Live coverage from Motorola's press conference
Whoa, giant RAZR 2 alert! Hope it doesn't kill us!
08:45PM PT - Yep, we're here, but Moto isn't letting us enter their lair until 9pm sharp. Must be something cool inside.
08:55PM PT - Okay, so we may or may not have gotten a little peek inside.
09:02PM PT - What's the hold up, folks? We're still outside!
09:08PM PT - We're finally in and seated - very swank, clublike environment with a DJ, bar, and a full spread of food. Oh, and there aren't any janky chairs here, nosir. Nothing but leather-clad, white futon thingies. Crazy.
09:12PM PT - So now we're back into this mode where we're just milling around, talking, and becoming inebriated. Is this a press conference, or did we take a wrong turn on the Promenade Floor?
09:20PM PT - Seriously, cotton candy and MOTOPLWS. Huh?
09:28PM PT - They just told us to "please turn off our Motorola mobile phones." Guess that means other brands don't apply?
09:29PM PT - Something important is behind this screen, we can just feel it! An intro video is playing, seems to be a montage of their recent ad campaigns.
09:30PM PT - Enter Stu Reed, President of Mobile Devices at Motorola. Happy New Year, blah blah blah... he's going over their fall announcements; V8 Luxury Edition, W series phones, and so on.
09:32PM PT - Well, that was quick. Jeremy Dale, VP of Marketing is now on stage. "Thank you for joining us..." oops, we're already having technical difficulties, three of their four displays have stopped working. Jeremy looks visibly flustered.
09:34PM PT - He's talking about "Generation C," young folks that are totally connected. Text messaging, et cetera... we think we see where this is going. "They don't just consume information, they devour it. These are the people we have been waiting for."
09:35PM PT - The first new device, the Motorola Z10 banana slider! 3.2 megapixel camera. "Advanced video editing capabilities and sharing capabilities." We're seeing a demo of video recorded on a Z10 now, we have to admit, it's pretty impressive. Seems relatively high-res and very high frame rate. He claims "24 hours of video" can be recorded, though we're not sure if he's quoting battery life or storage space.
09:42PM PT - Demo time! He's making a demo video for us. They're obviously REALLY emphasizing video creation with this sucker.
09:43PM PT - This is freaking amazing. He's adding overlaid text, transitions, and soundtracks to his video right from the phone.
09:45PM PT - Let us hit you up with some specs: 30fps QVGA video, HSDPA, expandable memory to 8GB, 3D stereo sound through built-in speakers, UIQ, metal casing. He's also saying it's one of the fastest starting cameras on the cameraphone market, about "four times faster than the competition." 3fps burst mode still photography. Automatic Flickr, Windows Live, ShoZu, and YouTube uploading, among others!
09:49PM PT - That's it for the Z10, moving on to music-focued phones.
09:50PM PT - Introducing the ROKR E8!
09:51PM PT - Woohoo, we're already talking about the morphing, disappearing keypad. It changes in music mode, phone mode, et cetera. He's calling the technology "revolutionary."
09:53PM PT - He's talking up the haptics now. The E8 has no buttons, just a glass surface; Moto knows that people like actual keys, so you get the "bzzt bzzt" effect when you tap on this bad boy.
09:54PM PT - Now he's talking about the circular nav slide. The further you are from 12 o'clock, the faster you scroll through menus. Idea is to make music selection relatively painless.
09:55PM PT - Soft touch back, 3.5mm headphone jack, 2GB of onboard storage, microSD expansion, dedicated keylock slide on the side, "compatible with virtually any audio format," integrated FM radio, microUSB port, Linux based.
09:57PM PT - "We have the best audio engineers in the world." Wow, that's a pretty bold statement. He's talking about how the E8 is apparently as good of a PMP as a dedicated PMP.
09:59PM PT - EQ5 and EQ7 stereo Bluetooth bases for home listening. Still talking about the E8: "It's a great phone when you want it to be a phone, and a great music player when you want it to be a music player."
10:02PM PT - Talking about how digital music sales will tip the balance toward music phones; MOTOMUSIC site has been doing well in Asia Pacific region. They're now announcing the acquisition of Soundbuzz, an over-the-air media sales firm dominant in Asia.
10:04PM PT - Back to the E8 and how Soundbuzz integration helps, he's talking about Music ID and how it can tie in directly to MOTOMUSIC to purchase and download tracks directly to the phone. Sounds a little Ovi-like! How are carriers going to feel about this?
10:08PM PT - Both the Z10 and E8 will be out this quarter and will roll out "very rapidly" around the world.
10:09PM PT - All done! Stay tuned for hands-ons!
