previous record was set when the new Nexus 7 leaked on July 17, which clearly prompted early adopters to take advantage of a small head start ahead of the big reveal.

The news means that Google Nexus 7 owners are probably happy with their devices and eager to grab new ones, by trading in their last-gen devices to fund their purchases, but there’s another stat that tells another side of the story: Gazelle saw no appreciable increase in iPad trade-ins on the new Nexus 7 launch day. That means Google probably isn’t luring iPad owners away from the iOS fold.

It’s probably not surprising to longtime tablet space watchers that the new Nexus 7, with all its apparent merit, isn’t an iPad killer. The Apple camp seems happy where they are, but the tablet market has plenty of room to grow; we’ll see if Google can expand outward, or if it’s mostly eating its own Nexus tail with this new model.