So I sometimes take for granted the simple things that make using my phone even more convenient. You just have to know the tricks.

Today, I’m sharing a few little shortcuts I like to use every day to make using my phone faster and accessing the things I want easier.

Hope you like these #MotoTips. Let us know if you find them useful—and we would love to hear some of your own, too!

Posted by David Schuster, Product Management

Get It Together with Assist - Motorola Assist helps you out when you’re busy—reading messages aloud while you’re driving, helping you sleep in peace, and more. The app’s meeting mode, in particular, knows when you’re busy based on your calendar and silences calls when you don’t want to be bothered. With this new update to Assist, you can choose what calendars you want to use with meeting mode. So if it’s OK to be interrupted during your workout schedule but not OK to be interrupted during meetings and family time—you can make the choice.

Get Help in One Place - New to Google Play is our Help app, formerly called Moto Care. With Motorola Help, you can learn all about your phone in one place and get easy access to real people at Motorola Customer Care when you need to. Pro tip: When you register your phone at http://www.motorola.com/support, you can get personalized tips and protect your phone if lost.

Enhanced Active Display - We’ve squashed some bugs! Motorola Active Display now runs more smoothly.

It’s still early in the year. We have a lot to do! We hope you like this set of updates. Please let us know what you think of our latest on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Management

Here’s the latest Download:

What’s Up with Touchless Control - Hands tied? Our latest update to Touchless Control introduces a new convenient command: Just say “OK Google Now, What’s up?”—your phone will read aloud your latest notifications. 

Migrate What You Want - Our Motorola Migrate app has been a hit for users transferring their information from their old phone to their new Moto X, Moto G, or Droid phones. But we heard from some people that it would be even more useful if they could select what content to transfer. With this update, we’ve made this possible for users moving from an old Android phone to choose what kind of content they want to migrate. This update also automatically imports SIM contacts to your preferred Google account and makes it easier to transfer the content you want if your old phone’s content is bigger than your new phone’s available memory (nothing like a little early Spring cleaning!).

Getting Smart with SIMs - Here’s a little treat for users in Latin America and India who have Moto G that supports dual SIMs: With the latest KitKat upgrade, we’ve included a new feature called Automatic SIM Selection. If you typically select the SIM for every outgoing call, this feature will suggest the preferred SIM to use based on the one that you’ve used to call friends in the past. Moto G users with dual SIMs can simply switch the feature on in their Settings. For more information, check out the FAQs.

Customize Your Active Display - Active Display quietly displays what you need to know with just a touch—and with this update you can now enable and disable notification vibrations using your phone’s Sound settings. Also, did you know that you can control which apps send notifications to Active Display? Just go to Settings > Active Display to choose what apps are important enough to you.

An Enhanced Assist - Motorola Assist—which recognizes when you shouldn’t be bothered and helps you out while you’re driving—now works even smarter to adapt to your working style in meetings. This update allows you to block off personal time in your calendar but still take calls. We’ve also made an important enhancements in Bluetooth connectivity that allow even more users to integrate Assist with their car’s built-in Bluetooth carkit.

We’re continuing to sprint after these evolutions, quickly innovating on both user-facing experience and backend technologies. Please let us know what you think of our latest on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Management

What better way to kick off The Download—a regular feature that gives you the scoop on the many software updates we are rapidly cranking out. In addition to the roll out of KitKat on Moto G, our software team has been busy as elves in a workshop shipping new features for you.

Here’s the latest Download, issue 1:

Android KitKat Comes to Moto G - Our KitKat family is expanding! When we launched Moto G last month, we committed to delivering Android, KitKat, to devices by early 2014. We are thrilled to start delivering on that promise early. Starting today, we are rolling out Android 4.4.2 to Moto G phones bought on Motorola.com or Amazon.com in the U.S. KitKat will come to other Moto G carriers and regions soon as well. This latest version of Android brings some cool new features, including printing emails and photos from your phone. Read our release notes for detailed information.

This update continues our effort to get our users the latest Android software as fast as humanly possible. We began by pushing KitKat out to Moto X users on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, just weeks after Google announced the new OS—and our most recent expansion over the past few weeks includes Moto X on US Cellular and Sprint and DROID ULTRA, DROID MAXX, and DROID MINI. We also started to roll out the software in Brazil for retail devices. More carriers and regions will follow very soon.

For more information on KitKat and deployment on Motorola devices, check out our software upgrades page.

Enhanced Touchless Control - With our latest update to this feature, customers who use a device PIN to lock their phone can use Touchless Control without entering the PIN first. Don’t worry—no personal information is divulged without a PIN. And, you can also use your voice to enter your PIN. Go to the Google Play Store for more information.

