Motorola has started rolling out ads for the release of its first smartphone after Google wrapped up its purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion last year.
Ad Age revealed the first Moto X ads would be printed today in US papers like the New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. While the ads are patriotic, suggesting the device was "designed, engineered and assembled in the US", they do not contain any images of the Moto X.
Last week, PhoneArena released leaked images of what is believed to be the new Motorola flagship smartphone. And last month, @evleaks revealed some of the device specifications indicating it would perhaps be a mid-range smartphone and not come in at the high end of the market.
The Moto X is rumoured to be powered by a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor, have 2GB of RAM, with a 10MP camera in the back and a 2MP camera in the front. PhoneArena expects the device to make its official debut on 1 August.
The smartphone is believed to run a stock version of Android, making it open to customisation. The adverts further point towards this notion by stating the Moto X is "the first smartphone that you can design yourself".
Motorola first hinted it was working on a proudly American smartphone when its CEO Dennis Woodside spilled the beans at the D11 conference in May. Motorola later confirmed Woodside's statements about the Moto X in a press statement.
Motorola is watching
Amid the hype around Motorola's 'patriotic' new phone, security concerns have arisen after a report by Business Insider, stating Motorola has been collecting usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses and other data from at least one of its models.
The analysis done by engineering expert Ben Lincoln suggests the information has not been encrypted, making private details accessible to any party collecting data over a network. However, the analysis was only done on one of Motorola's smartphone models, the Droid X2, with traffic between the device and Motorola's servers being monitored.
Lincoln highlights that sending private data using unprotected methods compromises the device and leaves it open to the hands of hackers. He found Motorola collects both Facebook and Twitter usernames and passwords. It is also able to trace user whereabouts by using the GPS coordinates when uploading an image to Facebook.
Motorola has not yet commented.
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