Motorola prepping "last stand" 8 megapixel phone?
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jun 23rd 2008 3:29PM
posted Jun 23rd 2008 3:29PM
While our homeboy Boy Genius may not be quite as well-known for his Moto scoopage as he is for his streak of RIM leaks, we're totally intrigued by his report today that Moto is working on an 8 megapixel phone code named "Alexander" that's being internally described as the company's "last stand." The unit is said to feature an NVIDIA-sourced chipset for video and 3G graphics (Tegra, perhaps?), an integrated GPS chip, and "probably" running "UIQ 4.0 or higher." It's not confirmed whether it'll have a touchscreen or what the final form factor will be, but release is set for October, and BGR says that if it's a flop the Moto brass will give up and sell the company off. That's a lot of pressure -- but with Moto's struggles lately, we can't say there's much to lose by betting the company.
Well at least Moto don't have rim leaks.
Why is that? Have they been staying away from baked potato chips?
Padum pum.
But seriously, I really like my Rizr and my wife's Razr. Sure they haven't innovated in a long while but I compare those phones to those from other companies and they feel so flimsy. The Motorola phone's usually have a solid feel and intuitive interface. Provided you get your hands on the MPT.
I will still be going with the $200 3G iPhone though come July so I will never look back.
Maybe if my first moto phone didn't crack it's screen, i wouldn't hate it so much... my PDA spends every day in my pants pocket, and it's perfectly fine, knock on wood.
@Hektik
yeah that was the joke... guess it was too dry =D
Please man, for the love of god, avoid usage of "pants pockets" and "wood knocking" together in your next post
When has Motorola ever made a successful camera phone? Hoping on big guns isn't going to save them at this rate, they should rather make another V3 type phone that'll sell bajillions and eat iphones for lunch
Raiden, like the RAZR 2, that didn't hold up the company by any means? u don't kno jack!
Wow the author of this article lacks basic reading comprehension skills. The phone is code named Alexander, not Dark Project. Any phone at Moto that has half a chance of being decent is designated as a Dark Project, meaning the ID is not published anywhere. A placeholder icon is used, and the majority of engineers working on the phone are unaware of the final design.
Moto deserves to fail after making the Razr. I had to use one as a temporary phone while a replacement Blackberry Pearl was coming in and it was horrible.
Why was it horrible? I have had nothing but good things to say about that phone. It had a great large screen. Relatively good reception and audio quality, a solid feel that didn't compromise with any added heft.
What didn't you like about it?
Both of you two are idiots....
The Razr and Blackberry should never be compared, as one is a productivity/smartphone and the other is pretty much a fashion statement.
ByronGman you're an idiot. No one compared them. He only said he had to use one as a temporary phone and it sucked.
I used a razr and would have to agree.
I'll add my sentiments. The Razr really sucked. Low volume, poor quality audio, stupid menus. My earpiece developed a horrible buzz after a few months.
Best move I ever made to get rid of it.
The whole menu interface just annoyed me...It might just be the fact that I was stuck with one that made me hate it so much, and to make it worse the idiotic t-mobile store gave me a chinese charger for it...WTF.
fwiw I was really happy with my circa 2005 RAZR. It was the plain original one too. For its time, the form-factor couldn't be beat (or duplicated for a while) and overall it was just a nice phone to use. It was far and away better than any moto phone I'd had before. My only complaints were the quality of the photos it took and a lack of really usable mobile connectivity (ie: web, email, etc).
I had a Sony-Ericsson T616 before the RAZR, and I just replaced the RAZR this past Christmas with an iPhone.
@ Kris
Whether or not you think the Razr sucked will depend on your priorities.
Obviously people who use Blackberries are looking for a good UI and productivity. Hence, saying the Razr sucked as a replacement for a Blackberry (and thus comparing them) does not make a lot of sense. Neither does defending a the Razr to someone like CTC, who won't have the same set of priorities for his phone:
"It might just be the fact that I was stuck with one that made me hate it so much"
I'll agree the Razr did have some shoddy features, but tell that to the thousands of teenagers who only cared about how it looked.
