Mobile Phone News

unverified information have run rampant that the head of Motorola’s soon-to-be-independent Mobile Devices division, Sanjay Jha, has plans to high-tail back to the Californian home from whence he came (where his family still resides, coincidentally) once the split wraps up. That may still be the case, but it seems like it’s not necessarily happening any time soon coming off comments this week from the dude himself. In comments to shareholders on Monday, Jha said that “the mobile devices headquarters is in [Chicago suburb] Libertyville, and that will continue at the point of the split,” qualifying the statement by saying that he’d “evaluate [their] needs” afterward but that doesn’t “know” that relocating the business “is a driving priority right at this time.” Moving the business clearly has personal benefits for Jha — not to mention likely brings a refreshed Motorola access to a greater pool of high-tech talent in the Valley — but regardless of what happens, he says that he doesn’t think the company will “dramatically change [its] space in Chicago.” Might not be a bad idea to fly all the engineers away from those nasty Chicago winters for a couple months, anyway, right?

Motorola’s Jha: moving headquarters to Cali not a ‘driving priority’ originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 04 May 2010 19:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We’ve already seen the MILESTONE showing off multitouch capability, something the DROID clearly lacks in the States despite the fact that Android 2.0 rocks kernel support for it — and at this time we’ve got another smoking gun: the official spec sheet. A quick glance at Motorola’s tech specs for the Euro-flavored handset lists “pinch and zoom” as an interface feature, so yeah, it seems like this’ll be in the shipping firmware. There’s speculation out there that Apple was somehow involved in making sure that multitouch “fell” down a flight of stairs before reaching US-bound Android devices, but really, it’s anyone’s guess what’s continue in this place — and Moto’s official statement isn’t helping much:

“We work very closely with our carriers and partners to deliver differentiated consumer experiences on our mobile devices. At times, similar devices come to market with different features, depending on the region, carrier preferences and consumer needs.”

Nor is Google’s:

“The Android 2.0 framework includes support for multi-touch. As with other platform technologies, such as the text-to-speech engine, carriers and OEMs can choose to implement it.”

So let the speculation — and the firmware hacking — start.

Filed under: Handsets, Software, HTC, Samsung, Windows Mobile