"The new Motorola starts today," new Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside boldly proclaimed at a New York City event on Wednesday. And what, you might wonder, will the new Motorola emphasize?
RAZR, RAZR, RAZR.
Motorola introduced its first smartphones since Google completed its acquisition of the phone manufacturer in May, and all of them are united under the RAZR umbrella, continuing the re-launch of the RAZR brand from late last year. The three smartphones -- the Droid RAZR HD, the Droid RAZR Maxx HD, and the Droid RAZR M -- all closely resemble the first Droid RAZR smartphone released in December 2011 in their thinness and use of Motorola-skinned Android operating system, though all three, Motorola execs emphasized on stage at the event, improved upon that phone's weak battery life and relatively lackluster display.
All three new RAZRs are 4G LTE smartphones that will be available exclusively on Verizon Wireless when they are released; each will come with last year's Android 4.0 (codenamed "Ice Cream Sandwich"), with Motorola Senior Vice President Rick Osterloh promising that all would be upgraded to Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" by the close of 2012.
Notably -- and here is the first real fruit of the Google-Motorola partnership -- each new RAZR will ship with Google Chrome pre-installed as the primary browser, making the new RAZRs the first devices to use Google's mobile browser out of the box.
And now, onto the devices:
First comes the Droid RAZR HD, which comes with a 4.7-inch Super AMOLED HD display that has 78 percent more pixels than the original Droid RAZR. The screen was one of the most complained about features on the first Droid RAZR, and that increase in pixel density should silence those critics; the old RAZR was also oft-criticized for its poor battery life, and Motorola's new RAZR HD will ship with a bigger battery that should get 40 percent better battery life, per a Motorola press release.
The second Motorola smartphone to debut is the Droid RAZR MAXX HD, an update to the Droid RAZR MAXX. The RAZR MAXX came months after the Droid RAZR and traded a few millimeters in girth for what is considered the best battery life for any smartphone. The RAZR MAXX HD continues that tradition: It is similar to the RAZR HD, sporting the same 4.7-inch Super AMOLED HD screen, but is a bit thicker, making room for a battery that delivers an awesome 32 hours of "normal use" without a charge.
Finally, the Droid RAZR M is the smallest of the three phones, a device with a 4.3-inch dispaly that comes with much ballyhooed edge-to-edge glass. Motorola says that the RAZR M has the same display size as the original RAZR but that it is shorter and thinner: The device's front is almost all screen. Motorola has put out a video to introduce shoppers to the RAZR M, which you can view below:
The Droid RAZR HD, Droid RAZR Maxx HD, and Droid RAZR M share several features (other than a general aesthetic consistency). In quick list form, they are:
- 4G LTE
- A 1.5 GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB RAM
- An 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD recording
-Front-facing cameras
-NFC capability
- Gorilla Glass display and KEVLAR backing
- microSD card slot expandable up to 32GB
The RAZR M will be available for pre-order at 5 p.m. on September 5, for $99 on contract from Verizon. (You can pre-order right here, if you'd like). Motorola did not announce pricing or availability for either the Droid RAZR MAXX HD or the Droid RAZR HD, but did say that the phones would be out before the holiday season.
Below, check out a couple videos and photos of the newest Motorola phones:
