Motorola

When Motorola unveiled the DROID RAZR MAXX smartphone at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, the sleek, high-end handheld stole much of the show's mobile-buzz. It also undoubtedly caused recent DROID RAZR buyers' blood to boil. That's because the RAZR MAXX, released less than three months after the first DROID RAZR, is almost identical to its predecessor, with one very significant difference: The RAZR MAXX packs a huge, fixed battery pack that addressed the original DROID RAZR's battery life issues.

With its slide-out QWERTY keyboard and latest version of Android, the original Motorola Droid stood for everything the iPhone wasn't. However, Motorola's interest in QWERTY Android phones has been downplayed with each new model. The Motorola Droid 4 ($200 with a new 2-year contract on Verizon; price as of 2/13/2012) is the latest in the keyboard toting Android phones. Unfortunately, the Droid 4 lacks the same excitement the original Droid sparked-- the excellent keyboard and zippy processor is overshadowed by a blurry screen and poor camera.

Motorola Mobility is warning people who bought but then returned Android-based Motorola Xoom tablets between March and October last year that the devices might have been resold by bargain-of-the-day website Woot with the ex-owners' sensitive data still on them.

Motorola Tuesday announced its newest entries into the tablet market--the Droid Xyboard 8.2 and Droid Xyboard 10.1, each offered via Verizon with LTE mobile broadband. An announcement of something new was long in coming; Motorola already unveiled the Xoom 2 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but beyond that, Motorola has been suspiciously quiet on the U.S. front ever since its Xoom became the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet to market this past February. Sure, there have been small, iterative improvements to that original Xoom, but nothing more. Until now.

The new Motorola Droid Razr will be the world's thinnest 4G LTE smartphone when it ships in November for Verizon Wireless.

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Google for more information about its planned $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, potentially slowing the transaction, Google said in a blog post Wednesday.

CEO Larry Page keeps suggesting there's something more to today's announcement of Google's $12 billion dollar acquisition of Motorola Mobility than just Android phones. On a conference call with investment analysts, Page noted that Motorola is also a "leading home device maker" and that Google plans to work with them to "accelerate innovation." Google's blog post on the deal also gives a big nod to Motorola's history of innovation, calling the company "a market leader in the home devices and video solutions business."

A survey of employees at Google and Motorola finds higher level of job satisfaction at Google. Page gets high marks, Motorola's Jha much lower.

Google is apparently sick of being pushed around by patent attorneys from Microsoft and Apple.

In a company blog post up early this morning, Google CEO Larry Page lays out the rationale for his software company to pay $12.5 billion for a leading maker of Android-based smartphones and tablets.