Qualitative standards (i.e. good/bad) can be measured according to a variety of scales, and my whole point is that these two were viewing the same product with different priorities in mind. That is an argument that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I don't agree with that. I loved my first edition RAZR, for the time, its design, size and build were pretty impressive. The two issues I had with the RAZR were relatively minor; freezing due to massive amounts of saved text messages and the microphone died after over a year and a half of use. Now I have an LG eNV and it's totally the opposite. I love the functionality, but the phone is huge and bulky. I've also had more problems in the first three months of owning it than in the two years I owned my RAZR. I'm currently on my third replacement for the eNV, and I am pretty gentle with my gadgets. Somedays, I wish I still had my RAZR.
Whoa, wait. I thought Ryan Block took over as CEO at Motorola months ago?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/06/motorolas-cellphone-business-needs-a-new-leader-okay-im-in/
That's why they're about to fail.
That's why they're about to fail.
Kris, I think you beat him to the punch.
Moto's biggest problem wasn't features or hardware, it was software enablement. Their UIs suck and their applications suck. Cramming in a 8MP camera, GPS, and '3G graphics' in won't make Moto not suck.
The Moto UI is great, it is fast, responsive, and has plenty of eye candy, and it is very logical and well designed. My RAZR V3xx is great.
...and yet i still flashed my verizon firmware back to the original motorola UI on my RAZR
o verizon when will you learn
I agree with kinshadow. Moto's UI implementations are horrendously bad. (which is why i will never own one, and why my girlfriend is so terribly excited to get her iPhone and throw her razr in the garbage.)
UIQ 4.0 is not the default MOTO UI....
Striker: Are you practicing for a job at the Onion? Keep it up!
RIP Moto, I did enjoy my RAZR v3 years ago.
I hear UIQ 4 is a total copy of the iPhone interface. If Moto get this out in the next 6 months, it might be a contender.
The final phase of the deathwatch has begun...
This is just like how Squaresoft created Final Fantasy...
Take that to mean whatever you want.
If I'm not mistaken, I think this is how the RAZR came to be as well.
The RAZR was a make or break phone for Moto. There existing lineup (while having some good phones especially for Nextel) was not a high profit division. The RAZR changed all that. The head brass wanted every phone to meet this standard. So far it hasn't.
There are right back where they where before the RAZR came out.
I don't like the razr. My HTC startrek may be a bit thicker, but it actually has a nice UI, Windows Mobile.
I don't get what makes these phones so popular.
They're a bit thinner
Moto has been around forever and remember how innovative the razr was when it first came out. True they havent come close to that big of a product in years but dont think that they are out of the game quite yet i bet they still have a few tricks up their sleeve. either that or they will come out with a total p.o.s. phone and we can all say goodbye to phones with misspelled names of phones that are supposed to sound cool
Make the above phone a smartphone and I will DEFINITELY check into it
If it's running UIQ, it IS a smartphone.
Sounds like Palms' battle strategy. They're putting all their eggs in their (fictional) new OS and hoping it will turn everything around for them. Hope it works out, but I'm not going to back to a Treo nor a Razr/Crazr/Lazr from Moto.
Though I still love that hot chick in the Razr commercials ;-)
Yumm....
This will never ship. They will also not be able to sell Mobile Devices, it needs too much capital to stay afloat. They will simply shut it down and lay off somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 people. This will also happen sooner than later, much sooner.
The company is a disaster internally. I bet there are Moto PMs reading about this here for the first time and are sharpening their hatchets to kill it.
Godspeed motorola, shush those naysayers, SHOW THAT YOU'RE STILL IN THE GAME!
We'll be saying the same thing once your IP gets banned.
Listen up moto. Here is an idea. iPhone has got the whole candybar smart phone thing down to a science. What is missing now is a really great flip phone. Doesn't have to be a waffer thin razr. But here are some things it should have.
1. Nice large 3" touch screen.
2. 3.5mm headphone jack
3. A really solid MP3 player that integrates with a desktop app for syncing. Not some POS desktop app either. We have to want to use this app for playing our music/videos even if we don't own the phone.
4. Video playback (xvid, H.264) with TV out.
5. Try using a real digicam sensor and not the type created for cell phones. Megapixels really don't matter when the quality is sh*t.Find a way to work out the power issues.
6. Full sized SDHC card slot
7. Priced maybe around $75-100 with contract.
...and make it shoot laser beams, and have a Batman-like grappling hook for scaling those tall buildings when you forgot your utility belt.
