Motorola stuns with new fleet of Moto gadgets

Motorola has been hard at work establishing itself as one of Android’s strongest players. Through their acquisition by Google in 2012 and subsequent sale to Lenovo earlier this year, the company has invested heavily in stepping up its design acumen and adding truly practical features to the core Android experience. Even after being a Google company, Motorola’s products have felt like a pure and unfettered vision of Android, and its only alterations to the ecosystem have been welcome ones.

The Chicago company rebooted its mobile line in 2013 with the launch of their Moto X, a flagship phone that differentiated itself with simple design and limitless customization. Now, Motorola is raising the stakes with some of the most hotly-anticipated mobile products in recent memory—will they change the game for Android manufacturers?

Circular logic

In late 2008, Motorola introduced a fashion-forward phone called the Aura, which was notable for little more than its circular display. The Aura was an engineering marvel even by 2014 standards, because LCDs made up of square pixels on X and Y axes seem completely incompatible with any shape besides a rectangle. Motorola couldn’t have known it at the time, but although the Aura failed to make a dent in history the way Apple’s iPhone has, everything they learned by developing a circular LCD panel wound up serving them well in a new form factor.

When Google introduced Android Wear earlier this year, they showcased a handful of products from their partners. In the eyes of both consumers and the tech press, they saw the Moto 360 and then everyone else. While Android Wear was designed to accommodate both squarish and circular displays, no other manufacturer tried to tackle a round wearable except Motorola, and the fruits of their labor were wild hype and frenetic excitement from both technology journalists and the consumer public.

The Moto 360 may be the company’s highest-profile release since the popular RAZR flip phone in 2006, and Motorola isn’t wasting the opportunity. The 360 is simply gorgeous, with a near-invisible bezel and display that looks impossibly futuristic—and in some ways, it is, since the perfect circle is interrupted for a small black region at the bottom for various sensors. The Moto 360 aims to be the poster child of Android Wear, merging high technology with high fashion. And although its ultra-thin profile leaves some battery capacity to be desired, in the hearts and minds of consumers the Moto 360 is the smartwatch to beat.

Solve for X

Last year, Motorola rebooted its flagship smartphone offering with the sleek, simple Moto X. Infinitely customizable with dozens of color options for its rear casing and chrome accents, their Moto Maker website attracted the interest of technology diehards and casual customers alike. In a way that only the iPhone has seemed able to do, the Moto X didn’t just cater to the whims of spec-hungry power users or selfie-prone consumers—it found a middle path that attracted both.

In one fell swoop, Motorola turned its business around and skyrocketed toward new heights in revenue. But the X wasn’t the only variable in Motorola’s reboot formula—their low-cost, high-value Moto G gave the company a leg up in developing markets. In line with Google’s recent push with Android One, the Moto G attracts interest from first-time smartphone shoppers around the world, costing less than $200 off-contract and offering above-average performance and features.

This year’s revisions take the X and the G in new directions, solidifying Motorola’s focus on the Moto family even after their acquisition by Lenovo. The X grows a larger screen and upgrades its industrial design with a metal rim, casting aside the plastic enclosure that made last year’s model seem less “premium” than competitive devices. The same color and material customization apply, meaning customers can design a singular Moto product that matches their personal style rather than choosing from black or white.

Motorola’s continued inclusion of meaningful additions to the core Android experience help both devices stand out. Like last year’s “Active Display” that allowed users to receive notifications and alerts without powering on the screen, the new Moto X features the rebranded “Moto Display,” assisted by infrared sensors so users can swipe their hand over their phone to check the time. Building the “Okay Google” voice activation function in Google Now, Motorola included always-listening capabilities that allow customers to call their phone whatever they want—“Okay, JARVIS” and “Okay, KITT” are fair game.

Can you hear me now?

One surprise in last week’s announcements was something of a blast from the past. The company revisited technology’s first wearable—the Bluetooth earpiece. Despite their stagnant popularity and questionable cultural connotations, Motorola’s new Moto Hint leverages new advancements in voice recognition technologies in Android—and perhaps aims to take advantage of a cultural zeitgeist. Characters in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her used tiny earbuds to communicate with their artificially-intelligent smartphones on the go. Motorola built that earbud, and it interacts with Moto products’ sophisticated voice-enabled features. Because the Hint is just larger than a peanut M&M, its battery life might not make it through the morning. So Motorola included a slide-in charging case that extends the Hint’s longevity by leaps and bounds—and also helps prevent customers from losing it.

Motorola is leaning hard into the future, and pushing the envelope of what’s possible.

Motorola’s new entrants look to re-imagine how we interact with smart devices, and position the company to lead the charge into our wearable future. Motorola is leaning hard into the future, and releasing products that capture the imagination for the first time in recent memory. The Moto X and its sister products are revamping a decades-old technology player, and elevating them to the forefront of consumer electronics design and innovation. But the dreams of one Chicago company aren’t the only thing riding on Motorola’s success—considering tomorrow’s Apple event, these Android products might be the platform’s strongest competitors against what’s coming.