Motorola phones

Motorola is one of the oldest manufacturers of telecommunications equipment including mobile phones. The company was founded in 1928 but did not operate under the name Motorola until 1947. Before that, it was called Galvin Manufacturing Corporation after its founder Paul Galvin.

Motorola has not existed since 2011. After several dramatically bad years, the company was split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. The former now deals with walkie-talkies, among other things. Motorola Mobility is responsible for smartphones and was bought by Google in 2011 before being sold on to Lenovo in 2014.

Motorola history

In 1984, Motorola released the first mobile phone for the US consumer market; the DynaTAC 8000X. The device was nearly a kilo heavy and had a talk time of no more than half an hour. Nevertheless, the device captured the imagination and it featured in many films. The DynaTAC saw a further development to the MicroTAC that featured a flap for the keyboard. The flip phone was born.

The models that followed kept getting smaller and thinner. The Razr series captured the imagination with its wafer-thin models and were wildly popular for a long time. 130 million of them would cross the counter. After the rise of the modern smartphone with its large touchscreen, the popularity of Motorola's clamshell models quickly declined. In 2009, Motorola stepped fully into the Android adventure with the introduction of the Droid. However, a very good selling phone the company would never release again after which it was split up and sold to Google in 2011. In 2014, Google resold the company without the valuable telecoms patents to China's Lenovo, which still releases phones under the Motorola name.

Motorola ROKR E1; the ancestor of the iPhone

Motorola was one of the reasons why Apple released the iPhone. In 2005, Motorola, in collaboration with Apple, released the Motorola ROKR E1; a music phone with iTunes. Although the device still most resembled an iPod that you could make calls with, rumours suggest that Apple was so disappointed with the end result that they flipped the iPad project they were already working on at the time and would make a phone first. In 2007, the iPhone was launched and that is seen as the beginning of the end for Motorola.

Motorola Moto series

Back to today's Motorola. With a few exceptions, the current models are all given the series name 'Moto'. This subseries consists of large-screen Android smartphones. It also used to carry series including the RAZR, RIZR, KRZR and ROKR but no new models have been released in these for years. The current product range consists of;

• Moto C - Entry-level budget models
• Moto E - Low-end series
• Moto G - Midrange series
• Moto X - High-end series
• Moto Z - Flagships with Moto Mod support

Moto Mods

Motorola is one of the few manufacturers still actively releasing semi-modular phones. Instead of removing components from the phone, the Moto Z series allows you to attach modules. With this, these Moto Mods add functionality. There are Moto Mods available with an extra battery, with 5G support and with a built-in projector. Most Moto Mods are mutually compatible so you can use it on multiple Z-series models, even on a newer model.

Motorola smartwatches

Motorola is responsible for one of the first modern smartwatches; the Moto 360. A round watch with round screen and a horizontal strip at the bottom; the so-called flat tire. There would be two versions of it, the last of which was released in 2015. The smart watches run under Google's Android Wear which has since been renamed Wear OS.