Lenovo exec lays out Moto(rola)’s 2016 plans

Lenovo seems to be shaking up the Motorola brand in more ways than just branding technicalities. Tech Sina sat down with Lenovo‘s Senior VP, Chen Xudong and the exec shared what’s to come for the bat-wing logoed brand.

It doesn’t surprise us that the bridging of brands means that the Motorola profile will change to reflect the interest of Lenovo and Motorola – two brains in one head if you will – yet Lenovo will be the one wearing the pants in this relationship.

He shared four big puzzle pieces and here they are:

All Moto-branded devices will come with an embedded fingerprint sensor in 2016

Moto-branded products that launch in 2016 will be either 5-inches or larger

Moto-branded products will be designed in a way to reflect Eastern and Western needs

Moto and Lenovo’s UI will merge to create a new skin that will be available in 2017

Those are some big bombs to drop so early in the year and comes during a recent period that has had many questions answered – the future of Motorola especially – which they clarified last week.

Now we’ll share Android Authority’s analysis of what 2016 will mean for Moto devices.

Biometric security

The manufacturer has flirted with the idea before – on the Nexus 6 – though they scrapped it towards the end. But it was once on the telco specific (AT&T) ATRIX 4G, albeit leaning towards Lenovo’s slide-type fingerprint sensors. We haven’t seen anything similar since then but since most smartphone makers are doing so, it’s time for Moto to do the same – it’ll even fit nicely in that rear dimple.

Going bigger

Based on their statement last week about “Vibe” and “Moto” devices, we could’ve seen this coming. Moto will occupy the higher end and from what we’ve seen in Motorola’s trend of devices getting bigger, it’s a clear no brainer. No Moto Es will exist once they start marketing the two ranges differently with entry devices be relegated to the Vibe name.

Promise of design based on market needs

Motorola devices of this generation aren’t ugly, in fact, they look pretty good. The dimple is a matter of opinion but since Lenovo’s CEO has positive impressions on how they look, it shouldn’t warrant any big changes.

Merging UIs

We’re not too happy about this. These days people usually buy a Motorola because its UI is almost stock and whatever they add turns out to be actually useful. Do you want them to return to the MOTOBLUR days? Google did them a favour after purchasing them, please leave that alone – we beg of you.

A bulky skin would mean longer delays for updates and they wouldn’t want that – surely irking existing users familiar with the current Moto.

Final thoughts

It’s likely that more information will be available as we’ve come to know that they like to contradict their older announcements with new ones. The next card they play will allow us to get a better picture of the whole 2016 master plan, we just hope the disruption is positive.

[ SOURCE, VIA, 2 ]