Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Live from Motorola's CES 2011 press event!

4:54PM And that's it!

4:53PM Looks like the Maps "demo" might have actually been a video. Could be that the software isn't done, but it's also possible he just didn't want to deal with location issues.

4:53PM Now Jha's giving us a personal tour of the Maps app -- a few changes in the UI elements, but by and large, it's the latest version of the 3D-capable Maps you can get on Android devices today. Looks awesome on a tablet, of course.

4:52PM "Honeycomb has been designed from the ground up for the tablet." So this confirms what we've been hearing lately -- that 3.0 is very much a tablet release. Not clear when (or even if) phones will see it, or how they might benefit.

4:51PM And now they're showing the video we first saw leaked a couple hours ago... deja vu. A little more detail here, it seems -- Google Talk-powered video calling, pretty awesome new 3D YouTube interface, revamped email and browser.

4:50PM "The device is not completely done -- we're not in a position to let you play with it today, but I want to show you some of the experiences that you'll have." Darn!

4:49PM The video really isn't giving us any crazy insights into Honeycomb's UI, unfortunately -- just pure marketing slickness.

4:48PM The video really isn't giving us any crazy insights into Honeycomb's UI, unfortunately -- just pure marketing slickness.

4:47PM Upgradeable to LTE!

4:47PM Available this quarter!

4:47PM Time for the fourth product: Motorola Xoom, the world's first Honeycomb tablet!

4:46PM 4.3-inch qHD display, video calling. Available early in the second quarter.

4:46PM Interesting side note: Jha keeps adding up the 1GHz cores in these devices to say that they have "2GHz of processing power."

4:45PM The music in this intro video is particularly brutal. Yow!

4:43PM And now for the third product: Droid Bionic for Verizon with LTE!

4:42PM Available January 19!

4:41PM 3.7-inch display, 1GHz processor. Billed as having "4G" data, as usual.

4:41PM WiFi calling support and hotspot for up to five devices.

4:40PM Tagline is "Life / Work Balance." Keyboard definitely looks playful -- more playful than, say, your average Droid 2.

4:39PM Cliq 2 for T-Mobile!

4:39PM "And now on to our second of four devices."

4:38PM And Jha's back. Atrix will also be coming to Bell Canada and Orange UK, turns out.

4:38PM "It's too soon to share pricing, but it will be competitive."

4:37PM Bradley just described the Atrix as "a monster." From what we've seen so far, that seems like an accurate assessment.

4:37PM "We're going to introduce over 20 4G devices by the end of 2011." That's a lot of HSPA+ and LTE.

4:36PM Here comes Jeff Bradley, SVP of devices at AT&T.

4:35PM Dock has its own battery and charges the phone when connected.

4:34PM First we saw the HD Dock -- now, time for the Laptop Dock. This thing's a Foleo clone, but the sheer awesomeness of the desktop integration we just saw might sway us to the positive.

4:33PM Built-in telephony capabilities through the phone's radio, too.

4:32PM Customizable dock at the bottom of the screen, run any Android apps you like. This is wild.

4:31PM Demoing Webtop -- pretty amazing. Insane, actually. Full Firefox 3.6 implementation with tabs, Flash 10.1. Hard to distinguish from a PC.

4:30PM Watching a movie clip -- loads fast, plays smooth. You'll just have to trust us on this one.

4:29PM Jha's talking up the Atrix's unique laptop dock -- good for HD video viewing, document editing, and so on. No additional processor required. Demo time!

4:27PM They're really drilling home the tagline that the Atrix is "the world's most powerful smartphone" -- we're wondering how that'll play with the rest of this afternoon's announcements.

4:26PM First up, we're getting a review of the Atrix that Moto introduced at the AT&T event this morning.

4:26PM "We're seeing some big trends such as 4G speeds and increased processing power." Everyone's getting in on this 4G trend, it seems!

4:25PM "We have introduced 23 smartphones in the last 12 months."

4:25PM "There's a lot of buzz at CES this year. This is our second day as a publicly traded company."

4:24PM Here comes Sanjay Jha!

4:24PM Time for Moto's new Atrix ad.

4:23PM Looks like we're starting off with a sales pitch on the Motorola brand itself -- a fitting way to kick off the split, we suppose.

4:22PM "We rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday to start our new life as an independent company."

4:21PM Here comes Bill Ogle, Moto CMO.

4:21PM Flashy video's showing cut shots of a few devices we've never seen before... including tablets.

4:20PM Lights dimming... here we go!

4:16PM And we're in!

4:06PM Okay, line's crawling... not in yet, but we're working on it.

3:52PM Looks like they're about to let us in. It's a madhouse here!

We're hanging out in the lobby of Las Vegas' illustrious Venetian Hotel and Casino -- along with about eleventy billion of our closest friends and colleagues. It's Motorola's CES press conference, after all, and we're expecting big things -- things involving Honeycomb and 10-inch displays, if we had to place a wager (and seeing how this is Sin City, we just might). Read on!