The invite - which could double as a clothing brand ad - simply says "Moto X," the date, the place and "RSVP here." The Motorola "M" floats above looking like the Bat signal.
The invitation features two handsets in the hands of two hip women, one in black and one in white, indicating that, like your style, you can customize the phone just the way you want.
That's it?
Black and white may seem a little on the limited side when it comes to creating a phone that matches the unique you, but from what we've heard many, many more options are due with the Moto X.
Motorola's branding for the phone has centered around a "designed by you" mantra, and so far it sounds as though a palette of colors and engravings will be possible. Users are said to be able to create a personalized default wall paper with a picture, while wood, metal, fabric and ceramic are all tipped as optional casing materials in addition to default plastic.
On the operational side of things, the invite shows a camera lens centered roundly on the back of the device, and the flash below. A jack is clearly visible on the top.
We've heard several times that the phone's sensors will be a thing to marvel, so tuned into your surroundings that the phone even knows when you're traveling in a car. The device is believed to house a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM.
A version running Android 4.2.2 was reportedly in carrier testing, but if Google reveals Android 4.3 next week, perhaps we're in for the updated OS on the Moto X?
After leaving nothing to our imagination thanks to numerousleaks, the Motorola Moto X finally got a release date scheduled. The hotly anticipated smartphone will break cover on August 1st in New York City.
The Moto X launch event invite (click to enlarge)
Rumored specs of the Motorola Moto X include a 720p display and a 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset along with 2 GB of RAM, 10 megapixel rear camera and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Motorola has already announced that the smartphone will be assembled in the United States.
We will be covering the Moto X launch live from the spot on August 1. Be sure to check in for the full scoop on the smartphone.
Apple and Samsung are caught up in a game of Deal or No Deal
Apple's and Samsung's bitter patent disputes have been widely covered for the past few years, with the biggest blow in the case coming in Apple's favor last summer.
In August 2012, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion (around £688M, AU$1.14B) million in damages, though that hefty price tag was dropped to a mere $450.5 million (£295M, AU$489M) earlier in 2013.
While it appeared Apple and Samsung were content to let the courts decide the fates of the various patents in question, there were some secret negotiations happening behind the scenes as well.
According to new documents released by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the Cupertino and South Korean companies have been discussing potential settlements as far back as Apple's $1 billion court victory.
Close, but no cigar
In addition to the ITC documents, sources revealed to the Wall Street Journal the ongoing secret settlement discussions have been both hot and cold, though no agreement has been reached as of yet.
Based on the information available in the heavily censored ITC papers, Samsung at one point offered a broad patent cross-licensing deal to Apple, which would have ended all litigation between the two companies.
Obviously Apple didn't take the deal, but it's not very clear from the ITC's report just how seriously Apple took the offer to begin with.
Both companies spent a great deal of time talking terms between December 2012 and March 2013, with some face-to-face meetings happening in January, though by February it appears the talks had broken down.
The ITC paper mentions a March 22 proposal from Samsung to re-open talks, adding that some of its offers were still on the table, however Apple did not respond by the time the ITC ruled.
Despite the massive amount of redactions in the report, it's clear the ITC didn't believe Samsung's offers were unreasonable, though it would seem Apple disagreed with that assessment.
Love-hate relationship
The curious thing is both Apple and Samsung continue to work together in the manufacturing process, as the South Korean company still provides chips for iOS devices.
However, there are also reports Apple and Samsung have a deal for Sammy to create chips once again in 2015, so it's still unclear just how strong the partnership between these two smartphone giants really is at this point.
For what it's worth, a memorandum of understanding was supposedly drafted by the two companies in February, which the ITC saw as promising for a potential future deal.
"The fact that representatives for both parties were able to reach a memorandum of understanding indicates Samsung is negotiating in good faith and, to be colloquial, is playing in the same ballpark as Apple," the report read.
With all the redactions in the report, it's impossible to tell just why the possible settlement fell through, but if Apple and Samsung are still talking behind closed doors, there's always a chance the ongoing legal battles could finally come to an end.
Given how this past year has played out however, we won't be holding our breath waiting for Apple and Samsung to start getting along.
Nokia Lumia 1020 will go on sale in Europe this quarter and some retailers are already taking pre-orders. The German campaign started at the hefty €799 price tag, but now the price has fallen down to the slight more reasonable €699.
And if you don't feel like paying that much upfront, Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany will be offering the Nokia Lumia 1020 at far lower subsidized rates. Their offers are already available at some online retailers.
Vodafone will give you the Lumia 1020 only for €29.90 if you opt for a two-year contract with a €70/month tariff (calls and data).
T-Mobile's cheapest offer has the Lumia 1020 listed at €149.90 with a 2-yar contract and €80/month plan.
