Motorola Announces European Release of Motorola Pro

Finally, a work phone worth taking home.  At least, that’s how Motorola is pitching the Motorola Pro to the European market in its Youtube video.  Virtually identical to the Droid Pro (minus the Verizon-purchased “Droid” name), this phone will be hitting the European market soon, aimed at bringing Android to business professionals. Sporting a 1GHz CPU and a 3.1-inch display with full QWERTY keyboard, this device is more than capable of handling anything one might traditionally turn to a Blackberry for. Youtube video and full press release available after the break.

Introducing Motorola PRO in Europe; Finally a Work Phone Worth Taking Home
Device offers greater choice to consumers and IT departments
BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 14, 2011 — Mobile World Congress 2011 — Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced Motorola PRO, the Android™-powered smartphone optimized for business use, is set to come to Europe. Delivering the speed, convenience, security and productivity tools that consumers and businesses alike require, Motorola PRO is showcased at Motorola’s booth at MWC: Hall 8, Booth No. 8A51.
“Consumers above all need choice to meet the needs of work and play and Motorola PRO strengthens Motorola Mobility’s position as the leading provider of Android devices. We don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Andrew Morley, vice president of marketing, international markets, Motorola Mobility. “In addition, employees and IT departments have made it clear that they want other options and solutions and Motorola PRO meets this need.”
The Motorola PRO smartphone powered by Android 2.2 features a 1 GHz processor with 2 GB internal memory and expandable external memory with SD card up to another 32 GB, as well as 3G mobile hotspot support for up to five other Wi-Fi-enabled devices/laptops and a QWERTY keyboard designed for speed and convenience. The business smartphone also includes QuickOffice pre-loaded and email support (Corporate Sync, Gmail™, POP3/IMAP embedded, Push Email, Yahoo Mail).
Other features of Motorola PRO
Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 support on a full multi-touch 3.1-inch (7.87-cm) brilliant display as well as the ability to capture and share content with the device’s 5-megapixel camera featuring auto focus and dual LED flash
Motorola security additions such as AuthenTec IPSec multi-headed VPN integration, remote wipe of device and SD card, and complex password support as well as device and SD card encryption
Accessories
Completing the package is the Motorola PRO desktop dock (sold separately), which provides a convenient charging station on your office desktop or kitchen counter and allows access to additional handset features while docked, including a clock (with alarm), a local weather reading, and the ability to play music or a slide show.
Availability
To learn more about the Motorola PRO visit YouTube™.
About Motorola Mobility
Motorola Mobility, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) fuses innovative technology with human insights to create experiences that simplify, connect and enrich people’s lives. Our portfolio includes converged mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets; wireless accessories; end-to-end video and data delivery; and management solutions, including set-tops and data-access devices. For more information, visit motorola.com/mobility.
Media Contact:
Gemma Priscott
Motorola Mobility, Inc.
+44 (0)7970 882994
gemma.priscott@motorola.com
Certain features, services and applications are network dependent and may not be available in all areas; additional terms, conditions and/or charges may apply. Contact your service provider for details. All features, functionality and other product specifications are subject to change without notice or obligation.
MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Motorola Trademark Holdings, LLC. Android and Gmail are trademarks of Google, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2011 Motorola Mobility, Inc. All rights reserved.
SOURCE Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc.

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Motorola to Release Wifi-Only Xoom in Europe Next Quarter

Motorola has made it known that the Xoom will be hitting Europe Q2 this year. Both 3G and wifi-only versions will landing in the upcoming months, but there’s no word yet what carriers will support the 3G version. And while we’ve seen indications of a wifi-only version, this is the first confirmation from Motorola that a wifi-only version will exist at all without carrier entanglements. Hopefully such an offering shows up stateside, as well. Full press release after the break.

