Tag: motorola

Motorola Razr and Razr+ (2024): Specs, Features, Price, Release Date

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Cameras have never been a strong suit for Motorola, but it’s giving special emphasis to the new “Photo Enhancement Engine” that’s exclusive to the Razr+. The company says it “uses AI” to produce finer image details, better dynamic range, improved bokeh, and more advanced noise reduction, all on the uncompressed raw image data. The Razr+ also gets a few extra camera features, such as Adaptive Stabilization for smoother videos, Action Shot for when you capture moving subjects, Long Exposure to create light trails, and Super Zoom, which enhances your zoomed-in photos. I’m not sure how much “AI” has to do with some of these.

There are two generative AI features, too: Style Sync and Image Canvas. The former lets you snap a picture of your outfit (or any kind of special texture), and it’ll generate four images using that pattern that you can then use as a wallpaper. Magic Canvas lets you generate images via a text prompt. These two features are available on both Razrs.

Later in the fall, Motorola will launch “Moto AI,” which it says is powered by both in-house and Google’s large language models. This will include features like “Catch me up,” which will summarize your clutter of notifications so you can focus on what’s important. A “Pay attention” feature will enable the phone to start recording instantly and transcribe and summarize the recording automatically. Then there’s “Remember this,” which can save onscreen information that you can ask the device for later.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Unfortunately, all this AI power doesn’t help Motorola improve its software update policy. These new Razr smartphones will only get three Android OS updates (they launch with Android 14), and four years of security updates.

For comparison, Google and Samsung offer seven years of software updates on their flagship phones. Longer software support means more features down the road, bug fixes, and security patches.

Accompanying these new phones is the Moto Tag, a small AirTags-like accessory that supports Bluetooth LE and ultra-wideband tech to help locate lost devices. It uses Google’s Find My Device network and will work with any Android phone. However, if you use it with a Moto smartphone, you can press the multifunction button on the Tag to remotely capture a photo.

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June 25, 2024
Motorola Edge 50 Pro Review: A Solid Midrange Android Phone

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Rounding things out is a 50-megapixel front-facing camera that is solid for selfies. It’s an impressive camera system for a midrange phone. But what came close to ruining the camera for me was the sluggish performance. The post-shot processing sometimes takes a second or so, preventing you from capturing several shots in quick succession.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Motorola Edge 50 Pro, main camera. The main camera captures lots of detail and has a decent depth of field.

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro has a 4,500-mAh battery, and it’s enough to see you through an average day. I once had to charge before bedtime after shooting several photos and videos. Charging is another surprising highlight, because you can use the 125-watt charger in the box to fill the battery in less than 20 minutes, though it does get warm. The Edge 50 Pro also supports wireless charging (up to 50 watts with the right charger).

While the Edge 50 Pro feels close to stock Android 14, there is a little bloatware (Facebook, TikTok, Bingo Blitz are all preinstalled). But I like Motorola’s added features, such as karate chopping the phone to turn on the flashlight or twisting it to launch the camera. It’s also easy to connect the phone to your Windows PC or laptop to wirelessly share files or double up as a webcam. Family Space is a handy option for parents with young kids, enabling you to lock down part of your phone before you pass it off to them.

Competition Crunch

Ultimately, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a good phone, and with a better processor and a longer commitment to software support it might have been great. With Google offering seven years of software support and Samsung matching, Motorola’s three years of Android updates and four years of security updates feel stingy. I’d love to see seven years become the standard.

The Edge 50 Pro’s most obvious competition comes from Google. The Pixel 8A is £100 less, and you can pick up the regular Pixel 8 for around £600 now. Both are better than the Edge 50 Pro. If you’re not a Google fan, you can find other options, like the OnePlus 12R, in our Best Android Phones guide. Even last year’s compact Samsung Galaxy S23 is not much more than the Edge 50 Pro now, and it has a surprisingly similar spec sheet but more processing power.

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May 30, 2024
The Best Motorola Phones (2024): Pros and Cons, Top Features

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Most impressive is battery life. There’s a 5,100-mAh cell, and this phone easily lasted two full days of average use. Even heavy users should expect to get through a full day without requiring a top-up. When you do need to recharge, you can use the included 68-watt charging adapter or a wireless charger. Motorola is one of the few phone makers to include a charger in the box, though it has started to change this practice in 2024.

Where it loses points is the camera system. A 50-megapixel primary camera is joined by a 50-MP ultrawide and a 60-MP selfie camera. In my photo comparisons, the Edge+ took some sharp shots, but it had a hard time keeping up with the cheaper Google Pixel 7A. Motorola’s results are often oversaturated and overly brightened, and they tend to deliver slightly off skin tones. In low light, I frequently had to retake photos because the first result was blurry. If the camera is important to you, I’d avoid buying any Motorola phone. Consider the Pixel 7A or Samsung Galaxy S24 instead.

