Motorola’s MOTOACTV is geek fitness chic. It’s a utilitarian square piece of metal and plastic, a low-powered ARM processor and 8GB of storage; some sensors and an accelerometer; a pair of headphones and some cloud sync capabilities. It’s not going to change your life unless you let it, and just like every fitness utility, you get out only as much as you put in.

But at its core, the $249.99 MOTOACTV appears to be one of the best, and most versatile, options for the avid runner, cyclist or golfer (more on that later).

Design

MOTOACTV’s design is nothing more than a reframed iPod nano, a square housing with an optional clip; the front is glass, the back a reflective mirror metal. It feels well-made, and likely is if it stands a chance against the elements; I dropped it several times (on purpose, and a couple times by accident) and it fared extremely well. Its 1.6-inch screen has a tired resolution of 176×220 pixels, and is covered with a smattering of Gorilla Glass.

There are five buttons and a capacitive area: volume up, volume down and power are on the right side; Start and Music are on top; the Android back button is on the face, under the screen. This limits its use to a single orientation, something I wish Motorola had taken into account when designing the device, since it’s not easy to consistently clip it the right way to a jacket or shirt. It involves having to remove it from the included clip and reorient it.

Start and Music operate independently: the former jumps into a workout screen while the latter either jumps into the music screen or pauses the current song. There is a microUSB port for charging and syncing with the computer, covered by a piece of rubber. In this case I’d say the rubber is welcome, since the MOTOACTV claims to be sweat resistant and rain proof.

The back area, as stated, is made of metal and has raised edges that allow the unit to slide easily into a number of proprietary accessories. The included clothes clip is the cleanest and likely most useful; I found it to be extremely tight, and fell only once despite numerous attempts to disengage the clip. I also had a chance to try the $19.99 Sports Arm Band, which uses the same attachment technique. Both accessories are well made and fundamental to the enjoyment of the gadget, and there are optional bike mount, watch strap and both wired and wireless headphones, each sold separately. It’s clear that Motorola is attempting to sell you the razor as well as a number of pricey blades here.

Usability

The Android-based interface is sparse but robust. There are four main areas in which you’ll spend your time: Watch, Workout, Music and Notifications.

The MOTOACTV is a bit too bulky to be used comfortably as a watch, but it can be configured as such. There are a number of timepieces available, ranging from the “train station” digital design to an apocalyptic analog face and many in between. That same screen also displays the calories burned and steps taken, which is reset at midnight each night. The device uses the included accelerometer to gauge the level of activity, but I found it easy to trick, and by the end of the day usually had a few thousand unearned steps in my tally. I can’t vouch for the caloric accuracy, either, but to have both is a reassuring presence.

The Watch screen also allows you to configure a digital timer, stopwatch and enable or disable a wakeup gesture, which will turn on the screen if you not-so-vigorously shake the unit. The problem is that with this gesture turned on the screen tends to wake up and go back to sleep every few seconds while walking, wasting precious battery life. At the same time it’s very useful if you’re using it as a watch; I wish there was a way to adjust the sensitivity of the shaking.

The Workout screen is, if you’re an avid runner, cyclist or even walker, where you’ll be spending the bulk of your time. It allows you to configure time, distance (or both) as well as calorie goals for the specific workout. You can also just press start and work it all out at the end. The MOTOACTV takes care of GPS location (though it was occasionally difficult to find a satellite lock), calories burned, speed and distance travelled. The MotoActv.com service also lets you upload these results to Motorola’s portal, tracking individual workouts and improvement over time.

As of a recent software update, the MOTOACTV also allows you to download golf course information from around the world, tracking distance, ball location and a number of other stat-junkie goodness. You’re not limited to those activities, though: the device is pre-programmed for Elliptical, Step Machine, Walking and Cycling, in addition to running. You can also set a custom activity such as Badminton, Baseball, Hockey and more. Each of these provides enough material to gauge improvement over time, and if you enter personal information such as weight and height when beginning your training, the device will tell you how much you need to work to hit a certain weight target.

Music

The MOTOACTV also comes with 8GB of internal storage, and a number of pre-loaded workout songs that I found completely all over the map. However, in addition to Motorola’s MotoCast app, which allows you to sync iTunes playlists to the device, you can merely drag and drop songs or albums in Windows’ or OS X’s file manager and the unit will parse all the necessary metadata.