BARCELONA – Mobile World Congress 2011 – Feb. 14, 2011 – Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced Motorola XOOM™ 3G/WiFi®-enabled version as well as a WiFi-only version will be available in Europe beginning in Q2 2011. Motorola XOOM runs on Google’s Android™ 3.0 Honeycomb – the only Android operating system designed specifically for tablets – and was named “Best of Show” by CNET at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The tablet will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress this week at the Motorola booth in Hall 8, Booth No. 8A51.
“Motorola XOOM re-defines what the tablet experience should be. Designed from the ground up with the consumer in mind, it provides more ways to have fun, connect with friends and stay productive while on the go,” said Alain Mutricy, senior vice president of Portfolio and Device Product Management, Motorola Mobility. “Whether surfing the Web, watching the latest hit movie, or video-chatting with friends, Motorola XOOM will delight consumers with its ease of use, speed and vivid graphics, as well as its Motorola Smart Accessories.”
In today’s fast-paced mobile device market, Motorola XOOM isn’t the next generation tablet; it’s the one after that. Thanks to its dual cameras, true multi-tasking functionality, latest Google Mobile innovations, 1GHz dual-core processor and 10.1-inch (25.65 cm) widescreen HD display, the Motorola XOOM provides users with diverse content-consumption capabilities.
Motorola XOOM Features
Motorola XOOM delivers a new type of mobile computing experience, including: a widescreen HD display with 1280×800 resolution to support HD video and with HDMI out; a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera for 720p video capture and 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats; and a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting.
A dual-core processor with each core running at 1GHz offers an optimal experience for Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The Honeycomb user experience improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization, and also features the latest Google Mobile innovations such as Google Maps 5.0 with 3D interaction. Video and other rich web content plays seamlessly with Adobe® Flash® Player.
Motorola XOOM supports up to 10 hours of video playback, and charges in half the time of competitive tablets on the market.
Motorola Smart Accessories
A Standard Dock for watching video content or listening to music through external speakers as the device charges
A Speaker HD Dock for sending HD content directly to a TV or clearly listening to music through two built-in speakers – eliminating the need to attach external speakers
A custom keyboard with Bluetooth® wireless technology and special Android shortcut keys
Please visit the Motorola MWC 2011 press kit for additional information www.motorola.com/mediacenter/mwc2011
About Motorola Mobility
Motorola Mobility, Inc. (NYSE:MMI) fuses innovative technology with human insights to create experiences that simplify, connect and enrich people’s lives. Our portfolio includes converged mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets; wireless accessories; end-to-end video and data delivery; and management solutions, including set-tops and data-access devices. For more information, visit motorola.com/mobility.

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LG Optimus 3D scores high on Quadrant benchmark tests

We told you about the awesomeness of the LG Optimus 3D smartphone at WC earlier here, but look at what this badboy can do on a Quadrant benchmark! In the words of Joey from Blossom…”Whoa!” The LG Optimus 3D pulled down a 2958 for the crowd at MWC, which you can tell from the pic, is substantially more than other current devices on the market.
Power of the “dual everything”, now that’s impressive!

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MWC 2011 – LG Optimus Pad announced – starting a tablet war

At MWC in barcelona, we’ve been seeing alot of new tablets being officially announced. One of the ones to get excited about is the LG Optimus Pad, an 8.9 inch tablet running Android 3.0, boasting a NVIDIA Tegra2 dual-core processor, with 32GB storage, and dual rear cameras capable of shooting 3D HD video. It’s a wee bit smaller than the Motorola Xoom, or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and just a bit larger than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch version.
LG made a declaration of war at their MWC event, showing slides which stated “True Tablet War” with the LG Optimus Pad beneath the text. You may have heard about LG’s teaser ad against Apple that got pulled rather quickly, most likely cause there were some copyright infringements involved in the context, but regardless, LG is trying to stand tall among a tablet market that is quickly beginning to get saturated. We’ll see how this all pans out for them soon.
What do you think, is the LG too small, too big…or just right in the middle for size?

        

