Motorola Refreshing RAZR Line this Fall

In what looks like a deliberate effort to upstage Nokia and Microsoft, Motorola and Verizon held a press event in New York today to announce three new Droid RAZR phones. The RAZR M (budget), RAZR HD (mid-range), and RAZR Maxx HD (high-end) will all come LTE-enabled with Google's Chrome browser, but none of the phones will ship with the latest version of Android.

The $99 (with contract) RAZR M has the same 960 x 540 super AMOLED display as last year's Droid RAZR. It runs on a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and 1GB of RAM, and features an 8MP camera. While the phone only has 8GB of internal storage, a microSD slot will let you expand it substantially.

Predictably, the RAZR HD ups the display quality to 720p, but under the hood it's pretty similar to the RAZR M (which is already pretty similar to last year's Droid X2). The HD quietly raises capacity to 16GB (plus microSD), but with the same processor, RAM and camera as the RAZR X2, the main internal upgrade here seems to be the battery. At 2,500mAh, you'll basically only ever have to charge it once. Just kidding, but that's a lot of battery.

So what's Motorola's strategy for setting its high-end RAZR Maxx HD apart? Give it an *even bigger* battery! Seriously though, it has the same processor, display, and camera as the RAZR HD. It doubles storage again, this time to 32GB+, but the RAZR Maxx HD's main selling point seems to be its 3,300mAh battery - the biggest in the business. Motorola could have run a quad-core processor on it, but they've opted for efficiency instead, promising a whopping 16 hours of talk time. If the only reason you've been going to sleep at night is to let your phone recharge, the RAZR Maxx HD is for you.

In all seriousness, the new RAZRs all look like totally decent phones; we're just disappointed to see a phone company owned by Google caught in a six month catch-up cycle with Samsung. We may even prefer the new RAZRs' kevlar framing and minimal bezels to the sort-of-ugly Galaxy S III, but the omission of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at launch is just baffling, even if it is promised for all three phones within 2012.

With the Galaxy S III still selling strong and new smartphones from Nokia and Apple imminent, are immortal batteries really a selling point? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Is this the Next Flagship Nokia Phone?

Two images of Nokia's Lumia 920 have surfaced today, featuring a touch interface with 3 soft buttons, what appears to be a PureView camera, and (allegedly) a 4.5 inch screen.

While the image is pretty clearly computer-generated, it's not unlikely what we're seeing is an incomplete press rendering. In other words; this probably is the Lumia 920.

A leaked image of the 4.3-inch Lumia 820, showing more of Nokia's bright colors, appears below.

Nokia will announce its Windows Phone 8 offerings at a press event with Microsoft in New York on September 5th. We'll have more details for you as they come out.

Stoked for Nokia's upcoming Windows Phones? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Nokia, Microsoft Holding Windows Phone Event on September 5

You've heard the rumors, and now it's finally time to pin a date to the calendar at long last.

Nokia and Microsoft issued a joint invitation on Wednesday, inviting the press to what's most definitely a Windows Phone announcement going down in New York City on September 5.

While the familiar tiles on the invitation sent to Engadget leave little doubt that the two companies will be talking about Windows Phone, it's unclear at the moment if the conference will unveil new Windows Phone 8 handsets, which have been leaking nearly as much as the sixth-generation iPhone in recent weeks.

Despite the Nokia Maps tile on the invite, there's some pretty compelling evidence to support the debut of new Lumia handsets at the event.

First, the invite lists Nokia before Microsoft, which seems to indicate it's more about hardware than the Windows Phone 8 software, which Redmond has already previewed on their own.

Second, September 5 just so happens to coincide with the opening of the Nokia World conference, where the Finnish handset maker is most certainly planning to take the wraps off new smartphone hardware.

We'll all have to wait until September 5 at 10am EST to know for sure, but Windows Phone fans will have some restless nights over the next three weeks in any event.

Source: Engadget

J.R. is a recovering independent feature film producer/director who turned a love of shiny gadgets into a steady stream of gigs writing about them for fun and profit. He can be frequently be found talking nonsense on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com