Best Motorola Mobile Phone Deals

Motorola has long been at the forefront of mobile technology and is credited with having introduced the first ever ‘flip phones’ as well as the first ever ‘clamshell phones’ to the market. While the company has in the past released phones featuring its own proprietary operating systems, in recent years high-end Motorola products have more frequently employed Google’s Android OS. This is a pattern expected to continue with the recently proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google.

Motorola is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading phone manufacturers. Because of its long history of producing mobiles and smartphones, Motorola possesses expertise in manufacturing high quality products for a wide range of markets.

Motorola was part of the Open Handset Alliance that introduced the Google Android operating system for smartphones in November 2007. Motorola was also among the first companies to bring a Google Android smartphone to the market with the Motorola Milestone, known as the Motorola Droid in the US. This handset proved to be a great success for Motorola, and reportedly stocks of the phone had sold out within 3 hours of its UK launch.

Following on from the success of the Milestone, which received the 2009 Time Gadget of the Year Award, Motorola concentrated on developing smartphones for Google’s Android operating system, including a direct successor in the Motorola Milestone 2, several further entries in the US ‘Droid’ range and a number of other devices.

A unique defining characteristic of some of Motorola’s Android smartphones is their use of the Motorola Motoblur custom user interface (UI). Motoblur runs on top of the basic Google Android operating system and provides a number of extra benefits.

The main focus of the Motoblur UI is on streamlining social networking integration, allowing users to access and share media and status updates across different social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, quickly and easily. Motoblur also provides users with a range of extra homescreen widgets including customised calendar, messaging and weather widgets. Motorola customers can create a centralised Motoblur account to store information and settings which can be easily transferred to other phones with the Motoblur UI, or accessed from a browser.

In mid-2011, Google made an offer to acquire Motorola Mobility for a figure of $12.5 billion which was accepted by the Motorola shareholders later in the year. Though the takeover has yet to be approved by regulators, at the time of writing it is expected to be finalised at some point in 2012.

Although Google has stated that it will continue to run Motorola Mobility as a separate business after the takeover has been completed, the closer relationship between the two companies will likely bring some benefits to Motorola customers. Closer working relationships between Android software engineers and Motorola hardware engineers could bring about improvements in Motorola products, and the combined patent portfolios of the two companies will help to protect them from lawsuits and thus lower prices for end users.

Motorola’s most successful range of phones is its ‘RAZR’ range of clamshell phones. The original Motorola RAZR V3 was released in 2004, and its key features were its super-slim profile (the thinnest on the market at the time), aluminium body and stylish design. Numerous different versions of the Motorola RAZR were produced over the following years, including editions with colourful cases and extra features as well as a full-fledged sequel in the Motorola RAZR 2. The original Motorola RAZR series sold over 130 units in total and remains the best-selling clamshell phone in the world.

In late 2011, Motorola released a Google Android smartphone bearing the RAZR branding, known simply as the ‘Motorola RAZR’ in the UK or the ‘Motorola Droid RAZR’ in the US. Taking design cues from the original RAZR series, one of the key features of the new Motorola RAZR is its slim design. At just 7.1mm at its thinnest point, the RAZR is one of the world’s thinnest phones. The Motorola RAZR is also a powerful modern smartphone, featuring a 1.2GHz dual core processor, 8 megapixel camera and a 4.3” Super AMOLED touchscreen.