In a bit of news-that-makes-you-say-duh, the WSJ tells us that Motorola is working on making a really good phone, and Google is helping. The interesting bits, however, come in surrounding all the trouble surrounding the project, which Motorola is calling “X Phone”.
Motorola is still working on its Droid line for US carrier Verizon, but it’s now also focusing on the X Phone project with Google, which purchased Motorola earlier this year. Here’s the part that you care about though:
For the X phone, an initiative being led by former Google product manager Lior Ron who specialised in mapping, Motorola wanted top-notch features for the phone’s camera and photo software, such as better colour saturation and the ability to take panoramic shots, two people familiar with the situation said. But some of the features were found to drain battery life or already have been incorporated into popular new devices, such as the iPhone 5 that launched earlier this year, they added.
Motorola also ran into difficulties when it looked into using a bendable screen and materials such as ceramics that would allow the company to make the X Phone more stress resistant, use more colours and mould into different shapes, these people said.
Now, that doesn’t sound totally promising, but it’s not a death sentence either. Google might not have a history of making great hardware itself, but it’s worked with OEMs on Chromebooks to very good results (it sort of just gets out of the way on the Nexus line). And it’s actually great to see Motorola aiming high. But for right now, there isn’t much positive movement being reported. Hopefully that changes. [WSJ]