There are some offers from O2 as well, but they are quite steep compared to those we've already mentioned.
Nokia Lumia 1020 has already available on pre-order in the USA exclusively through AT&T and had a great start. The cameraphone is already out of stock because of the high demand and some customers might have to wait a while until they get their hands on the beast.
Lots of EU retailers have the Lumia 1020 listed available with 4 to 6 weeks shipping, which seems about right since the phone is expected to launch in September.
A selection of brightly coloured bodies won't be the only option presented to buyers of the fabled 'cheap iPhone' if and when Apple launches said device, according to reports on Friday.
Leaked documents, courtesy of Chinese social network Weibo, have sparked talk that Apple is working on two variants of the device with different specs, connectivity options and price points.
According to the reports the device codenamed iPhone Zagato will be the cheaper of the two and will pack a Samsung 'HP5' dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, FDD 4G LTE and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.
The second iteration, apparently codenamed Bertone, will be more expensive due to a 'HP6' processor and TDD 4G LTE, which is an alternative standard developed for the Chinese market.
Both handsets will pack the same 4-inch screen size as the iPhone 5, the documents state, but it seems unlikely the cheaper devices would get the Retina Display treatment.
Shady goings on
Fridays reports follow a number of leaks and rumours that have focusing the devices purported colour options.
You might not remember INQ, but you will be aware of its legacy. It's a company that began in 2008, only created a handful of phones, but brought the notion of tight integration of services to the masses.
The INQ1 was a stealth hit for the brand located next to the Thames in Battersea, winning awards for the handset that brought Facebook integration into the handset in 2009 when Android was barely out of the box.
Then came the INQ Chat 3G and Mini 3G, adding in Skype and Windows Messenger to the mix as well as direct links to eBay and the like. That might sound archaic now, but this was before smartphones had really taken off, and the cost of INQ products was squarely aimed at the low end.
At this point, the future looked bright for the firm, and it announced its first Android handset, the INQ Cloud Touch, in 2011, which was dubbed "the Spotify phone", as it had a key that gave direct access to the music streaming service as well as an innovative dedicated info key that flashed up the information the users wanted when pressed.
But that's when the wheels started to come off the hardware wagon. The INQ Cloud Q, which brought a keyboard into the Android mix for the firm, never appeared, and hints of future devices dried up.
The INQ Chat 3G
Poor sales of devices were never given as the official reason for the demise of the hardware business, but there was no doubt that only being available on Three (likely because the parent brand of INQ, Hutchinson Whampoa, also owns the network) reduced the number of possible customers.
"We had a really different product with the INQ Cloud Touch, and that's how we got off the ground," CEO and co-founder Ken Johnstone told TechRadar. "It was quite cheap, but then Samsung would be able to come in at half the cost down to the sheer economy of scale that it has."
In a world now dominated by identikit handsets from Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry (well, the first two), the chunky, plastic, low-cost handsets with a focus on social networking and music seemed to make sense. They gave consumers easy access to the things they used, and for not much money.
The software shop
But with the low sales, INQ made the decision to exit the smartphone business and has instead set up shop as an app developer.
"When we were working on smartphones, it was always fundamentally software that we were doing," admitted Johnstone. "The hardware was outsourced; we did the design in-house but all the detailed hardware, PCB layouts, mechanical engineering, manufacture was by another firm.
"Our core competency was the software that we were working on. So when we pivoted the business it felt like a no-brainer, as we'd created all this value with our software. Plus we could see that the behemoth of Samsung was coming, and we didn't have the economy of scale to compete.
"So now [working on apps] it's a much more front foot feeling, as we're masters of our own destiny. When you're in the hardware business you can launch the best product in the world, but we only had the ability to do a couple of handsets a year and we knew we would be stuck with those for a year and a half, and that didn't feel comfortable."
Discover me, socially
So now the focus is on social discovery. In previous interviews, Johnstone has evangelised about the "social DNA" that runs through INQ thanks to its efforts in the phone space, and there's no doubt that's true.
The Cloud Touch used Facebook's Top Friends ability to draw in large, full-page info on the people you interact with most, and that functionality was drawn off into INQ's People app as it began to experiment with bringing its core functionality to the Android Play Store in 2011.
INQ is now pushing two apps: Material (which uses Facebook and Twitter interests to create a magazine of personalised content for users twice daily), and SoHo (a launcher that takes over your Android phone and gives a scrolling view of Facebook, Twitter or Instagram).
Look at this lovely Material
Both of these are now available in beta form, and both are free. With no indication of making them paid-for in the future, and competing in the tremendously congested social media / mobile magazine space, how can this strategy help INQ rise from the ashes of a smartphone business?