Music plays into workouts in inestimably important ways, and Motorola thought ahead on this one, too. By default there is a permanent playlist called Fitness Music. You can choose individual songs to add to this playlist, which play when you start exercising. The harder you work while listening to a particular song, MOTOACTV’s algorithms figure out when and how often to play the song. If you take a particular running route every day, and tend to lag during an uphill, for example, the song that gets you the most pumped will begin playing as soon as the previous one is finished. It’s an excellent feature that I appreciated, especially during early morning runs when I wasn’t very happy to be out in the cold.

As a general music player, however, MOTOACTV does a decent job, though the Android-based interface is rather clunky. While there are slick transition animations, I would have loved to see gesture-based navigation such as on Apple’s fifth-generation iPod nano. Repeated use of the back button gets tiresome after a few clicks, and while you can hold it down to return quickly to the home screen, there is little panache to the procedure, especially when you’re shelling out nearly $300 for the device.

Conclusions

The MOTOACTV is something I’ve taken to wearing every day, even if I’m not exercising heavily. I use it as a pedometer and a calorie counter and, more recently, as a music player. It supports Bluetooth with A2DP profiles, so my stereo headphones play just fine; it can map out my walking routes and determine how far and how quickly I’ve been moving; and it lasts a long time. The battery can be relied on for 20 hours before it gives in, and Motorola has thankfully included a dual-USB wall charger with the kit so you can plug in your phone and the MOTOACTV before you go to sleep. That’s thinking ahead.

I noticed that, just sitting idly, the device depletes around 30% battery every eight hours, so be sure to plug it in. Battery usage will be inevitably higher if you choose to connect it to various ANT+ compatible sensors such as a heart-rate monitor.

Considering you can participate in challenges on MotoActv.com, and have people comment on your workouts, encouraging you to do better, the device succeeds as both a social tool and an individual motivator. For $250, it’s by no means cheap, and by the time you’re done paying into the various accessories you could be closer to $400. But if you’re serious about fitness — and an increasing number of geeks and non-geeks alike are — MOTOACTV is a very compelling product.

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3. MOTOACTV launching “sometime in Q4″, LTE tablet in 2012

The prepaid market is one that we don’t really broach too often, but it’s an essential component of everyday life for millions of Canadians. While the penetration rate for smartphones is nearly 40%, it’s still much more common to see someone with a cheap flip phone or aging candybar walking down the street. Smartphones are essential to peoples’ lives, but so is the savings from a $89.99 prepaid phone paired with a $20/month commitment-free rate plan.

The MOTOKEY SOCIAL, hereby deemed Motokey for austerity sake, is an interesting take on the the portrait QWERTY phone. At first glance it appears quite similar to the previously-reviewed Android-powered Motorola Pro+ but for the smaller screen and dedicated Facebook button.

Let’s take a look at this pseudo-smartphone and see if it’s right for you, or your younger sibling.

Specs:

- Custom Motorola operating system
- 2.4″ 320×240 capacitive touch screen
- 64MB RAM, 128MB ROM (50MB user available) with microSD slot
- 3MP camera
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900, EDGE Class 10, WCDMA 850/1900
- 910mAh battery
- WiFi / Bluetooth, GPS
- WiFi hotspot support
- Built-in Facebook button
- Stereo FM radio
- 87g
- 60 x 105.5 x 9.98 mm

—

It’s important to note that the Motokey is not, depending on your definition, a smartphone. It runs a touchscreen-”friendly” operating system, but it’s a far cry from the versatility of Android, or even Samsung’s Bada.

This simple Java-based operating system is surprisingly robust, with capacitive touchscreen support and native social networking features. There are smartphone features we take for granted, such as a Java browser (Opera Mobile), Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and weather applets. I’d be remiss to call them apps, but they perform ably enough.

There are five home screens, each of which is adorned with various widgets and app icons; holding down on one will bring up an ugly prompt asking to change the source of that shortcut. You cannot move an icon, or replace it with a widget, so an icon must be replaced with another, and a widget with another, and so on. The system works quite well, though getting things exactly right is time-consuming and cumbersome. Nevertheless, we have to go back to one thing: this phone provides, for $90, similar albeit vastly simplified functionality as a device three or four times the price.

The hardware is quite hardy for such an inexpensive device. The keyboard is similar to the one on the Motorola Pro+, but adds a dedicated number row in the space where an extra half-inch of screen space would be. The keys are spritely and well-honed, spaced just right for messaging hounds; the number row will appease those with aversions to the “BlackBerry Way” of holding down the alt key for most secondary presses. As you can see, like the Android-powered HTC Status there is a dedicated Facebook button near the bottom left of the keyboard. Such an inclusion leaves no doubt as to whom this diminutive device is to be marketed to.

