Outside of possible FCC filings, Motorola has largely been coy about just what its next major smartphone will be -- until now. The firm's Dennis Woodside just revealed at D11 that the new flagship will be called Moto X (previously rumored as the X Phone), and that it will be built in a Fort Worth, Texas factory that was once used to make Nokia phones. Woodside isn't giving away many details at this stage, although he teases that the smartphone will "know what you want to do before you do." Oh, and he has a Moto X in his pocket... not that he's about to show us anything just yet, of course. If you're curious about Woodside's actual quote, it's below:

"It'll be the first Motorola smartphone built in the United States. It'll be built in Texas -- we'll employ around 2,000 people. It's right outside of Fort Worth in a 500,000 square foot facility that was previously used to build Nokia phones."

Update: Woodside had two extra nuggets while on stage -- he mentioned that the Moto X will be "broadly distributed" across numerous carriers, a rarity for Motorola smartphones in recent years. Specifically, he noted: "The Moto X is going to be broadly distributed -- that's a first for Motorola in a number of years. The support of the carriers has been fantastic." In other words, this won't be a Nexus device, and you can count on some amount of skinning and bloatware to muddle things up. On the issue of battery life, Woodside said: "I'll save the details for later, but [the industry issue of] battery life is a huge problem. Motorola has some of the world's best engineers and systems designers who spend their lives on that problem. There are two processors in the device that creates a system that allows you to do such a thing." Two processors, you say? Fascinating!

Update 2: The Moto X should arrive in late summer. Also, a reminder: Motorola mentioned a shift toward stock Android coming later this year. While there isn't any guarantee that the Moto X will embrace that philosophy, it would be a fitting poster child.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

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Two months after appointing Todd Park as Chief Technology Officer, the White House has picked Nicole Wong for the newly created position of Chief Privacy Officer. Details about the job are still MIA, but she'll likely be working closely with Park. One thing's for sure, though: Wong brings some serious Silicon Valley cred to the table, having worked on product copyright and privacy issues at Google for eight years and, more recently, serving as Twitter's legal director. If you recall, the EFF gave that social network high marks when it released its annual report last week -- an auspicious sign if we've ever seen one.

Filed under: Internet

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Via: CNet

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I think we all knew this, but for someone on the inside to come out and admit it it?!? A former FBI counterterrorism agent has hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance...

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Among the people affected by Apple's iOS 6 Maps debacle was claimed project head Richard Williamson, who was reportedly shown the door at the end of 2012. While the details were never directly corroborated outside of Williamson's exit in December, he may have found a new home at Facebook: Bloomberg's sources say that the director joined the social network's mobile software division within the past two weeks. We don't know what (if anything) Williamson might be producing when Facebook has so far declined comment, although there's no question that he has an appropriate pedigree when he managed interface development for key iOS apps and helped get Safari off the ground. Suffice it to say that the internet giant has plenty of projects that might benefit from his overall experience.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Apple, Facebook

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Via: AppleInsider

Source: Bloomberg

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