SETTING A NEW STANDARD IN TABLETS,LG OPTIMUS PAD DEBUTS AT MWC
Designed for Both Work and Play, LG’s 8.9-inch Tablet is Convenient to
Hold with One Hand; Features Android 3.0, Dual Core CPU, 3D Camera
Barcelona, February 14, 2011 – LG Electronics (LG) today unveiled the highly anticipated LG Optimus Pad at a press conference on opening day of Mobile World Congress 2011. With diverse multimedia and productivity features, the LG Optimus Pad features a unique 8.9-inch display for one-handed portability and uncompromising viewability, a departure from the trend toward tablets featuring 7- and 10-inch screens.
The LG Optimus Pad is powered by Google’s Android 3.0 platform and the NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processor. The world’s first tablet with a 3D camera, the LG Optimus Pad wraps users in an immersive multimedia environment with Full HD 1080p decoding.
“With a flood of tablets hitting the market, we felt strongly that the LG Optimus Pad needed to set a new standard for what a tablet should be,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. “We think the LG Optimus Pad achieves the right blend of portability and viewability with no performance compromises.”
The LG Optimus Pad also represents the fruits of a close partnership between LG and visual computing leader NVIDIA. “The world of computing is shifting under our feet,” said Phil Carmack, Senior Vice President of NVIDIA’s mobile business. “Tablets are quickly taking their place as our most personal computer, providing previously unimagined capabilities and full mobility. The new LG Optimus Pad uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 to give consumers outstanding levels of power, speed and performance.”
Easy Portability, Ideal Viewability
Sized at 8.9-inch diagonally and 149.4-mm horizontally, the LG Optimus Pad offers a sensible solution to other tablets on the market that are either too large for comfortable portability or too small for ideal viewing. The conveniently-sized LG Optimus Pad fits comfortably in one hand, goes anywhere and slips easily into purses and slim briefcases. With 15:9 aspect ratio, the LG Optimus Pad allows users access to the full range of applications in Android Market and its 1280 x 768 WXGA resolution vividly displays multimedia content in full widescreen format.
Powerful, Fast and Versatile Platform
The LG Optimus Pad is powered by Android 3.0, Google’s latest platform optimized for tablets which supports larger display resolutions and applications specifically designed for tablets, including Google eBooks, Google Maps 5, and Google Talk. Android 3.0 also makes the LG Optimus Pad easy to use with a more intuitive PC-like interface. The LG Optimus Pad fully utilizes the 1 GHz Dual Core CPU of NVIDIA Tegra 2 to deliver lag-free web browsing and quick app start up. The superb graphics and multitasking capabilities of NVIDIA Tegra 2 enables the LG Optimus Pad to run multiple apps simultaneously and handle rich multimedia with ease.
Haven for Multimedia Enthusiasts
As the world’s first tablet equipped with a 3D camera, users can capture vivid images and video with the LG Optimus Pad for viewing on 3D TVs using HDMI or on the web via YouTube 3D. Business users will also appreciate the built-in videoconferencing feature. With 1080p Full HD decoding, movie enthusiasts can transfer high quality content to their TVs without any loss in picture quality. Serious and casual gamers alike will delight in the wide collection of console-quality games available through the Tegra Zone app that runs seamlessly on the LG Optimus Pad.

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Words With Friends Arrives on Android

I’m pleased to say, today marks the death of the the “If only my Android phone had…” era. The one app I’ve wanted since getting an Android phone was, of course, Words With Friends. One of the most popular iPhone apps, and “the game” that all my friends have been playing, finally lands on Android. So if you’ve been waiting to school your unenlightened (ie iPhone-owning) friends in a Scrabble-like word game, you wait is at an end. Pick up Words with Friends (Appbrain link) in the market or by scanning the QR code below.

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Wi-Fi and 3G versions of Motorola Xoom coming to Europe in Q2

The Motorola Xoom was the first Honeycomb tablet to be announced, but it has received some stiff competition from LG and Samsung since then. We already knew that the Motorola Xoom is coming to Best Buy in the US on February 24, and that it might cost as much as $799 unlocked.
At the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry, the Mobile World Congress, Motorola has now announced that people in Europe also will be able to enjoy its Xoom device.
Like several of its peers, the Motorola Xoom is a tablet powered by Android 3.0 and a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor. It features a 10.1-inch (25.65 cm) widescreen display with a 1280 x 800 resolution – lacking, or free from, 3D technology depending on how you look at it. The Xoom also has dual cameras: a 5MP shooter on the back, and a 2MP front-facing camera.
It will be hard to choose between all these promising tablets. I guess price, and reviews, will become the deciding factors when people get ready to start carrying one of these technological wonders. Both Wi-Fi and 3G models of the Motorola Xoom will be launched in Europe in Q2 2011.

