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  • Meet the Indiegogo "Transform the Smartphone Challenge" Finalists

    For the last few months, developers and entrepreneurs have been busy sharing their ideas for creating the next generation of Moto Mods through our...

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    When we launched the Moto Z family of smartphones and Moto Mods, we opened up a new world of possibilities. We shared our commitment to innovation...

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  • Magnifying Community Impact: Moto Dedicates Music Studio in São Paulo, Brazil

    Our mission: to promote the social inclusion of low-income youth in Brazil through cultural entrepreneurship. The result? “Estúdio Moto” (Moto Studio)...

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  • Mod the Future Visits the Big Apple: Behind the Scenes at the NYC Hackathon

    What do 53 developers, 18 entrepreneurs, three designers, one surgeon and a dog named Goose have in common? These eager participants (and K9) all...

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    Six months ago, we took a stand against incremental innovation with our Moto Z family of smartphones and Moto Mods™ – and we’ve never looked...

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Showing posts with label Software Updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Software Updates. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
0

The Download: New Gallery, Migrate, and More KitKat Sweetness

So it might be a little cold in the last days at our Libertyville offices—but there isn’t a polar vortex that could stop us from us from cranking out the new software updates!

Here’s the latest Download:

New Year, New Gallery Look - Our Motorola Gallery has a fresh, new look! True to our promise to enhance the best parts of Android, we’ve developed a new Motorola Gallery UI that looks a lot cleaner and a lot more beautiful. The navigation is faster, the album drawer is streamlined, and the thumbnails are bigger and bolder.

Move Over, iPhone - It’s even easier to move your information over from an iPhone in our latest update to Motorola Migrate, the app that allows you to move your personal content from your old phone to your new phone. Now you can transfer your iCloud contacts and calendar events right from the app and not just in the MotoMaker web tool like before. So whether your old phone was an Android or iPhone, it’s a breeze to move over to your new Motorola phone.

KitKat Gets a Boost—Literally - We have begun releasing KitKat to Moto G on Boost Mobile. Check our upgrade pages for Australia and the U.S. for more information.

KitKat Comes to Moto X in Canada - Do KitKats come in maple? We started this week rolling out KitKat to Moto X on Rogers and Fido, the first Moto X to receive KitKat version 4.4.2. See the upgrade page for Canada to learn more.

As always, we welcome your thoughts, feedback, and comments on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. We listen to them, and they make our products better.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Management
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Monday, January 13, 2014
0

The Download: Voice Texts, Zap and More Kernels

It’s a New Year and the Motorola software team's 2014 resolution is to continue to rapidly deliver delightful software experiences to our users. Over the holidays, we’ve been working on a number of software enhancements that we hope will help start your year off right.

Here’s the latest Download:

Your Personal Text Messaging Assistant - Love getting text messages read aloud to you while driving? Now you can reply back—completely hands-free using just your voice with Motorola Assist.

As part of this update, we’ve also enhanced Motorola Contextual Services, the key magic behind some of our Motorola applications. It provides the secret sauce behind activity detection in Assist and optimizes Touchless Control. This latest update helps make drive mode detection faster and more accurate using Bluetooth for Assist.

Zap Your Photos and Videos - This app is a really fun way to share stuff with friends near you. Droid Zap uses your phone’s GPS/WiFi functionality to send photos and videos with a simple gesture. This latest update gives a sleek, new look to the app and offers support for KitKat. Available on DROID Ultra, DROID MAXX, and DROID Mini.

KitKat Breaks into Europe - The KitKat goodness continues to roll out at a furious pace! Last week we began rolling out Android, KitKat 4.4.2 to carriers and regions in Europe. Check the software updates release page for the latest on your device.

Kernel Sources for Moto G - For our developer friends, we’ve released the Kernel Sources for Android, KitKat 4.4.2 on Moto G. Download the kernels here. Knock yourselves out!

We think 2014 is going to be a great year. We’re here, we’re listening, and we’re making your Motorola phones better all the time. We're committed to bringing you many more software innovations over this next year. Want to tell us something? Feel free to comment on our profiles on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Management
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Thursday, December 19, 2013
0

The Download: Moto G Gets Android 4.4.2, KitKat, in Record Time! And more.

We don’t know about you, but over the past few weeks we’ve had visions of KitKats dancing in our heads. We’re excited to tell you we’re starting to roll out Android 4.4.2, KitKat—the very latest version—TODAY on Moto G!

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
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Thursday, December 19, 2013
0

Disney Legend Glen Keane Joins Motorola’s Spotlight Stories

To animate means to bring to life.

Glen Keane’s work seems larger than life. As the creator and animator of beloved Disney characters such as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan, Glen has drawn more than figures on a screen. He has made the stories and characters of our childhoods. He gave us imaginary friends, admired heroines, misfits in search of understanding, and at least a Halloween costume or two.

At Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, we believe in the power of storytelling, so we’re building new stories made specifically for mobile. Not stories made for the big screen but shown on a small one. Not flat content. We’re building interactive, immersive stories made for your smartphone.

So we’re excited to announce that Glen—the artist behind so many classics—is working with us to push the future of animation with an original Spotlight Story.

Expected to release the middle of 2014, in this third Motorola Spotlight Story, Glen is going back to the drawing board. Literally. Together with the engineers who unlocked the graphics technology that made our first Spotlight Story, Windy Day, possible on the Moto X, we’re pushing new edges. The raw emotion of the hand-drawn line brought to life in our technological world. And yours.