Motorola promises three Android OS upgrades and four years of bimonthly security updates.

Runner-Up

This 2023 phone is the result of a rare (public) partnership between Motorola and its parent company, Lenovo. If you’re familiar with Lenovo’s popular line of ThinkPad business laptops, the ThinkPhone (7/10, WIRED Recommends) tries to emulate the look, down to a red, customizable button on the left side of the phone that’s meant to look like the red nub on a ThinkPad’s keyboard. Technically, it’s an enterprise phone, but you can buy it unlocked at Motorola or Lenovo, and I like it!

It’s similar to the Edge+ in many ways, though some small changes explain the slightly lower price. For starters, it doesn’t have a curved glass display, though if you’re like me, you might like that. The OLED screen is a little smaller at 6.6 inches, with a refresh rate that goes up to 144 Hz (still more than enough). It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, which is still a flagship-grade processor but isn’t as powerful as the Gen 2 or current Gen 3.

Still, the 5,000-mAh battery lasts two days, and there’s a 68-watt charger in the box, along with wireless charging support. It retains an IP68 rating for water resistance, has NFC for tap-to-pay support, and comes with 256 GB of storage.

There’s a 50-MP primary sensor, a 13-MP ultrawide, and a 32-MP selfie camera. I preferred many of the photos from the Lenovo ThinkPhone to some of the shots I took on the Motorola Edge+, but these cameras still don’t measure up to their peers. Still, it commonly goes for $400 now, so it’s a heck of a phone at that price.

Motorola promises three Android OS upgrades and four years of bimonthly security updates.

A Folding Moto

Motorola’s first folding smartphone from 2020 had a lot of flaws, but its 2023 successor levels up the game in a few ways. The Razr+ (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a folding flip phone—it’s the smartphone successor to Paris Hilton’s iconic pink flip phone. Yes, you can flip open the phone to answer a call and flip it shut to end it.

When it’s closed, the larger 3.6-inch OLED exterior screen can show you notifications, apps, and handy widgets to check the weather, calendar events, and news. It even lets you play simple games. You can also use the superior primary cameras—which would typically be on the “back” of the phone but are now at the front—to snap selfies and use this external screen as a viewfinder. They’re some of the sharpest selfies you’ll snap.

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April 30, 2024
Motorola Moto G Power 5G 2024 Review: Fantastic Value

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For years, Motorola has dominated the budget smartphone market in the US with its Moto G lineup, but these Android phones have never felt particularly exciting. Handsets like the Google Pixel 3A or even the new Nothing Phone (2a) have almost always offered more features, better performance, cooler designs, and nicer cameras for just a few more bucks.

They also suffered from a lack of near-field communication (NFC) support—the sensor that enables tap-to-pay for contactless payments at cash registers, train stations, and the like. Motorola notoriously skipped this perk on its sub-$300 phones in the US for almost a decade, even though it has been standard on competing devices that are as low as $150. This year’s Moto G Power 5G changes that—it is hands down the best Moto G the company has ever made, and is honestly the best phone you can buy for under $300 right now.

Hello Moto

It’s important to make sure you’re looking at the Moto G Power 5G for 2024, as the name of this device has stayed the same over several years. One of the best parts of the new version is how it looks and feels. Gone is the shiny, boring plastic design in favor of a textured vegan leather back that does a surprisingly great job of resisting fingerprints (dust and lint tend to get stuck in the grooves though). I suggest buying the Pale Lilac model, but the Midnight Blue, which is more black to me, is handsome too.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Using this phone, it’s easy to forget it costs just $300. The 6.7-inch LCD is sharp and I’ve had no trouble reading the screen on bright sunny days. The speakers sound decent, there’s a 3.5-mm headphone jack, and the side-mounted fingerprint sensor is reliable.

Performance is a standout too. This Motorola is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 7020 chipset with 8 GB of RAM, and while you will notice a few stutters here and there, like when switching between apps, it’s otherwise fairly snappy and smooth. I’ve found it performs more fluidly than Samsung’s Galaxy A35 5G ($400), which I’m currently testing, even if the Samsung scored slightly higher on benchmark tests. To assuage any concerns, I have used the Moto G Power 5G as my daily smartphone for almost a month and haven’t run into any issues.