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Qualcomm ships dual-mode Gobi3000 WWAN chip, intros LTE / HSPA+ chipsets galore

Qualcomm ships dual-mode Gobi3000 WWAN chip, intros LTE / HSPA+ chipsets galore

By Darren Murph posted Feb 14th 2011 7:35AM

Qualcomm just refined the term "blowout" here at Mobile World Congress. It's obviously a critical show for the wireless supplier, and while the 2.5GHz Snapdragon CPU is the undisputed highlight, there's quite a bit of chipset action worth paying attention to if you'd prefer that your next handset / mobile hotspot be capable of handling the world's most advanced network technologies. First off, there's the Gobi3000 modules, which Qualcomm just announced were shipping en masse. Compared to the Gobi2000 that has been infiltrating laptops and MiFi devices for the past year, this one doubles the HSPA downlink speed and enhances the Gobi common application programming interface (API) functionality for enterprise applications. The design supports single-mode (UMTS) and multi-mode designs (CDMA / UMTS), and should be popping up soon in devices from Huawei, Novatel Wireless, Option, Sierra Wireless and ZTE.

Next up are the MDM9625 and MDM9225 chipsets, which are designed to support LTE data rates as high as 150Mbps within mobile broadband devices. These guys are fabricated using the 28nm technology node, and are backwards compatible with previous generations of LTE and other wireless broadband standards, giving consumers using USB modems powered by the MDM9625 or MDM9225 chipsets an uninterrupted broadband data connection on nearly any network around the world. These are being launched alongside the MDM9615 and MDM8215, which are similar chips designed to support multi-mode LTE and dual-carrier HSPA+, respectively. As for the MDM8225? That's being released today to support HSPA+ Release 9 (the latest version, obviously), which will support 84Mbps on the downslope (not to mention dual-carrier HSUPA operation) and should fit into at least a couple of T-Mobile USA devices by 2012. Finally, Qualcomm has nailed down a deal that'll enable all future Snapdragon-powered Android devices to "have access to instant streaming of TV shows and movies from Netflix." Just sounds like a pre-loaded installation to us, but hey, we'll take all the optimization we can get when it comes to streaming video on the mobile. 

 

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LG Optimus 3D hands-on

We all knew it was coming -- LG was going all-in with 3D screen technology, and they've done it with the Optimus 3D. And, surprisingly, it's not horrible.

The phone itself is fairly unremarkable -- your basic black slab. It's got a 4.3-inch touchscreen powered by a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4 processor, and flipping through Android 2.2 (it'll get a Gingerbread update at some point, LG says) was plenty fast.

But 3D is what this phone is all about. And not just playing 3D videos, which was pretty cool, but recording them as well. The Optimus 2D has not one but two 5MP cameras on the rear for stereoscopic recording. And you can even see what you're recording in 3D in real time on the touchscreen display.

So how's the 3D look? It's ... different. Your eyes will have to adjust to it some, but it's not the worst thing in the world, and some content looks better than other. Battery life, we're told, is boosted by the dual-core processor. But you know how those things go -- you'll need to use it to see.

There's a handful of 3D-capable games on board, and the phone has a dedicated hardware button that takes you to a special 3D gallery, from which you access all your 3D content, including 3D content on YouTube.

You're going to have to see this to believe it, truly. We're not completely sold on the idea of 3D content, but LG certainly is.

More pics and video are after the break.

Youtube link for mobile viewing

 

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Motorola Pro for Europe – Hands-on [MWC]

Close your eyes and imagine - imagine a strange and crazy world where the Motorola Droid Pro doesn't run on Verizon but instead has been outfitted solely with an HSPA/GSM radio and set for Europe. Image that the only other difference between the Verizon Droid Pro and this crazy new phone - let's call it simply the Motorola Pro - is that it doesn't have any of the custom Verizon software or the Verizon 'droid' branding. Image it still has a 1GHz processor, Android 2.2, and the same version of MotoBlur.

Imagine no more, dear reader, because the Motorola Pro is not only announced, it's real and we have the photos to prove it. What an amazing world we live in - the only way it would be amazing-er is if we had a firm launch date and price. Sadly, all we know is that it's coming to Europe and given that the hardware is here and on display and working, we have assume that it's coming soon.

A few more photos after the break.

Motorola Pro for Europe - Hands-on [MWC] posted originally by Android Central
Sponsored by Android Cases and Accessories

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