The 2.4″ QVGA screen is appreciably crummy, but not a write-off. With sufficient brightness, clarity and touch responsiveness, it’s a great deal better than a resistive layer. Viewing angles are pretty laughable though, and you can see the banding in most gradients, owing to the limited colour palette.

Around the back is a 3MP camera, for which the software could be worse: one-touch Facebook sharing, plus decent response time makes for a pleasant enough experience. I foresee many young people pointing the lens at their own faces, friends gathering in the shot for a candid self-portrait. The lack of flash is no surprise, but one can take grainy and low-framerate video at a decent 640×480 resolution.

Though the phone does not come with a microSD slot, the phone supports one up to 32GB, and it’s a good thing too, since there are only 50MB of usable storage out of the box for photos, video and music. There is a decent media player built in, though, to accompany the top-side 3.5mm headphone jack. Indeed, the phone appears to be a smartphone from the look of it: it is charged with an industry-standard microUSB cable (provided, thankfully) and has similarly robust build quality.

The Motokey is ringed by a chrome plastic bezel, to which a sturdy battery cover is attached. Underneath the hood is a 910mAh battery, but I had no issues with the battery. Since I couldn’t perform my usual suite of battery tests (for lack of apps), I merely repeated a short video I filmed until the cell wore to zero. The phone lasted nearly fifteen hours on medium brightness, indicating a relatively mild battery draw under load.

Surprisingly, the Motokey has a built-in WiFi hotspot feature to accompany the HSPA+ baseband inside. Telus offers a wide range of Prepaid Plans, though the base cost is 20c/min with a monthly plan and 30c/min without one. Data can be added, in 250MB/month increments, for $20, though it does not look like it can be combined with a voice plan. One plan, which includes such “deals” as $45/month Unlimited Voice gives you access to 5 numbers, plus evenings after 6pm and weekends and no-limit messaging, are a far cry from post-paid contract rates, but perform the function for those people who want nothing to do with a 3-year contract. Per-use data rates are $3/MB.

Thankfully, like all Motorola phones, call quality is excellent. There is an ample-sized speaker on the back for those tinny music urges, and the device, which is around the same height and width as the BlackBerry Curve 9360, is very comfortable to hold in the hand.

There is no doubt that the MOTOKEY SOCIAL is not aimed at me, nor most of our readers. But I decided to review it precisely because it is the type of phone that parents will buy their kids, or themselves, if cost is important and usage is kept to a minimum. Prepaid costs can add up quickly, but those who will seek one out are unlikely to be the heavy “Crackberry” users who will invest in an expensive handset.

As such, the Motokey gets a hearty recommendation without many of the reservations I usually foist on a smartphone. For $89.99 outright, and a $20/month prepaid plan which comes with no commitment, it’s the most robust and feature-filled fuss-free handset I’ve used.

The MOTOKEY SOCIAL is available from Telus for $89.99 outright.

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1. TELUS releases the MOTOKEY SOCIAL, Motorola giving 14 away
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Since then, three things have happened: 1) It received an upgrade to Gingerbread, which completely overhauled its software and gave it a huge performance boost. 2) Its bootloader was unlocked, allowing for custom ROMs, kernels and recoveries. 3) It’s been surpassed time and time again by its competitors, including some more recent Motorola devices.

But to its credit the Atrix, with its 4″ qHD display, 1Ghz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and huge 1930mAh battery, has survived the onslaught of time pretty well.

First, let’s go over what has held up well. Since its launch every major ARM-based manufacturer, from Qualcomm to Texas Instruments to Samsung, has released a dual-core solution. And even NVIDIA’s own Tegra 2, with which the Atrix was the first to launch in phone form, is about to be supplanted by the quad-core Tegra 3. But dual-core 1Ghz still feels fast, and using the Atrix now is not a significant step down from the latest Snapdragon or OMAP.

This is aided by the fact that the Atrix included 1GB of RAM when the rest of the industry was pumping out phones with half that number. Multitasking still feels effortless and fluid. The included 16GB storage has also aged well: there isn’t a single Android phone on the market that ships with more than that.

The Atrix’s speed practically doubled overnight when Bell released the Gingerbread update in August. In truth, though, I installed Android 2.3 long before that, when enterprising hackers unlocked the device’s bootloader and discovered, hidden in plain sight on Motorola’s servers, early builds of the eventual upgrade. Not only was it a big aesthetic change — they did away with most of Froyo’s ugly, blocky design choices — but Motorola injected some magic into the kernel, as the device just flew.

