Motorola's mobile division, a company with almost a century of history, became part of Lenovo after selling Google. Moto after a five-year break returns to the Russian market. The company introduced two new lines of budget smartphones Moto C and Moto E and announced a very thin modular Moto Z2 Play.
I was able to attend the presentations, which were made by the company’s representatives - Jan Hackfeld, Vice President and Marketing Director of Motorola’s mobile, Oliver Ebel, Division Head and Lenovo Schweinov, General Manager of the Lenovo Mobile Unit in Russia and Central Asia.
To begin, I propose to recall the history of Motorola mobile devices, and then look at the new items.
A bit of history
The history of Motorola began with radios for cars, as I wrote about this in a
separate post . During World War II, the company supplied the American army with radios. One of them we saw in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."
In 1956, a pager was made for doctors, which allows us not to use the loud speaker in hospitals for any reason. The device did not have a screen that pager users remember from the 1990s. It was essentially a walkie-talkie. The operator reported the necessary information to the doctor right in your ear.
In the article "The
Gadget That Has Gone: The Old Pager Advertising " I collected the most interesting videos from the past. But in the title, I was a little cunning - this gadget didn’t go anywhere, it just disappeared from our radar, as it became a niche device again. For example, we see him in every episode of “Dr. House.”
The mobile phone story began in 1973, when AT & T's Martin Cooper made the first call to “delight” his Bell Laboratories competitors. In that year, the company introduced DynaTAC phones, and in 1983 the
first commercial call took place
on the mobile network . Already in the same year, Motorola made hands-free cars.
The first phone weighed 1 kilogram 150 grams, had a red LED display and allowed to talk for 35 minutes with a waiting time of 8 hours. Its parameters without an antenna were 22.5x12.5x3.75 cm. This gadget was worth 3,995 US dollars, which today is
about 9,868 dollars . The DynaTAC was followed by Flip Phone, and then MicroTAC, much smaller phones with flip-open lids.
The GSM standard was introduced later, in 1991. Call forwarding, call barring, call waiting, call hold and global roaming were introduced to its services.
In 1993, Motorola released StarTAC, a phone that looked like a voice intercom from Star Trek. In the future, clamshells will become the brand's business card, but there will be other form factors: Motorola V70 will get a rotating lid, and the first Android smartphones will become sliders with a QWERTY keyboard.
In 2006, the flagship Motorola RAZR V3i took the second position in sales at Svyaznoy. This phone already had a 1.3 megapixel camera and a 710 mAh battery. WITH
One of the company's first smartphones, the Motorola ROKR E6, was running the Linux operating system. It had a 2.4-inch touch screen, a 2-megapixel camera with video recording and macro photography, support for SD memory cards of up to 32 GB, and an integrated HTML browser and document viewer.
The Android era began for Motorola with the CLIQ communicator (DEXT in Europe) on Android 1.5 Cupcake. The gadget was called "The first phone for social networks" and added to it the service MOTOBLUR. The phone was primarily intended for users of VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Twitter. In fact, the shell has become an aggregator of social networks, allowing you to see alerts right from the screen and send messages.
The slider gadget got a 3.1-inch screen with a resolution of 320x480 pixels, a Qualcomm 7201a processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, a full-sized QWERTY-keyboard.
Next up was the Motorola Droid on Android 2.0. The device is built on Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 with a clock frequency of 500 MHz, received 512 MB of internal memory and 256 MB of RAM. The gadget came with a 3.7-inch screen with a resolution of 480x854 pixels and a 5-megapixel camera.
Motorola opened a representative office in Russia in 1993. In the 2000s, the number of employees in the country reached 1,000. On January 1, 2011, due to the fact that the company ceded its share of the Russian market to its competitors, the Motorola Mobility division closed down. In 2012, Google bought for 12.5 billion US dollars.
Moto was one of the first manufacturers of smartphones on Android and was at that time among the top three leaders along with Samsung and HTC in the United States. But first of all the company was interested in 17 thousand patents owned by Motorola. Before that, Google had 500 patents, most of which are related to search.
In 2014, Google
sold for 2.5 billion a division of Motorola Mobility. Prior to this, he was separated from Motorola Home and sold for 2.35 billion. But Google has left the bulk of the patents.
The new owner of the brand, Lenovo, has long thought whether to return the Moto brand to Russia. In 2015 at the IFA 2015 in Berlin, I spoke with the top management of the company, they were very interested in the question: how much Motorola is remembered in our country. As a result, in March 2016, 4 smartphones appeared on sale in Russia: Moto G, Moto Z Play, Moto Z and Moto X Force. On June 27, in Moscow, new budget smartphones and a mid-priced device were presented.
Return to Russia (again)
The history of Moto phones was one of the main topics of the event. Lenovo is counting on residual brand memory. I bet that you were holding at least one device in this photo. What about me - I remember how I chose the V100, and how I envied my friends with the RAZR V3 and V70.
Jan Hackfeldt, vice president and marketing director of the Motorola mobile unit at Lenovo, said that according to the analysis of brands within the company, it was Motorola that has the highest level in the world. If Lenovo plays better in the low price segment, then Moto is a premium. Golden RAZR advertised Beckham in 2007, for example. The company decided to play in the middle and high price segment and went from a large number of products to 10-12, simultaneously supported.
Oliver Ebel, vice president, head of division of Motorola, called Russia one of the most important markets for the company. Now buyers are available devices in several segments. We are talking about the line C, the most budget, and the flagship Moto Z, which is already in Russian stores.
