At an event earlier today Motorola, a Google company unveiled its latest ‘budget’ smartphone called “Moto G”. The theme of the entire event and the ideology behind the product was to make premium features available at a non-premium price.

While announcing the new Moto G product Motorola executives mentioned Apple’s iPhone 5s, Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and HTC a few times. Moto G features 4.5 inch high resolution screen with 329 ppi and 720p. The executives were quick to point out that the screen has better quality than Apple’s flagship iPhone 5s. Moto G runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.2 GHz, 1GB RAM, and offers “all-day” battery life with around 14 hours of talk time on 3G networks. In comparison, iPhone 5s according to Apple offers 10 hours of battery life on 3G.

After unveiling the hardware features and sharing the idea behind creating a budget phone Punit Soni who is responsible for software product management for Moto G took the stage to talk about software. Soni mentioned the three main tenets of their software strategy for Moto G. The first being build on pure foundation of Android, second build experiences that compliment Google services and not compete with them and lastly ensure that the software can give value back to the users.

If you’ve ever seen any Android device in the market manufactured by Samsung, HTC or Sony among many others you will immediately realise that all these companies have two things in common. They add a layer of their own software to the stock OS and bundle services that compete with Google’s software services.

Soni began to elaborate on the three main tenets by saying:

In today’s ecosystem mobile manufactures have a very confused relationship with Android they build on top of it but then they add all of these custom skins which detract from the user experience and hogs resources then they go ahead and put duplicative software on top of it which basically compete with Google services.

He goes on to mention that devices bundled with multiple mail apps, app stores, video players and music players results in “non-intuitive” and “cluttered” user interface.

At the time of purchase of Motorola by Google for a record  $12.5 billion the search giant claimed that they bought the company to secure Android’s position in future by acquiring key patents. Even though Google claims to treat all Android partners equally, at today’s event Soni was sending an indirect yet strong message to ‘other’ Android device manufacturers.

While referencing to the custom skins the slide Soni used had TouchWiz, Sense UI and Xperia UI. Clearly, targeting the top three Android manufacturers to convey that Moto G’s software strategy is superior to other Android partners. So, in essence Motorola a company owned by Google called Samsung, Sony and HTC “confused”.

Soni then goes on to advocate the use of “pure Android” in mobile devices and says:

A device that’s built on pure Android with minor optimisations is gonna have an incredible high performance

Here again Soni is sending out a clear message that any device with custom UI layers may be missing out on high performance as other non-stock apps and skins may hog more resources than required.

This could have a long term effect on customer mindset when they buy Android devices. Users could soon start associating “real” Android experience with Motorola (since Google owns Motorola) and “spinoff” experience with other smartphone manufacturers.

When it comes to smartphones most devices are beginning to look quite similar in terms of hardware so ultimately manufacturers try to differentiate their products with custom skins and other software services. However, at today’s event it appears that Google might have used the announcement of Moto G as an opportunity to convey Google’s stand on device manufacturers trying to add custom layers.

If this wasn’t enough, Motorola went on to compare performance of Moto G in terms of answering calls, making calls, launching browser, returning home and booting to Samsung Galaxy S4 to show how stock Android OS was clearly the winner.

This is the best validation of a strategy which involves disciplined software which focuses on optimisation that creates value for the user

In his attempt to bring attention to stock Android experience Soni suggests that software strategy being followed by other Android device manufacturers is rather indisciplined.

So, in conclusion on one hand Google’s Motorola tried to highlight the features of its new low-priced smartphone but on the other it clearly didn’t fall short of ridiculing Google’s Android partners.

It will be interesting to see how Samsung, HTC and Sony respond to Motorola claiming that their devices are non-intuitive, have cluttered interface and custom skins that hog resources.

Following the release of the iPhone 5 on Friday, iFixit went ahead and conducted one of their famous teardowns for Apple’s latest and greatest version of the iPhone. iFixit noted in their teardown that the iPhone 5 is tightly packed, far more than the iPhone 4S, likely because of the thinner and taller glass and aluminum enclosure.

Because the iPhone 5 is opened front-to-back, replacing a cracked screen is going to be easier than ever. Thank you, Apple!

Tools required to open up the iPhone 5 are a suction cup and a Pentalobe screwdriver, making it much easier to open than previous models. As noted, the iPhone 5 is still using Apple’s in-house Pentalobe screws, developed specifically to prevent third parties from dissecting the device.

For the iPhone 5, Apple has switched to a different battery chemistry, with a higher voltage and slightly larger capacity than the iPhone 4S. Let’s see how the battery specs stack up.

iPhone 5 Battery: 3.8V – 5.45Wh – 1440mAh. Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G. Standby time: Up to 225 hours.

iFixit removed the aluminum back and tore down every part, including the new 8 pin dock connector, the battery, the A6 chip, and the Qualcomm chip for LTE connectivity.

The A6 processor is the first Apple System-on-Chip (SoC) to use a custom design, based off the ARMv7 instruction set.