"We created Material and SoHo as it came from people's personal behaviours. We found we were visiting the same websites regularly to find information; people are in the habit of waking up and going to one or two sites, which is very narrow in scope and they're missing out on lots," said Johnstone.
"Now the shackles [of being a phone manufacturer] are off, and we can churn software out quickly. If we want a new feature it can be live in the market a couple of weeks later, whereas that's much, much harder if you're doing lower level handset software."
There's still a large question mark over how you can monetise free apps without resorting to heavy advertising, but Johnstone believes that creating an asset that can accurately track users interests will be an incredibly important asset in the future.
"The thing we've done is work quite closely with some academic research institutions, we're doing some cutting edge work and getting a steer from them into what's working and what's not to create our own engine which determines your interests.
SoHo, so what?
"In Britain and Europe there are good little hubs of research into things like semantic technology, it's a hot and interesting space right now and it really interests us as a team.
"What we're trying to do is radically change the way people discover content, almost like trying to make search obsolete in a mobile context.
"Search has its place and it's amazing, but in a mobile context we don't necessarily have the time to go and search for things.
"It's not an easy thing to do but I don't think anyone has done it well."
The idea is strong: offering up content that you'll want to read without having to want to go and find it. Or with SoHo, having your social feeds as active wallpaper that drip-feeds you the information without needing to open the apps time and again.
However, the current offering is a long way away from that right now. Material will wake you up at half five in the morning to let you know a magazine is available to read, with articles that are only 50 per cent relevant to many and with a lot of repetition from the previous "issue".
Not there yet
Similarly with SoHo, users are finding issues. A look at the comments on the Google Play Store shows that the fact it's a launcher irks some, as well as the fact you can't have multiple panels showing different feeds.
We raised these issues with Simon Davies, INQ's Head of Product, who admitted there was work to be done, but preferred it this way in a beta offering:
"We sometimes get some interesting challenges around localisation [with Material] that we didn't realise when we first started. For instance, football can draw in both soccer and American football, so we rapidly had to roll out updates that looked at where you were and did some clever stuff that figured out what you wanted.
"We've still got a few more elements that we can roll out too. Music is another interesting area for us, as it contains so many different genres. As a result, we've gone to some smart people from universities for different elements of product and added a huge swathe of changes [since the start] for which we're now figuring out patents."
Davies also dismissed the idea that launching without the full range of features was detrimental. He's excited about the beta tag, saying that it's resulted in some great feedback from users that has built engagement and raised mistakes in a constructive way.
There's no doubt that INQ's new approach is refreshing - even the office layout has changed since the days of being a hardware manufacturer, making everything more open plan to unify the teams.
But equally, it's a company taking a huge risk by moving into apps that focus on the user's interest, trying to work out you want to read before you think of it, or giving access to social networks when you're not even looking.
The current apps need a lot of work to take on the might of Flipboard or even Facebook Home - Johnstone might claim that INQ isn't creating something that rivals these names, as its apps are more about discovery, but there's no doubt in the eyes of the user there are similarities.
But it's great to see a company in the UK trying to make waves in a new area of technology - if it can truly create a twice daily magazine that gives you content that you would never have found otherwise would be awesome, and would blow the likes of HTC's BlinkFeed and Flipboard out of the water.
And Johnstone isn't ruling out a return to hardware in the future either, although probably not in the same guise as before:
"We won't do the hardware ourselves, but it's not impossible that you'll see the INQ brand out there one day, maybe as software on someone else's hardware."
INQ tried to swim against the tide and bring the cool apps to the front and centre of phones for a low cost. It would be great if that ethos didn't die because of a congested smartphone market.
Australian carrier Telstra has received a confirmation that the Samsung Galaxy Note II 4G model will skip Android 4.2.2 and will be updated straight to the 4.3 Jelly Bean. It doesn't seem to be a regional thing either - all Galaxy Note II units might be treated that way.
Here is the official quote from Telstra's support page:
Samsung have elected globally to skip the 4.2.2 update for this device and will instead go to a newer version of Android. No schedule has been provided for this update.
We already know that Samsung Galaxy Note II will live long enough to taste the Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, so owners shouldn't worry about the Android updates.
Meanwhile, Samsung still manages to keep the upcoming Galaxy Note III under wraps, but a picture taken with it popped up in Picasa yesterday. It hardly gives us much info, but it does confirm the device model number - N9005. This will most probably going to be the Snapdragon 800 version of the phablet with the revamped Exynos 5 powering the N9000 version.
The Note III will be announced on September 4 ahead of IFA in Berlin. It's expected to bring 5.7" 1080p Super AMOLED display and 3GB of RAM.