Instead of making their own app. Why don't they just allow it to be synced using an app I already have. I don't like programs for each device. PLEASE!
Mobible Devices is being spun off regardless of what this or any product does. The rest of the company (The government and enterprise side) is doing extremely well, you just wouldn't know it because of their down syndrome cousin thats losing billions a year.
This happened once before with Motorolas semiconductor business (OMG UR OLD MAC HAS A MOTOROLA CPU?) which became Freescale and they managed to survive it. Whether or not mobile devices can do the same thing remains to be seen.
You'll find out for sure by 2010.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Palm you suck. It is too late for that last stand.
Apple kicks Palm and Engadgets arse.
ok riiigghhtt...........all your phone are belong to us! Palm? I thought this article was about Moto...I need more coffee I guess.
Good to see reading comprehension is alive and well.
It'll still be another poopy Moto phone. Booo...
dear motorola,
it's not the size of the photo we have a problem with, it's the quality.
and while i understand you want to develop something like this for the mass market, the fundamental problem you guys are having is that you aren't selling enough phones. developing an 8 megapixel sensor for your phones is only going to drive the price up and even further alienate the precious customers you want to keep.
who the hell brags about the megapixels their cameraphone takes anyway?
enjoy your huge commercial failure,
your friends at engadget
Exactly. A phone with an 8-megapixel camera is bound to be a niche product. Are they really going to save themselves with a low-volume, high-markup phone? Nokia's N-series is great and all, but is that really where they're making their money?
mmmm, i smell death approaching.
How crappy is your life if you spend time working around getting banned from a blog?
And how crappy is your life if a blog actually has to take measures to ban you?
Crazy world we live in.. oh well, it shouldn't be much longer...
;-)
^ useless twat
Your arrow is pointing to your own name, Mr. Twat.
Man, these folks need to really reinvent themselves. I heard the new model is going to be called the LUZR.
as long as it doesn't start with a lowercase "i"...
As a user of Moto phones in the past, I must say that they should focus on improving the UI which is not very user-friendly.
Agreed. I bought 2 RAZRs for my wife and my mom and the menu system is like trying to seperate spaghetti. Seems like the Riddler made the menu hierarchy.
I've been using my Treo 650 for years now and that's because it's expandable(software wise) and the menu system is very user friendly. The only phone(at the moment) that's going to tear me away from my 650 is the iPhone. I don't really like Apple but the iPhone works well and has all the right features - wifi, media player, huge TOUCH screen etc. I don't care what anybody says, the touch screen is the future, of course, coupled with a full real qwerty keyboard hidden somewhere.
I think Motorola has a good chance but they need to take a look at what people like right now and erase the RAZR from there memory completely.
I thought that RAZR2 (in my case, the RAZR V9m) is a big overhaul over the original RAZR. I love the call quality, big front screen, and the excellent speakers on the phone when listening to music. The 2MP cameraphone takes REALLY GOOD quality pictures... I hear everyone bashing on the ORIGINAL RAZR, but not their NEWER razr phones... I wonder why is that?
lowest ranked dude your my hero. i dont think a week has gone by that you havent made me crack up at least once
Motorola won't get this right. They'll do something to screw it up. Always have, most likely always will.
Any phone that would have an 8mp camera stuffed into it would need to be feature-rich in every other area. There would be no point in going ape-wild with the camera and making the rest of it lame. The components need to be balanced out. Real power in one component? Then there better be real power in the rest.
But any time Moto has put out a phone that was designed to compete in this "do-it-all" category, they did something to cripple it. Maybe they'll surprise us, and I'm not trying to be negative - just being realistic and going by history. Based on past performance, and the convoluted and untalented (or just stifled) team they've been working with, they'll most likely fail in some crucial area in the design of this mystery phone, which will demolish their chances of ever grabbing anyone's real interest... or dollars.
I hope they surprise us, but I'm not betting on that, so I'm saying my goodbyes now: So long, Moto. It was fun while it las... No, actually, it never was any fun that I can remember. You won't be missed (not by me, anyway).
Did no one read the article? Take a look at the rumored specs. The reference to Tegra in particular. Now take a look at what Tegra is capable of. This phone has the potential to once again turn the phone industry on it's ear. It probably will be the make or break moment for Moto.