Google and Motorola's long-awaited Moto X phone, subject of numerous leaks and rumors, will finally be outed in a full-page newspaper ad ... but the phone itself remains largely a mystery. The ad — aimed at readers celebrating the July 4th holiday — instead focuses on the phone's individualistic American pedigree.
"The first smartphone you can design yourself," reads the ad, slated to appear in several national papers on Wednesday, and which Ad Age acquired ahead of publication. And that's not its only first: As Motorola announced earlier this year, it's also "the first smartphone designed, engineered and assembled in the USA."
Just what you can design yourself isn't clear, though. Screen size? Camera resolution? Ruggedness? Motorola isn't saying — nor is there a release date mentioned beyond "soon." Rumors still put it at late summer or early fall.
Many consumers and analysts have been curious what Motorola has been up to since Google acquired it for $12.5 billion in 2011. Clearly, apart from a few handsets probably already in development at the time of the merger, Google's subsidiary has been working on phones that can differentiate themselves from those of Android partners such as Samsung and HTC, but without scaring off the partnership that has made Google's mobile OS so popular. A "custom" phone with an American patriotic streak seems like a safe play.
We'll know more whenever Google decides to let the cat out of the bag, which will almost certainly take place at a press event later this year.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