What will happen when a master animator of the big screen jumps to an innovative, mobile canvas? We’re excited to see.

Stay up to date with Spotlight Story happenings on our Tumblr or join our Google+ community.

Posted by Baback Elmieh, Technical Program Lead, Advanced Technologies and Project (ATAP)
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Update 3: Some Sweet News: KitKat Comes to Moto X First on Verizon Wireless; Now on T-Mobile, AT&T
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
0

Update 3: Some Sweet News: KitKat Comes to Moto X First on Verizon Wireless; Now on T-Mobile, AT&T



We see our job as taking the world’s best mobile operating system from Google and building world-class products and experiences for our users. Continually making them better is just as important. So what could be sweeter than Android 4.4, KitKat, rolling out in phases to Moto X on Verizon Wireless starting today!

Our software team has been hard at work bringing the latest version of Android to our Moto X users more quickly than ever. When it came to KitKat, we couldn’t wait to deliver. Our software strategy is to build on a pure Android foundation and complement existing Google services, not compete with them. We think this latest release is just that—all the features you love about your Moto X with the latest Android OS.

The KitKat update brings a bunch of improvements, including some of our favorites:

  • An improved phone dialer. Now you can search for contacts directly from the dial-pad and easily see and tap on those you contact frequently.
  • More gallery goodies. KitKat packs in some cool, new gallery effects—such as Posterize, Highlights, and Edges. You can even use the Draw feature to annotate your photos freehand with your finger.
  • New Hangouts app. All of your conversations now in one place—texts, video calls, and other chats all together in one app. Plus, you can now send animated gifs and share your location.
  • Color Emoji. For when words aren’t enough, the Google Keyboard now includes colorful characters to send in text messages and other communications.
  • Drag to focus and expose. An updated camera app lets you control both the focus and exposure of your photos. Simply drag your finger to set just the right exposure and focus point.
  • And more… Restyled status and navigation bars, new full-screen mode, and enhancements to Motorola features like Touchless Control.

And this is just the beginning -- we will have more KitKat for Moto X news to share on other carriers and countries very soon.

For more details and information, please see our release notes or check our software upgrade page.

Updated November 21, 2013
KitKat is now rolling out to Moto X users on T-Mobile.

Updated November 22, 2013
KitKat is now rolling out to Moto X users on AT&T.

Updated December 12, 2013
KitKat is now rolling out to Moto X users on Sprint and US Cellular.

Posted by Steve Horowitz, SVP Software Engineering
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Introducing Motorola Spotlight Stories™ - Storytelling Designed for Smartphones
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
0

Introducing Motorola Spotlight Stories™ - Storytelling Designed for Smartphones

Smart phones have become deeply personal devices, indispensable in our lives.  Storytelling is the most timeless and human of activities.  Yet the stories that live on our mobile phones are mostly adapted from other media -- like TV shows, movies and books -- merely shrunk down to a smaller screen.  Why is that?  We decided to change it.  So, we created a new way of telling stories, one designed specifically for smartphones, where the capabilities of the device are part of the experience itself.

Together with our team of Motorola engineers and Oscar-winning director Jan Pinkava, we’re happy to announce the debut of Windy Day, the first immersive, interactive story made for mobile phones, launched using a first-of-its-kind storytelling platform called Motorola Spotlight Stories.

Motorola Spotlight Stories aren’t games, movies or videos. They’re different.  New.  Here’s how some of our first audience members reacted when they saw Windy Day for the first time:




When the first Android phone came out almost five years ago, it had roughly the same graphics computation performance as a Nintendo Gameboy Advance, which came out five years before that. Since then, the performance improvement of mobile processors has been astonishing.  The graphics chipset on the Moto X has 600 times the computation capability of that first Android device, and next year mobile graphics processors will surpass the computation capabilities of video game consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Where is all that graphics power going?  When we measured it, we found that outside of a few graphically advanced apps and games, it’s barely being used.  It was a graphics-processing treasure chest hidden in plain sight.

So, we decided to make something new.

We tuned the Moto X so that, even in the most stressful user-interface conditions, up to 60% of its graphics capability is accessible. We took advantage of that access to build a powerful creative canvas for storytellers, incorporating a real-time 3D graphics engine, an advanced rendering technique from Pixar called OpenSubdiv, and sensor algorithms adapted from the landing systems of interplanetary spacecraft. Really.

We invited some of the best storytellers of our generation to paint something on this canvas.  Jan Pinkava, the Oscar-winning director of Geri’s Game and co-director of Ratatouille, Oscar-winning producer Karen Dufilho, animator and Academy Award nominee Doug Sweetland, Caldecott-winning illustrator Jon Klassen, veteran animator Mark Oftedal, composer Scot Stafford and artists from eight different countries joined us to build the first Motorola Spotlight Story: Windy Day.  It’s our gift to you.  We hope it makes you smile.

Motorola Spotlight Stories are featured exclusively on the Moto X. Stay tuned for more, because we are continuing to work with award-winning storytellers.  There are a lot more stories to tell.

Watch what happened when one of our own product managers, Kevin, showed Windy Day to his 2-year-old son—then check out Windy Day for yourself.



Baback Elmieh
Advanced Technologies and Project (ATAP) Technical Program Lead

Visit our Tumblr page to stay up to date with future Stories and further information on the technical achievements.
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