Then came CyanogenMOD7. From being one of the most locked-down devices on the market emerged a piece of versatile hardware that now has a vibrant development community. CM7 changed the way I used the Atrix, giving it the same enormous feature set as the other 50+ handsets supported by the custom ROM.

And, whether you’re running a custom stock-based ROM or CM7, various kernel improvements have helped developers push the capabilities of the 1930mAh battery to unbelievable levels. The Atrix is still, by far, the longest-lasting Android device I’ve ever used. I can easily get two days of use from it.

Physically, the Atrix hasn’t aged so well. Stout even at its release, it feels practically bloated now. We know now the extra girth was needed to accomodate the huge battery, but its plastic body and flimsy battery cover have since been condemned to the “2010 design faux pas” category.

I still think that its 4″ screen size makes for a very comfortable experience —  far better than the 4.3″ – 4.6″ variety. The qHD screen is a slim 16:9 ratio, so the Atrix is easy to hold between two fingers. The quality of the screen, however, leaves a LOT to be desired. This is the area in which Motorola has fallen the farthest behind — even on their latest handset — and after using the Galaxy Nexus and Optimus LTE extensively, the PenTile-inclined Atrix looks practically terrible. With inaccurate colours and poor viewing angles, not to mention practically unreadable text at its furthest zoom, we’re happy these days are behind us.

Moving on, the Atrix is a great phone. No, I mean an actual phone: sound quality from the earpiece and speaker is still best-in-class. Fundamentally, this makes it a mean business phone. It’s got all those great Motorola business features such as built-in certificates and extensive vendor VPN support. And remember, it has that unique fingerprint scanner that has yet to make it, for better or worse, to any other smartphone.

The camera on the Atrix still sucks. That won’t change, and as other manufacturers make improvements to their optics the Atrix will begin looking even worse in comparison. Focus is slow, low-light quality atrocious and photos overall lack detail and colour.

But with the Gingerbread update came a nice bonus: 1080p video recording. Though it took a third-party app to actually capture video at such a high resolution, today we have a phone that captures decent true HD at 24fps.

The Atrix was one of the first Android handsets to come with an HDMI-out port, capable of transmitting a 1080p signal to your home theatre system. And while it came with a Webtop and HDMI dock, sold separately, its built-in HDMI mirroring feature was enough for most people.

The Atrix, nearly a year later, is still going strong. Countless Android handsets have been released since March, boasting improved internal specs, sharper screens and better build quality. But then, as now, Bell’s first superphone still retains many of the qualities that made it such a compelling device to begin with.

Related posts:

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2. Bell states the Motorola ATRIX is “Coming Soon”.. puts up pre-registration page
3. Leaked images show new Motorola device, possibly the ATRIX 2?

Update: According to their sources, the Atrix 2 will not be LTE-capable despite previous hints as to the otherwise. Sorry for the confusion!

We know that Rogers and Bell are in the process of rolling out Canada-wide LTE networks to satiate the millions of data-hungry mobile users across the nation. We also know that Rogers (but not Bell) is releasing an LTE-capable Samsung Galaxy S II later this year.

Now screenshots have leaked of an upcoming refresh to the Atrix, which internally at Motorola is going by the codename Edison, on the way to AT&T. The good news is that AT&T’s upcoming LTE network is using the same AWS spectrum as our carriers’, with a view to the upcoming 700Mhz spectrum, too, when it’s auctioned off next year.

Other specs include a 1.2-1.5Ghz dual-core chip, most likely powered by Texas Instrument’s OMAP SoC, an 8MP camera capable of 1080p video, and the newest version of Android (though Ice Cream Sandwich has not been confirmed). The screen also looks to be a shoe-in for the original’s qHD 960×540 pixel resolution, though with a slightly larger 4.3″ or 4.5″ screen.

Considering the Atrix was Bell’s first superphone, and is still a pretty beefy machine, the sequel will have some pretty high expectations. Hopefully they can improve the PenTile screen and smooth out the rough interface edges, and keep decent battery life, and they’ve got a surefire hit on their hands. One more pic after the break.