The 5,000-mAh battery cell comfortably lasts a full day of heavy use—I’ve hit 39 percent after five hours of screen-on time—with enough to make it to the following morning on a single charge. One of the biggest surprises is that you can wirelessly recharge this phone. I say that because wireless charging is generally not available on sub-$400 smartphones. Nothing’s fancy-looking Phone (2a) at $350 doesn’t even have it. I love popping my phone on my bedside wireless charger instead of hunting for a cable in the dark, so it’s a welcome addition, and I hope to see wireless charging creep into cheap phones.

Similarly, I love that a sub-$300 Moto G finally has NFC support. It’s about damn time! I’ve used it to pay for my subway fare, late-night trips to the deli, and coffee. No wallet needed.

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April 28, 2024
This AI Startup Wants You to Talk to Houses, Cars, and Factories

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“The physical world is where we have most of our problems, because it is so complex and fast moving that things are beyond our perception to fully understand,” says Brandon Barbello, a cofounder who is also Archetype’s COO. “We put sensors in all kinds of things to help us, but sensor data is too difficult to interpret. There’s a potential to use AI to understand that sensor data—then we can finally understand these problems and solve them.”

When I visited Archetype’s founding team of five, currently working out of a cramped room in the Palo Alto office of its lead funder, venture capital firm Venrock, they showed me some illuminating demos that, they assured me, only hinted of Newton’s vast potential impact. They placed a motion sensor inside a box and prompted Newton to imagine that the container was an Amazon package with fragile cargo that should be carefully monitored. When the box was dropped, the display running the model broke the news that the package might be damaged. One can easily imagine a shipment of vaccines with motion, temperature, and GPS sensors monitored to verify whether it will arrive with full effectiveness.

One key use case is using Newton “to talk to a house or chat with a factory,” says Barbello. Instead of needing a complex dashboard or custom-built software to make sense of the data from a home or industrial facility wired with sensors, you can have Newton tell you what’s happening in plain language, ChatGPT style. “You’re no longer looking sensor by sensor, device by device, but you actually have a real-time mirror of the whole factory,” Barbello says.

Archetype’s AI model Newton takes in data from different sensors and combines and convert it into plain language descriptions about what’s happening in the physical world.

Courtesy of Archetype

Naturally, Amazon—owner of some of the world’s most digitally sophisticated logistics operations—is one of Archetype’s backers, through its Industrial Innovation Fund. “This has the potential to further optimize the flow of goods through our fulfillment centers and improve the speed of delivery for customers, which is obviously a big goal for us,” says Franziska Bossart, who heads the fund. Archetype is also exploring the health care market. Stefano Bini, a professor at UC San Francisco’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, has been working with sensors that can assess the recovery progress after a person has knee replacement surgery. Newton might help him in his quest for a single metric, perhaps drawn from multiple sensors, that “can literally measure the impact of any intervention in health care,” he says.

Another early Archetype client is Volkswagen, which is running some early tests of Archetype’s model. Surprisingly, these don’t involve autonomous driving, though Archetype very much wants its technology to be used for that. One Volkswagen experiment involves a scenario where a car’s sensors can analyze movement, perhaps in concert with a sensor on a driver’s person, to figure out when its owner is returning from the store and needs an extra hand. “If we recognize human intention in that scenario, I can automatically open that back gate, and maybe place my stuff into specially heated or cooled locations.” says Brian Lathrop, senior principal scientist at Volkwagen’s Silicon Valley innovation center. That mundane task, believes Lathrop, is just the beginning of what becomes possible when AI can digest reams of sensor data into human-centric insights. Volkswagen’s interests include the safety of people outside vehicles as well as passengers and drivers. “What happens when you network all those cameras from those millions of vehicles on the roadway, sitting in parking lots, on driveways?” he says, “If you have AI looking at all these data feeds, it opens up an incredible amount of possibilities and use cases.”

It’s not hard to imagine the dark side of a trillion-sensor monitoring system providing instant answers to questions about what’s happening at any location in its dense network. When I mention to Poupyrev and Barbello that this seems a trifle dystopian, they assure me they’ve thought of this. As opposed to cameras, they say, radar and other sensor data is more benign. (Camera data, however, is one of the sensor inputs that Archetype can process.) “The customers we are working with are focusing on solving their specific problems with a broad variety of sensors without affecting privacy,” says Poupyrev. Volkswagen’s Lathrop agrees. “When we’re using Archetype software, I’m detecting behavior, not identity. If someone walks up to my wife and tries to grab her purse, that’s a behavior you can detect without identifying the person.” On the other hand, there’s evidence that the way people walk—something high-quality radar might well detect—is as distinctive as a fingerprint. Just sayin’.

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April 5, 2024