Droid Turbo will soon be available in three new limited edition metallic colors

Although Motorola’s Droid Turbo was announced over 6 months ago, it’s still a perfectly capable piece of hardware. If you’d like to get your hands on one sometime soon, you’re in luck. Starting Thursday, May 28th, the Droid Turbo will be available from Verizon in Gray Ballistic Nylon with three new color options – Metallic Blue Accents, Metallic Orange Accents and Metallic Violet Accents. The new color variants will be available both online and in-store through Verizon Edge for $20.83 per month for 24 months, or for $499.99 if you’d like to go the off-contract route. The phone will also be available for $99 when you sign a two-year contract.

If you need a refresher, the Turbo has a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440 x 2560, a 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 processor, a big 3900mAh battery, 3GB of RAM and a 21MP rear camera. The device still runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat, but Verizon says the update to Android 5.1 Lollipop will be here “soon”. The phone also features Advanced Calling 1.0, which means call quality to other Verizon customers will be crystal clear.

Anybody out there interested in these new color options?

Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen.) briefly spotted on Flipkart’s website

Motorola’s Moto G series has proven itself worthy over the years, offering users a great Android experience without breaking the bank. It’s been awhile since the Moto G (2nd Gen.) made its way to the public, and it looks like we’re finally starting to hear some rumors regarding the next handset in the G line. The Moto G (3rd Gen.) recently made a quick appearance on Flipkart’s website, though not much information was given about the handset.

Aside from specifying the color and on-board storage options, the only real bit of information we have from the listing is the handset’s model number, which is listed as AP3560AD1K8. It should be noted that the 2014 Moto G carried model number XT1068, which is an odd contrast from this new model listing. This could also just be a placeholder model number, with the phone’s real specs not going live until the device is listed for sale on the website.

The listing has since been taken down, so there’s no way to find out any additional specs on the leaked handset. Previous rumors have suggested that the device will bring a Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB of RAM and either a 5 or 5.2-inch 1080p display. Although the listing doesn’t tell us much, it may be a hint that we could see the device launch before September of this year.

Moto X, Nexus 6, and Moto 360 48-hour sale starts May 18th in the UK

With new flagships from Samsung, LG, and HTC taking up much of the spotlight these days, Motorola has done its best to bring the focus back to its Moto line-up through various promotions and sales. Many of these deals have been focused on the U.S. market, but starting midnight on May 18th, Motorola will be conducting a 48-hour sale in the UK. The UK sale will apply to the Moto X, Nexus 6, and Moto 360 smartwatch.

The Moto X will be offered for £299 and £339 for the 16 and 32GB models, respectively. Next up, the Nexus 6 is being dropped to £449 and £519 for the 32 and 64GB models. As for the Moto 360? The smartwatch will be offered for £150, a savings of £50. With all these products already over a half-year-old, are they still worth buying? Honestly, yes, they are well worth the money and should still offer high-end experiences that is nearly on par with newer phones and watches.

That said, if you enjoy being on the absolute bleeding edge, you might be better off waiting for Motorola’s next-gen offerings. Rumors suggest that the Moto 360’s successor may be just around the corner, and we can also expect a next-gen Moto X late this summer and a new Nexus (though reportedly not from Motorola) in the fall.

Anyone planning on taking advantage of Motorola’s sale, or would you rather wait to see what they bring out later in the year? Let us know in the comments.

Moto E (2015) LTE gets updated to Android 5.1

Motorola’s 2015 model of the Moto E belongs to the wide range of budget smartphones. But even with the lower specs and matching price, Motorola is giving its device some love by updating it to Android 5.1 Lollipop. With only 1GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 410 processor, and 8GB of on-board storage, Motorola has proven that Lollipop can run on lower specs, a fresh change compared to, say, HTC’s attitude – the Taiwanese company is not going to update the better spec’ed One Mini 2 to Lollipop.

Improvements brought by this update come all across the board. Starting with the cameras, Motorola has improved low-light photos and the front-facing camera’s viewfinder. If your device is ever stolen or lost, you can now be assured that no one will be able to access your data as long as you have a screen lock. And when a heads-up notification hits the screen, you can now swipe it away for later. This way the notification leaves the screen but stores itself in the notifications panel.

There are also a number of improvements to the quick settings. Tiles now include pull-down functionality and conditional tiles can be hidden with a long-press. Also customary to other device’s rollouts of Android 5.1, the volume controls and volume settings panel have been improved dramatically. You can now change notifications volume while music is playing by tapping the bell icon.
Android 5.1 also comes with a number of other bug fixes and improvements to ART which should help performance.

brightcove.createExperiences();

Has Motorola set the bar in terms of putting brand new software on dated specs? Let us know what you think.