Because the A6 is not an ARM-specific CPU design, this gives Apple the ability to tailor the A6 towards their needs.

According to Chipworks, the B8164B3PM silkscreen label denotes 1GB Elpida LP DDR2 SDRAM.

Following their step by step teardown, iFixit ultimately gave the iPhone 5 a 7/10 for repairability, slightly higher than the 6/10 they gave the iPhone 4S. The full teardown video and summary from iFixit can be seen below.

{Via BGR}

UPDATE: Apple has announced “The new iPad” with retina display, A5X chip with quad-core graphics, 5 MP iSight camera and more.

Apple is all set to unveil iPad 3 at today’s launch event but, new details about the upcoming product announcement continue to be revealed. iPad 3 specs have been widely reported as the third gen tablet is expected to feature retina display with a resolution of 2,048 by 1,536 pixels, a dual core A5X chip and now details about RAM have been published too.

A new report by The Verge reveals that in addition to “powerful GPU” iPad 3 specs will also include “more RAM”. 9to5 Mac was quick to point out that their sources claim Apple’s next generation tablet will include 1GB RAM. The new A5X chip is being now referred to as “A5 on steroids”. With a high resolution display on the new iPad it would require a powerful graphics processing unit and more RAM for fast and responsive applications.

Apple usually doesn’t reveal technical specification such as RAM in its keynote event or product descriptions. In the past RAM has only been confirmed when the device goes on sale and iPhone / iPad repair sites teardown the device and reveal specifications that are not published by Apple.

The rumor mill also seem to suggest that iPad 3 will finally bring LTE connectivity to Apple’s iOS device. The third generation iPad is expected to be available on Verizon and AT&T networks.

To be clear, that would mean two distinct, separate versions of the LTE tablet (one for each network). In addition, there’s a third international model which does double duty on 3G; a CDMA / GSM model using a similar radio chipset to the iPhone 4S (a Qualcomm Gobi chip).

Other specifications leaked so far point to a thicker iPad, better battery life, “Smart Case”, and improved cameras. Even though Apple has always aimed for its next iOS device to be thinner than the previous one it would be interesting to see if iPad 3 actually turns out to be thicker when compared with iPad 2.

Have you been waiting for LTE iPad? What are your expectations from the event? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Apple is expected to unveil and announce iPad 3 release date at a keynote event on March 7th. Over the past few months, a number of reliable sources have claimed that the iPad 3 would be released with not only hardware upgrades, but 4G LTE connectivity as well.

4G LTE roll out plans in the US are still underway and carriers are working towards proving the next generation fast networking to its subscribers. According to iMore’s sources iPad 3 will indeed feature 4G LTE connectivity:

4G LTE networking has been another mystery surrounding the iPad 3, with a compatible Qualcomm chipset becoming available, but international LTE coverage is still slim, and in some cases a year or more away. It sounds like Apple has 4G LTE lined up for iPhone 5 this October, but we’re still not certain if the iPad 3 will get it earlier.

The report notes that the source is same as the one who informed them about Apple’s iPad 3 media event scheduled for March 7th.

The same source that originally told iMore Apple would be holding their iPad 3 event on March 7 has now let us know that the announcement will in fact include 4G LTE networking. We’d heard previously that 4G LTE would be coming to iOS in 2012, but not whether it would make the cut for iPad 3, or whether Apple would save it for iPhone 5 in October.

4G LTE has only become popular over the last year in the United States and is not yet available on every network. If Apple is to include LTE networking, they are going to have to roll out the iPad 3 on Verizon which is currently the only network offering 4G LTE, then transition to others over time.

If Apple chooses not to include 4G LTE, they would have ot wait an entire year until they could include the technology in the iPad 4, although a few reports suggest that LTE model may make an appearance a few months following the initial WiFi only release. Apple’s media event is going to be Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco and will begin at 10AM PT/1PM ET.

{via Mac Rumors}

When it does arrive it is quite likely that Apple will break its longtime exclusive partnership with Infineon for the iPhones Radio chip, and go with rival company Qualcomm.

Why is that? Well for starters Intel recently purchased Infineon outright, and for various reasons the relationship between Intel and Apple has been cooling of late. Part of that is more to do with restrictions Intel has put on which GPUs Apple can mate with the CPUs it buys from them. i.e. Only Intel’s. One could also surmise that Apple don’t particularly like being tied to Intel for all their grocery shopping needs, and iPhone chips as well as desktop and laptop chips is a chip too far.

Another good reason though, is that Qualcomm can offer Apple not only a CDMA baseband chipset that will work on networks like Verizon’s they can also offer chipsets that will open up pretty much every mobile phone network in the world to the iPhone.

Of course, Apple may well split where it gets its baseband chips from between both Infineon and Qualcomm, just as it splits its real GPU sourcing for its computers between NVIDIA and AMD/ATI.

Either way, expect new networks for the iPhone 5.

Are you tired of the Verizon rumors? Or hyped because it really going to happen this time? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…