Now here is an interesting handset, Motorola. In the US, you dipped your toes in the insidious waters of toughened smartphones with the i1. Now, across the pond, you get yet another handset announced that is IP67 certified to come out unscathed from the battle with elements. A commendable achievement on a 3.7″ touchscreen handset running Android, we admit.

The Motorola Defy, as the name suggests, is not afraid to be dropped, scratched (Gorilla Glass), used in a sand storm, or submersed in water up to 3 feet (1 meter). Really not bad, considering it stays light at 4.16 ounces (118gr), and keeps a fairly slender 0.54 inches (13.8mm) profile with a capacitive touchscreen that carries 480×854 pixels of resolution.

The chipset is TI’s OMAP 3610 running at 800MHz, which should be enough for most purposes. Motorola still managed to slip in a 5MP camera with LED flash, so you won’t be missing moments out of those harsh environments you take the Defy to. It is not specified if the video capture is HD, but the frame rate is listed as 26-30fps, which should deliver smooth video, even if not 720p. The tough handset sports dual microphones for noise cancellation, which should make recorded videos clear sounding as well.

Every opening around the phone is cap protected, and there are screws tightening the case together to prevent those liquids from entering the innards. The folks at Motorola say that the possibility of upgrade to Froyo is being looked at, but there is no certainty so far what will follow. The Defy has the Swype text entry method preloaded as default.

It should be available in Europe at some point in the fourth quarter and, who knows, might make its way stateside as the rumored Jordan on T-Mobile.
source: Motorola

Motorola confirmed the anticipated European version of the DROID 2 today, under the MILESTONE 2 title. It does 3G only at the 2100MHz band, so it is calling Europe home, and will be available there in the fourth quarter. It is basically a rebadged version of the Motorola DROID 2, thus the same 1GHz OMAP3 chipset running Froyo is present in the MILESTONE 2.

Of course, there is nowhere to hide from MOTOBLUR, as Motorola has decided to leave the UI on the European version, along with its resizable widgets. It can tether wireless internet to five devices at once, but it depends on the carrier whether the feature will be allowed.

The major difference is that the MILESTONE 2 will shoot 720p HD video when it ships, so hopes are up a firmware upgrade or a cooked ROM will unlock this feature for the DROID 2 as well, since the shooter is absolutely the same. Motorola will ship it with an 8GB microSD card, and the internal memory is listed as “up to 8GB”. Have a look at the promo video below, very Flash-y.

Dare to guess the difference in keyboards? MILESTONE 2 has the € sign up left.
source: Motorola

Motorola XT300

A few clear pictures and videos of an upcoming Motorola XT300 have leaked on a German website, but the source is clearly Chinese. The handset seems to be running Android with MOTOBLUR on top, but the most interesting element about it is that sweet-looking QWERTY. The shape and the portrait-sliding keyboard make it resemble very much a larger Palm Pre.

In the boot sequence we can clearly see the red eye that is trademark of Verizon’s high-end DROID line, but it seems like a mid-range Android handset, so where is it going to appear is anyone’s guess. The Motorola Milestone XT720 is a GSM handset, and has the XT prefix, so the XT300 might end up on another network altogether, and not necessarily in the US. Are you liking this form factor?
via Engadget

The all-popular CyanogenMod 6 is out of relese candidate status now, and ready to bring Froyo to your rooted oldie-but-goodie Android device. The comprehensive list of supported devices includes the HTC-made Aria, G1, Google Nexus One, Desire, Hero, EVO 4G, Slide and Incredible, as well as the venerable Motorola DROID, and the flagship Samsung Galaxy S.

If you have already rooted your device, and want to try the Froyo experience, head over to the forums from the link below. Apart from improved speeds and battery life, the mod brings some additional features compared to the stock Android 2.2. A cool one is the browser color invert (saves battery life on AMOLED screens, such as the one on the Incredible), and there are also some music player enhancements, bringing along support for the lossless audio format FLAC. The mod is not without bugs, though, some users report installation problems, which might brick your device, as well as problems with Google services, so use at your own discretion.

In a battle of the operating system versions, the folks over at PocketNow have pitted a Samsung EPIC 4G, running a stock Android 2.1, against a Nexus One running the latest CyanogenMod 6 Froyo build. The authors ran the Quadrant full benchmark test and examined Wi-Fi and 3G download speeds, but we won’t spoil the fascinating battle for you.
source: CyanogenMod & PocketNow

A battery life test run by the folks from Laptopmag has produced some predetermined results. They wrote an Android app to run a web browsing test in controlled environment (60 websites changed every 60 seconds), and turned off all but the cellular data connectivity options. The web browsing was left plain and simple, with Flash and other plug-ins off, and the screens remained on all the time with 40% brightness.

The results are not very surprising if you look at the official manufacturer’s numbers for the tested handsets, however it’s good to have them confirmed by a 3rd party as well. The worst performer was the HTC Droid Incredible, but the authors admit that the type of testing chosen takes the most toll on AMOLED screens. Their power consumption when showing white backgrounds, as found in most websites, is triple the one of regular LCD displays. In other circumstances like shades of gray or colors, they consume way less power, but white is a killer. If the testers had chosen continuous video play, for instance, the results of the Incredible probably would have been better. Not to mention that it has a 1300mAh battery, while most of the others tested are with 1500mAh ones.

Nevertheless, on top of the smartphone pack climbed the two latest DROIDs from Motorola. The DROID 2 lasted 7:07 hours, and the DROID X the whopping 7:42 hours. Considering these two handsets are with the power-sipping TI OMAP 3630 produced with the 45nm technology, those hours are quite explicable. We wonder if the Super AMOLED screens don’t have the same power consumption disadvantage to the LCDs when a white background is continuously displayed that the AMOLED ones have. That might explain the fact that Samsung’s Vibrant, Captivate and EPIC 4G fared worse than the DROIDs, regardless of the fact that their Hummingbird chipsets are produced with the 45nm process as well.

