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The Moto X phone will be made in the US and is coming this summer, says Motorola (update)

The Moto X phone will be made in the US and is coming this summer, says Motorola (update)

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woodside d11
woodside d11

At D11, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has just confirmed that the company is working on a flagship phone, and that it is indeed called the Moto X. The phone will be made in the US, it will have an OLED screen, and Woodside has said that "we know when it's in your pocket, we know when it's in your hand, it's going to know when you want to take a picture and fire up the cameras." It'll know when you're in the car, for instance, and promote different interactions.

It's going to be built in Texas, in a 480,000-square-foot facility previously used to manufacture Nokia phones. Woodside says Moto X will be the first smartphone built in the United States, and was clearly proud of that fact. Some components will come from the US, too, though portions will come from Taiwan, Korea, and elsewhere. The phone is explicitly designed to compete with the iPhone and the Galaxy lineup, though Woodside did say that one of the areas Motorola sees as promising is in high-quality, low-cost devices.

Details are still relatively scarce, though Woodside did cite breakability and battery life as two of the things Larry Page is most focused on, which dovetails nicely with what we've heard before about Motorola's plans. Motorola's also apparently working with a number of different carriers, and Woodside said "the response has been great." The phone's coming by October, along with "a handful" of other devices.

Woodside has the phone in his pocket on stage at the conference, but wouldn't show it to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher during their interview. Android head Sundar Pichai has seen it, apparently, but Woodside adamantly claimed that Motorola is treated no differently than any other Android partner. "We're hiring out of Google," he said, "but once you come to Motorola you give up your Google badge. It really is separate."

Maybe the X phone can finally answer the big question: why did Google buy Motorola?

Update: Motorola has now issued a press release touting the Moto X. Along with being "designed, engineered, and assembled" in the US, the release reveals that the phone will actually be available this summer.