Source: BGR

Related posts:

1. Update: Bell Motorola ATRIX already put on sale, now $69.99 on a 3-year
2. Leaked images show new Motorola device, possibly the ATRIX 2?
3. Image: Bell Motorola ATRIX versus the competition (Desire HD & Xperia arc)

So what does Moto do now that its RAZR brand is dated enough to be considered nostalgic? Well, in this impatient age, it brings it back, of course, to rule again! According to the above screenshot the device used to take it is referred to as a Droid RAZR. Yes, EXIF data from a smartphone can easily be faked, but let’s pretend for a second that it isn’t. What would a RAZR need to look like for Moto? It would need to be the thinnest, lightest Android phone imaginable, with a view to design and functionality.

So, then, cast your mind back to the Motorola Slimline, a device that was leaked from a website redesign a few months ago that was subsequently yanked and pretended didn’t exist. While only a computer-generated render, it showed off a pretty unique clamshell smartphone design with a, ahem, droid-like backing and a curved front. We’d expect nothing less from Motorola if you chose to bring back the RAZR brand, but one thing is for certain: it couldn’t fail. Their entire legacy depends on it.

What do you think about the Droid RAZR? Would you buy one?

Source: Phandroid via Pocketnow (2)

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While a select view devices have been released with unlocked bootloaders, for the most part Motorola has taken an unfriendly view to Android developers and their need to tinker. Tonight, however, a tweet from one @ibproud who started a campaign five months ago called “Unlock teh Bootloader” (sic) claims that he sat down with Chris Wyatt, a VP at Motorola and the company is deriving a scheme to unlock all existing and future bootloaders.

Current locked phones will be unlocked via a software update, and pending carrier approvals, available in late Q3 or early Q4 of this year. Why such a long wait? Even regular Android updates seem to take ages to be approved; releasing one that could potentially open up their devices to potential security threats will take a bit more scrutiny.

There is nothing official from Motorola itself just yet, but you can be sure that if this is true, the company, whose market share in recent quarters has been steadily ceded to HTC and Samsung, will try to use this good grace to its fullest advantage.

Source: Phandroid via AusDroid

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2. Hopefully Motorola unlocks the bootloader after this Facebook poll
3. TELUS Motorola Milestone gets minor Software Update

Motorola Mobility focuses on cellphones and set-top-box “delivers personalised information to meet the needs of consumers both in the home and on the go” while Motorola Solutions will focus on public safety radio and enterprise handheld devices that “provides business and mission-critical communication products and services to enterprises and governments”. As for branding the businesses, the famous light blue Motorola logo of years past will go to the Solutions business and the Mobility business gets a brand new vibrant red logo.

Motorola is set to announce a number of new Android devices this year including smartphones and tablets.

Source: Motorola
Via: PhoneScoop & Engadget

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3. Motorola Explores Strategic Realignment

The upgrade will not be Android OS 2.1 but will include the following: Improved Text Messaging, Bluetooth Improvements, Enhanced “Contacts” Feature, Improved Stability, Improved Battery Life, Improved Streaming Audio & Video Playback, Phone Application Improvements (to avoid occasional “Call Ended” notifications).

Moto states that “On Monday August 23rd we will have an optional early software release available for the Motorola Backflip from TELUS! Our goal is to have 200 customers test and provide feedback on the software before it is officially released to all customers! We will be making the preview software available via an over-the-air update from 10 am EST until we reach 200 users”. If you want in on this all you have to do is from your home screen hit the Menu > Settings > About phone > System Update.

Good luck to the 200 chosen ones, let us know how it goes.

More here at Motorola
Via: Twitter

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Rogers released the Android-powered Motorola Flipout a few days ago. I got my hands on and in this first review I took a look into the hardware. The main reason was to test out the hinge on the Flipout. You’ll see that it’s a very compact device, everything it put into 67 x 67 x 16.8 mm… basically the dimensions of a Post It note pad. The weight is a light 88 grams and overall it feels nice in the hand.

Specs wise it comes with a 2.8-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 320×240. Once you flip open the Flipout it reveals a 5-row QWERTY keyboard. The keys are flush and a bit tight, so it could be a challenge to type due to its size. Around the device you’ll see a volume rocker, power button, 3.5 mm headset jack, Micro USB. On the front of the device are the menu, home and back buttons. There’s also a 3 megapixel camera that can take video, can hold up to 32Gb with a microSD card. In addition, while other Android devices wait for an upgrade the Flipout comes with OS 2.1 and Motorola’s MOTOBLUR.

Check out the hardware review, I put the Flipout through a quick rigorous hinge test. (It’s a good thing Rogers has their Hardware Protection Program in place)

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