Of note here was the top-notch performance of the Dell Streak, which fitted right smack in the middle between the DROIDs with 7:35 hours of battery life as tested. And this is despite the large 5″ screen, and the 65nm Snapdragon inside. Looks like the Streak was born to browse.

Have a look at the full endurance chart below to see how everybody fared.
source: LaptopMag

Similar to how HTC was seen by Google as the priority choice to bring Android into the smartphone realm with G1, Motorola is now being garnered with the same attention with their upcoming Android powered tablet. It’s being reported that Google is in close alliance with Motorola since their offering, out of many manufacturers out there, is looking to be in line with the expectations set forth by Google. DigiTimes Research senior analyst Mingchi Kuo believes that Motorola’s Android tablet will sport the Tegra 2 platform from NVIDIA along with a 10.1” display panel supplied from Sharp – which is said to have a reduced brightness output compared to the iPad, but still thinner in size. Naturally, Google is going to be working closely with Motorola with this one by setting the expectations for its specifications which should hopefully coincide with a user interface that will ultimately exude a proper experience. The tablet is slated to go into mass production by the end of the year and will be manufactured by Motorola with the hopeful goal of shipping out 2 million units for 2011.
source: DigiTimes

We have gotten used to the iFixit treatment of every new and worthy gadget, and would honestly miss it if one day a great phone appears, and we never see what’s inside. The hard working people there have disassembled a shiny new Motorola DROID 2, just to find out that the innards have mostly the same layout as on the original, save for the new elements like the 8GB NAND flash internal memory chip. Even the keyboard can supposedly be replaced with the old style, as the spacing and contacts on the back look identical.

An interesting take from the teardown is that the DROID 2 has the same 1390mAh battery that the first DROID had, however talk time in 3G mode is estimated to be nearly ten full hours instead of the 6.5 we had in the original. And that’s with the Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 CPU clocked at 1GHz, instead of the 600 MHz of its predecessor. The combination of Froyo optimized for a TI OMAP chipset, produced with the 45nm technology, has brought to the DROID 2 a whopping 49% increase in battery life!

It certainly looks like those claims for 30% increases in battery life when moving from the 65nm to the 45nm process, and then another 30% when dual-core chipsets of this kind hit from TI, Qualcomm and Samsung, is not vapor ware. If such talk times can be achieved on an Android handset, then the smartphone industry is certainly heading in the right direction with the new 45nm chipsets, like the ones we find on the Motorola DROID 2 and Samsung Galaxy S phones.

There was a mention in the iFixit writeup of the antenna position, which is cleverly just a gold wrap around the speaker at the bottom. We think that antenna position design decisions should be a must in phone disassembling articles from now on in light of certain events. Also, it is amazing how small the camera module actually is.
source: iFixit

Speaker and antenna	CDMA chip in yellow	5MP camera

The keyboard module	Frame	DROID 2 at pieces

If you’re looking for a rich mobile web browsing experience that closely emulates the look and feel of desktop browsers, you only need to look at a handful of Android powered smartphones now that Adobe confirmed Flash 10 support for additional devices. We’ve already witnessed the HTC EVO 4G getting it and we know that it’s coming to the Motorola DROID X as well, but it’s also expected to become available for the HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S, and the Motorola MILESTONE. So there are plenty of handset to think about if you’re in the process of bailing on your current device and shopping around for a new one. It’s assumed that Flash 10 support will be integrated with the various Android 2.2 Froyo updates that are expected to become available in the coming weeks. However, the actual availability date for each smartphone will vary, but at least we can all ready the champagne when the actual day comes around.

source: Adobe via IntoMobile

We’ve been tipped that Verizon’s original Motorola DROID is starting to get an Android 2.2 update over the air, ahead of the rumored August 12th date. This may not be the swan song update for the current most popular Android device, since Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) probably won’t have strict hardware requirements that the DROID can’t fulfill.

Unfortunately, users are reporting that this update doesn’t include Flash Player 10.1, but it should be coming soon. Mobile hotspot is also not present, so if you want these here and now, you will have to root the device.

Thanks, Ronald!

If you read our introductory article about the world of smartphone SoCs (System-on-a-Chip), you probably noticed that Texas Instruments has been one of the first companies to sample chips with the next generation Cortex-A9 architecture from ARM Holdings. Now, handsets with this chip are yet to be announced for 2011, but TI couldn’t help but boast that it is the first to license the yet nebulous successor to the A9, codenamed Eagle, which ARM will reveal later this year. Not only that, but the Houston-based company has obviously been buddy-buddy with ARM during the planning process of the new core, giving it a flying start ahead of the competition.

From announcing the ARM Cortex-A9 in 2009, to the first handsets with it, which will probably appear in 2011, there is a time gap of two years. Thus, we can safely assume that Eagle-based smartphones won’t be hitting shelves until 2012. Hopefully, the world will still exist by then, so we can all rejoice with the 28, or maybe even 20nm production process of the Eagle.

It promises low power consumption with performance comparable to that of Intel’s next iteration of the Moorestown mobile platform, which will most likely be produced with the 2x nm method as well. Cortex-A9 is optimized for dual-core performance at 45nm, so Eagle might be dual-core on 2x nm, or even quad-core, dream on.

ARM doesn’t actually produce the chipsets, they create the core and instructions, then license it out to companies that have the engineering and foundry resources to create custom smartphone and tablet SoCs like Qualcomm with its Snapdragon, Samsung’s Hummingbird, and TI with the OMAP family that is currently powering all of Mototola’s DROID line.
source: AnandTech