Anton Shveinov, general manager of Lenovo’s mobile division in Russia and Central Asia, spoke about the company's plans:
“The smartphone market in Russia is one of the few markets that, despite all the economic difficulties, continue to show steady growth and are not amenable to adversity. We set a goal in 2018 to take a confident third place in this market. There is a very important point. The Russian market is at the same time very difficult, but at the same time very interesting. Difficult because not in every market you can see 20 players holding more than 1% of the market, and the total number of players is more than 40. But let's think about how many brands represented in our market really occupy an important place in the minds of people? Enough fingers of one hand or even half of fingers. Therefore, in 2017 and 2018, we set ourselves the goal to occupy a significant place in the minds of consumers in the minds of people. ”
New smartphones
Lenovo, in addition to the existing gadgets in Russia, introduced new smartphones in the budget and middle segments. Of the budget - Moto C and Moto C Plus with a minimum set of features. The younger Moto C model works in 3G, but it also costs less than five thousand rubles. The screen here is 5-inch with a resolution of 854x480, Mediatek processors depending on the device version - from 1.1 GHz to 1.3 GHz. Memory is 8 or 16 gigabytes, and only 1 GB of RAM. Battery - 2350 mAh. The 4G version costs six and a half thousand. Moto C Plus features HD screen resolution and 4000 mAh battery. Eight and a half thousand will be sold.
Moto c
Display: 5.0 inches, 854x480 pixels
OS: Android 7.0
Processor: 4 cores, MT6737m, 1.1 GHz / MT6580m 1.3 GHz
Flash memory: 16 \ 8 GB
RAM: 1 GB
Camera: main - 5 MP, front - 2 MP
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE
Battery: 2350 mAh
Weight: 154 g
Price: 4990 ₽ (3G) / 6490 ₽ (4G).
Moto C Plus
Display: 5.0, 1280x720 pixels
OS: Android 7.0
Processor: 4 cores, MT6737, 1.3 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
RAM: 1 or 2 GB
Camera: main - 8 MP, front - 2 MP
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE
Battery: 4000 mAh
Weight: 162 g.
Price: 8490 ₽
Moto E and Moto E Plus got 5.5-inch displays with HD-resolution, quad-core MT6737 1.3 GHz, 16 GB of memory. The younger model was equipped with 2 GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel main camera and a 2800 mAh battery. The oldest is 3 GB RAM, a 13-megapixel camera and a 5000 mAh battery. Phones will cost 9990 ₽ and 13990 ₽ respectively.
Moto e
Display: 5.0, 1280x720 pixels
OS: Android 7.1.1
Processor: 4 cores, MT6737, 1.3 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
RAM: 2 GB
Camera: main - 8 MP, front - 5 MP
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE
Battery: 2800 mAh
Weight: 145 g
Price: 9990 ₽
Moto e plus
Display: 5.5, 1280x720 pixels
OS: Android 7.1.1
Processor: 4 MT6737 cores, 1.3 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
RAM: 3 GB
Camera: main - 13 MP, front - 5 MP with backlight
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE
Battery: 5000 mAh
Weight: 198 g
Price: 13 990 ₽
Now - about the most interesting. In August, Moto Z2 Play will be on sale. The Z Play follower is built on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 crystal-based system featuring low power consumption and energy consumption. The processor cores work with a 2.2 GHz clock speed, the video accelerator — Adreno 506 GPU responds to the graphics. In the rating of Antutu, a smartphone with 67,959 parrots hit only 51 places.
The smartphone will receive 3 or 4 GB of RAM, 32 or 64 GB of internal memory. You can expand the memory using microSD up to 2 terabytes. You do not have to choose whether to insert a memory card or a second SIM card into the phone - a special slot provides for the simultaneous use of two SIM cards and a card.
A fingerprint sensor was installed under the screen - it is less similar to a full button than Moto Z Play, which is very pleasing. NFC support is present, so it will be possible to pay from the phone using Android Pay.
The display device - 5.5 inches Super AMOLED with a resolution of 1920 × 1080, protected by Gorilla Glass. The 3000 mAh battery, according to the statements on the Motorola website, should support operation for up to 30 hours. TurboPower allows for 15 minutes to charge the phone for 8 hours of work, and for 30 minutes - by 50%. Charging port - USB Type-C.
The main camera of the device is 12 MP, the front camera is 5 MP. Two-color LED flashes are installed on both sides. The smartphone is compatible with all Moto Mods. Strongly protruding from the back of the camera serves as the second point of support for the modules after the magnetic contacts. Currently 4 modules are released: JBL SoundBoost speakers, Incipio offGRID battery, Insta-Share projector and Hasselblad True Zoom camera. A Amazon Echo voice assistant module and a gamepad module are being prepared for release, as well as a number of projects from the contest winners: a professional microphone, a walkie-talkie, wireless charging, a solar battery, and so on.
The thickness of the device, except for the bulging window of the camera, is 5.99 millimeters. In Moto Z Play, this parameter is 6.99 mm. The phone was made very thin, but, unfortunately, by reducing the battery from 3510 mAh, which was enough for a couple of days of intensive work, to 3000 mAh.
Moto Z2 Play will cost 34,990 rubles.
Moto Z2 Play
Display: 5.5, 1920 × 1080 pixels
OS: Android 7.1.1
Processor: 8 cores, Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 2.2 GHz, Adreno 506 GPU, Natural Language Processor, Contextual Computing Processor
Memory: 32 GB / 64 GB
RAM: 3 GB / 4 GB
Camera: main - 12 MP, front - 5 MP, LED flash
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE, NFC
Battery: 3000 mAh
Weight: 145 g
Price: 34 990 ₽
Low-cost Moto C and C Plus, Moto E and E Plus should be available this month. And the appearance of the Moto Z2 Play smartphone in Russian stores will have to wait until August.