Motorola Press Event in NYC

As you probably know, I work for Motorola – but until recently have had very little to do with the mobile devices side of the business. So it’s not shocking that when I traveled up to NYC last week for our press event in NYC, I was in store for some surprises.

Sascha Segan (gimpy from a broken toe, but witty as ever) has already covered the new IDEN phones, and I only have one minor point to add. Don’t knock the rubberized phone backing until you try it. Love the grip.

On the other hand, nobody has made much comment about the slew of Bluetooth accessories on display. When I say slew, I mean they almost equaled mobile phones in their proliferation. And, while the Bluetooth devices are first and foremost designed for wireless communication, their expanding functionality is quite interesting. Check out this little gadget to the right for streaming music from a PC, DAP or mobile phone to your mobile phone headphones. (It’s the piece plugged in to the bottom of the iPod -yes Motorola had an iPod on display) Sure, lots of devices do this kind of thing, but I love the idea of packaging this with your phone. Your earbuds theoretically go anywhere your phone does (i.e. everywhere), and if you take along the tiny little plug-in gadget, you can stream music wirelessly from virtually any device.

Then there’s the GPS device I saw. Yup. GPS. Don’t know much about the Motorola T815 and didn’t get a chance to play with it, but just the fact that Motorola is incorporating GPS in its portfolio is fascinating to me. Convergence indeed. (The device gets paired up with a Motorola smart phone)

Of course, no Motorola event would be complete without massive presence from the RAZR2, the new Q9 and the Z8-I’m-only-available-in-Europe-ha-ha-you-silly-Americans. Shiny toys, and again illustrative of the convergence trend. Most interesting to me is the RAZR2 “See What I See” function. You can show somebody on the other end of the phone a video of what you’re looking at. As I’ve said before, I think this is a logical first step toward full video telephony.