New Motorola Phones Come In Mini, Maxi, And Ultra

The relationship between Motorola and Verizon has been pretty successful, to the point that the Droid branding used by the two companies has reached almost Kleenex/Band-Aid ubiquity. Yet in recent years, the bulk of the Android market has belonged to other device manufacturers. Verizon hosted a press event earlier today to unleash three brand new Droids. Will Google’s own handset arm be able to change trend and increase sales?

All three phones use Motorola’s new 8X Computing technology. It’s actually an eight core system — a dual-core handling applications, a quad-core for graphics, a single-core devoted to “contextual” duties, and one core for handling natural language. The new solution is alleged to have two times the graphics power and about a quarter more processing performance for most tasks.

First up, we have the Droid Ultra. Sporting a 5″ screen and $199 price tag, this seems like the base model. Motorola is claiming that the Ultra will be the thinnest LTE phone on market come launch on August 20. There are plenty of software features to make the Ultra stand out from other Android handsets, but don’t pre-order until you see her siblings.

Comes in basic black and Verizon red.

Take the Droid Maxx, the follow up to the RAZR Maxx HD. Props to Motorola for the shorter name. This third generation Maxx improves yet again on battery life, with Verizon claiming 48 hours of battery life. All that power actually comes in a thinner package than last year’s model, plus it has a nice 5″ screen. For those occasional charges, the Maxx includes wireless charging (no word on what standard, if any). The Maxx will ring up at $299 and seems like a pretty solid road warrior.

Finally, we have the Droid Mini. This isn’t the first device to be announced, but pre-orders are already live. Come August 29, the Droid Mini will be available with a 4.3″ screen, 16 GB of onboard storage, a 10 MP camera, and a 2130 mAh battery. At the price of $99 a unit, the Mini is well worth checking out. 

In 2013, “mini” means having a larger screen than an iPhone.

All three units have Kevlar bodies and a host of software tweaks. Most impressive is the deeper tying in of voice recognition. Saying ,”Okay Google Now” launches several tasks. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the command for Google Glass is “Okay Glass.” The idea of a phone that’s constantly passively listening is less than comforting to some, but the tech is neat. The new Droid Zap feature sounds a lot like NFC photo sharing.

One possible hurdle for these is going to be people who say, “Oh, but the S4 is quad core”, not getting that the “dual core” Droid series is technically more powerful. It will be interesting to see how that’s handled. Especially since Motorola has one thing going for it here is that the Mini is actually a smaller version of the flagship Ultra. Internally, they’re the same phone. Compare that to Samsung and HTC, who are essentially rebranded versions of last year’s model. It will be interesting to see if that’s enough to take Motorola’s market share up to the level of the company’s mindshare.