Tech Blog

[#1]

Only yesterday the company we knew as Motorola Inc. split into two entities — Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. The one that will matter to you as a consumer is Mobility. I was at an exclusive briefing today with Motorola Mobility’s CEO, Sanjay Jha, where he unveiled plans to launch a new phone and a “laptop dock” that will leverage laptop-style power and functionality to a smartphone.

The phone is the Motorola Atrix, a powerful handset that features dual-core 1GHz processors, 1GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage (expandable to 48GB with a microSD card). The screen is 4-inches with a resolution of 960x450 — very similar to the iPhone’s current Retina display. No specifics were given on battery life, but it will have one with a higher capacity than the iPhone 4, apparently. The Atrix runs on Android 2.2, and should be upgradeable.

Joining Jha was an executive from Bell that spoke about plans for a rollout of a network that would more than double the speed and capacity of its current fibre-optic network one. Rather than Long-Term Evolution or LTE, as it’s better known, this newer network will be called HSPA+, giving phones like the Atrix speeds of up to 14.4Mbps. Bell will also exclusively carry the phone as well, though no timeframe was given other than “in the coming months”.

What really raised some eyebrows was the “laptop dock” that can bundle with the phone. Jha plugged the phone into a slot in the back, opened up the lid and the screen lit up with a Motoblur interface and access to all of the Android apps installed on the handset. If you remember what Palm attempted with the Foleo a couple of years ago, the laptop dock essentially does the same thing, except that it offers a full version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, along with Motoblur and USB ports. That includes all plug-ins, Flash and any other features the browser would have on a PC or Mac.

The dock is thinner than a MacBook Air, with a screen size of 11.6-inches. The keyboard is also a full size, and the trackpad handles navigation. In other words, it’s like a laptop, but it really only serves as a dock for the phone. Get the dock itself, and you have a fairly useless piece of gear. You’ll need the Atrix in order for this to make sense. It’s a virtual certainty that Bell will market these two as a bundle when they launch.

It piggybacks off the phone for an EDGE, 3G or Wi-Fi connection. And it charges the phone regardless of whether it’s plugged in or not.

No pricing for either device was given at the briefing, though it may be announced sometime later during the show.

[#2]

HSPA + isn't a 'new' network, it is just the same technology running at faster speeds - and Bell already has devices using this network, such as the Novatel Wireless USB stick.

The Atrix uses the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and is capable of 1080p video output, and it will also be a very good gaming phone too. At the Motorola CES event they also showed a dock that can hook up to a TV or Monitor and mouse and keyboard, and has the same functionality as the Laptop dock, a 'desktop' interface with full web browsing.