So you took the plunge and made the wise decision to buy a brand new Moto 360. And now? You look fantastic. You feel fantastic. Now let’s get you up and running with five cool things you can do with your Moto 360 right out of the box.

By now, you've had time to play with your new Moto X. You've shown it off, maybe you've read about a few of the features, and even gave your phone a name. If you’re looking to fall even more in love, here are few tips to help you.

A new year means out with the old and in with the new. In the ole days that might have mostly meant cleaning our houses, but in today's modern lifestyle it can also mean something else: time to choose new apps!

As we begin 2015, here are eight must-have apps that could make your next year a little better.

Timely Alarm Clock
On cold winter days, who really wants to get out of their warm, comfy bed? Make this experience as painless as possible with Timely Alarm Clock. It’s easy to use, gorgeous to look at, and works just as well on tablets as it does on your smartphone. It even turns down the alarm volume when you pick up the device.

Elevate
We spend so much time and energy hitting the gym. Why not give your brain some love, too? Elevate is a mental workout for your brain. Through more than 25 games and personalized training exercises, you can teach yourself to focus better, process information more quickly, write and speak more effectively, improve your memory, and more. You can even track your progress and see yourself get smarter.

Feedly
Stay up to date on reading all your favorite blogs and websites with Feedly. This RSS client is robust, easy to use, and includes other plug-ins to work with services like Evernote. It also makes it a cinch to connect to your social networks so can easily connect to whatever it is you’re reading. You might even use it to discover a few new feeds to follow in the new year.

QuickPic
If you have thousands of photos spread out across various online accounts, QuickPic is your jam. It can pull photos from Picasa, Google Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, and more, so you have access to all of your photos in one central location. And, you know, if some of those photos are of a more, shall we say, incriminating than others, rest assured it’s easy to password protect them.

LastPass
Believe it or not, there are still a lot people out there who still use the password, “PASSWORD.” Don't be ashamed. That’s why LastPass exists. It’s a password management app that lets you store all of your passwords in one place, so you can use a different (and preferably stronger) password for every site without having to remember them all. And if you’re worried about keeping all of your passwords in one place, you can add multifactor authentication to ensure your passwords remain hidden and secure.

Cerberus
While you are an upstanding and model citizen, there are others who may not share your same sense of decency. Which is to say that there may come a time when you find that your mobile device has been stolen. Should that happen, Cerberus can help protect your phone. When stolen, you retain remote control of the device, allowing you to track it, wipe the memory, lock the device, and record audio. And when you get near the stolen device, you can narrow down its location (and really annoy the thief) by turning on a loud alarm on the phone—even if the device is in silent mode.

Slack
Anyone who has ever worked on a group project in school knows collaboration is hard. While Slack isn’t going to prevent someone from trying to let everybody else do the work for them, it does make it easy to communicate and collaborate with your team members, no matter where you are, by creating a central hub for messages and important files. Plus, you can break things down by workflow, so nobody is getting spammed with messages unrelated to their work.

Pushbullet
Keeping with the theme of collaboration, Pushbullet is designed to make all of your devices communicate seamlessly. With Pushbullet installed on all of your devices, you’ll be able to push data from one device to another immediately. This makes it easy to send your phone an article for you to read later, send your desktop a picture for immediate editing, or even read your text messages on your computer when you’re too lazy to get up and check your phone.

Tell us, which apps would be on your nice list? Let us know on our Facebook, Google+, or on Twitter using the hashtag #MotoAppyNewYear.

Posted by the Motorola Blog Team

With the Lenovo acquisition complete, Motorola is returning to China -- one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets -- in triumphant fashion, introducing three of its latest devices. The new Moto X, new Moto X Pro and new Moto G with 4G LTE will all go on sale in early 2015.

Motorola has a long history in China and we are pleased that smartphone fans there continue to be passionate about our brand and products. Chinese consumers have long been at the leading edge of smartphone use, blazing trails in mobile messaging, media and more. Motorola's pure Android based devices will give them new choices in how they connect to the world.

Moto X: Choose how it works. Choose how it looks. (Available early February)

As a designer, there is this leap of faith that is hard to describe. You come up with a great idea. You know there is a need for it. And then it’s time to make it real, not only in the designing but in the engineering. The two have to come together.

When it came to designing the wood Moto X (what we now fondly know as the Natural Collection), we had to take that kind of leap. We looked to you, our consumers, for inspiration. We visited your homes and listened to your stories. You showed us what mattered to you and why.

We knew that allowing people to customize their phones with a variety of colors—bright, dark, shy, loud—their own accents, and a personalized message was an important step. But we wanted to create another choice that would make a really unique statement. Looking out into the market of black and white phones, we thought of designing something really different: a wood phone.



It was time for the leap. There were challenges to overcome to make our idea real. We had to:

• Design for uniqueness. Synthetic materials, like plastics, are purposefully created identical, so that technology like the antenna work every time. The beauty of wood is that it is a natural material, so every piece is gorgeously different. This meant we had to design the shape of the wood backs—as well as the technology inside—to work the same every time, regardless of the wood’s variation.
• Design to last. This organic material also needed to have the same durability that we create in synthetic materials. The shape and the design of both the wood backs and the casings became key to making the phone weather every day use—art as much as science.
• Design for choice. Underpinning the ability to choose a wood, leather, or color back was Moto Maker. Moto Maker is what would allow customers to choose exactly what they wanted. Beneath the clean website design was more than just code. We had to develop new software, workflows, and creative teams so people could see their designs online before ordering. Offering a personalized message on the back of the phone made it possible to create a totally one-of-a-kind device, but it also required new, automated equipment that had never been used before.

We moved into a shared space, an epicenter where all the leads could work together for the next 10 months. We were moving so fast and so fluidly that we needed to be able to tap on each other's shoulders to ask the most random (but ultimately important!) questions. Moto Maker was weaving our teams and company together in a completely new way to address the unique challenges of enabling you to choose from literally thousands of combinations.

The result?

The ability for the first time to express your style by choosing from first real wood—and now leather—phone backs, among other colors and customization. The backs are designed to be unique, just like you. The feel of the wood isn't slick and artificial. It's smooth but natural, intended to feel amazing and wear beautifully over time. It’s authentic and crafted. It’s not meant to be your standard mobile device.

As the co-creators of this phone, we’ve spent a long time designing. Now it’s your turn to design the rest. Take a leap. What Moto X are you?

Posted by Katie Morgenroth, Lead Industrial Designer