Spreading Holiday Cheer - We’re getting into the holiday spirit! Turn your Moto X running KitKat off and on—and experience a little cheer with our new start-up animation. For those with a Moto G, download the Motorola Boot Services application from the Google Play Store to take part in the animated holiday tidings.

More Camera Goodness for Moto G and DROID - We’re taking the latest Camera features on Moto X on KitKat and making them available for Moto G, DROID MINI, DROID MAXX, and DROID ULTRA. This brings some enhancements photographers will love—such as Drag to Focus and Expose (manual exposure and focus with just a touch), locking exposure during Panoramic shots, and additional language support. Check out the Google Play Store for more information.

Improved Active Display - We’ve squashed some bugs! Active Display—battery-friendly notifications that fade in and out when the phone display is off—is now optimized for KitKat and works better than ever. It’s all part of our mission to listen to our users and iterate quickly. Go to the Google Play Store for more information.

More Kernel Sources! - Over the last few weeks, we released the Android 4.3, Jelly Bean kernel source for Moto G, and yesterday we released Android 4.4, KitKat kernel source for Moto X. Enjoy your custom ROMs!

The Download - Yeah, that is pretty recursive if you ask me. But our last big feature is a regular software blog which provides you with the latest on all the cool, shiny, new features and upgrades that are headed your way. Subscribe in the upper right column to stay up to date on the latest.

The last few months have been quite a wild ride. We are working hard to continually improve the experience on Motorola devices and look forward to hearing from you. Your feedback will be heard and acted on. Feel free to comment here or on our profiles on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Management

The world is full of lazy phones. Phones that blink at you most of the day and sleep the rest. These phones make you do all the work.

That’s why Moto X was built with one thing in mind - you. It responds to you...it does things for you...it’s designed by you.

Want information? It pulses with what’s important at a glance. Want to get directions, search the web, call a friend? Just talk and it responds to your voice – no touching necessary. Want Moto X to match the colors of your favorite kicks or sports team? Design it that way yourself.

Moto X is all about you and it’s all about choice. That choice includes the wireless carrier you want.

Moto X is now available in the US at AT&T, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, Verizon Wireless - and starting today - T-Mobile via Motorola.com. If you’d like to create a phone that’s uniquely yours through Moto Maker, the design experience is currently available with AT&T.

Outside the US, Moto X is also on-sale at Rogers in Canada, Claro in Puerto Rico, Vivo in Brazil, and at Movistar in Chile (also available at Claro in Chile later this week). Additionally, we’ll be announcing more availability across Latin America shortly.

In the meantime, check out Moto Match, our new Facebook and real-life Booth Experience. Moto Match uses color detection technology to create a Moto X based on your style.

On Facebook, Moto Match is the first phone configurator that allows you to use Facebook photos to quickly and easily create a customized Moto X that truly reflects your personal style. Simply choose a favorite pic from your Facebook timeline, and the app will do the rest by identifying the photo’s most prominent colors and creating Moto X to match. You can create as many designs as you like and share them with your friends, not only on Facebook but Pinterest too.



In the Moto Match Booth (below), fashionistas step in and the screen recognizes what you're wearing, then picks a Moto X to match your look. You can then personalize the photo with your signature and email the image to share with your friends or purchase it later.

True to the DROID heritage, these new devices continue to pioneer innovative features. We’ve re-engineered the DROIDS from the inside out to enable amazing new software capabilities including: 

Touchless Control: lets you use the phone hands-free even when the device is asleep, allowing you to place phone calls, send texts, find directions, or search the web.

Active Display: provides the information you need to know just by glancing at the phone’s display - for stuff like time, texts, social updates, calendar notices, etc. Active Display subtly lights up a portion of the screen with notifications without having to wake the phone or pick it up.

Quick Capture: DROID can go from pocket to picture in an instant. Just shake to wake by quickly twisting your wrist and tap anywhere on the screen to snap a pic, or press and hold to capture an action sequence with rapid-fire shots.

DROID Zap: the fastest and easiest way to share photos and videos with a friend or a group of friends nearby. Swiping up on a picture instantly shares it with fellow Android users nearby, and to receive, all they need to do is swipe down on their screen.

The new DROID devices help you do things faster and stay connected to what matters most. DROID ULTRA will be available for $199.99 and DROID MAXX for $299.99, with a new two-year customer agreement. DROID MINI is $99.99 and will be available August 22. For more information, visit droiddoes.com.