Every year, we go through the same ordeal. Rumors and leaks surge just weeks prior to the announcement of a new flagship device. Anticipation and expectations swell. Then the company takes the stage at some high-end venue or even at a massive convention like Mobile World Congress or CES. From there, it seems, everything begins to take a turn for the worse. Rarely do any smartphone launches go off without a hitch – every manufacturer has issues orchestrating the fine art that is launching a smartphone. And below are some of the larger issues that are becoming synonymous with smartphone ...

When you go shopping for a car, are you likely to drive off with whatever happens to be on the lot that day, or are you a buyer who likes to customize? Maybe you know the engine you want, the tires you want, and have everything from color to trim to the options package worked-out to a T. The ability to have such control over your purchases is a luxury that's extended to other fields – you can have a computer put together with nearly any combination of specs you can dream up – yet it hasn't made its way to the world of smartphones... yet. Last week, a rumor suggested that Motorola might ...

Samsung's Galaxy S 4 launch sort of wrapped-up the early-year Android announcements, leaving all the major players with new hardware with the exception of Motorola. Where are Moto's new models? The X phone rumors continue on, though it could still be months before we're able to work out the truth in those, and in the meantime we've seen some leaks of other devices, like that XT912A from last week (above). Now we've got a few additions to bring to the mystery of Motorola's upcoming lineup, with the discovery of several codenames. That XT912A shows up again in a GLBenchmark result, revealing ...

Ever had your eye on a smartphone but the specs weren't quite what you were looking for? Wished it had 2GB instead of 1GB of RAM, or 64GB instead of 32GB internal storage? A whole new slew of rumors about the Motorola X phone are out, and they suggest that Motorola could give customers more control than ever before with choosing just how the hardware of their new phones is configured. First off, the rumors claim that Motorola X is more of a brand than a single phone, and the first X model will be out in June as an octo-core handset. That gives credence to the idea that we might hear it ...

Yesterday, we heard some new rumors about Motorola's so-called X phone, including a possible new name and a number of hardware specs. The source behind all that news was sketchy, at best, so we were left without the ability to put an abundance of faith in the claims. Today we get to hear some new details on the X phone, but this time the specs aren't quite so ostentatious. Instead of that quite high-end-sounding 16/5-megapixel main/front camera combo, this new rumor claims that the main camera would top out at 10 megapixels, though it does leave the door open for a very-high-res ...

Motorola's X phone has been the subject of many rumors so far, but we've heard quite little about the hardware itself; sure, there's been some general talk about materials or even a really high-end camera, but little in the way of hard specs. Today we get a breakdown of just what kind of silicon the phone could be packing, as well as learn a little more about its name. The image above is apparently not any sort of official render, but the name itself is interesting. Could the X phone be slated to arrive as the Motorola nXt? Will it remain the X and that "nXt" could be part of the ...

The latest U.S. numbers are in from comScore for the three-month average period ending January 2013 and, while there aren't any changes in the ranking, the percentage points are just a tad different. Apple and Samsung are still in their comfortable leading positions in the OEM standings, both registering a slight growth, while HTC, still in third, is losing a bit of ground. Compared to October 2012, Apple has managed to strengthen its leading position by adding 3.5% to its figures for a total of 37.8%. Samsung is also on the rise only adding 1.9% this time for a total of 21.4%, followed ...

We've spoken a couple times about the effect Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility will have on the company's future smartphones, often in the context of the rumored Motorola X phone. The official word has been that when Google took control last year, Motorola already had a twelve to eighteen month pipeline of products that were already in development, meaning it wouldn't be until sometime later this year at the earliest before Google's influence would really start making an appreciable impact. Now Google's CFO is bringing up the subject again, and he's got some less than glowing ...