Folks on Verizon got quite the treat last week, with the Droid Turbo finally being announced and put up for sale, as well as the Nexus 6 beginning (and ending minutes later) its pre-order period. Now, you guys have had your fill or high-spec Android devices, but what about the rest of the world? Actually, we might have something for you there. Meet Guilherme Henrique. He is your average Google+ user, and shared some photos of a new device he was unpacking and looking around on the daily commute. Now, what makes this and Guilherme special? The device he’s got some snapshots of. It’s called the Moto Maxx. Sound a little odd? It should.
Motorola is a company of many trades and carriers, as seen with the Moto X and the Moto G, both from this year and last, as well as the Nexus 6. But, with the launch of the Droid Turbo, the powerhouse that only Verizon customers could have or use, they locked down again. The Droid line of devices are only ever Verizon exclusive, so that’s fair. But what’s this device, then? It looks, from the images, to be a Droid Turbo, called the Moto Maxx, that has the same camera, at 21 megapixels, battery, at 3900 mAh, storage, at 64 GB, display, at QuadHD (2560 by 1440 pixels), processor, a Snapdragon 805 running at 2.7 Ghz, and turbo charging abilities. But, what? The back of the device, which appears to be the same ballistic nylon material which the Droid Turbo had, just without the ‘Droid’ nameplate down at the bottom of the device. What else can we say? Well, we know two things just from the pictures. First, there is no Verizon messaging app in the dock on the homescreen, which the Turbo had (since it was a Verizon-only device). Second, we know that it takes SIM cards, as evinced by the ‘no SIM’ indicator in the notification bar, letting you know there is no way you can get service.
The last this we’d like to call attention to is the screenshot of the system settings, where it says the name of the device (Moto Maxx). Look at the ‘Versao da banda be base’, which translates to baseband version. The things to note are as follows. First, the word ‘quark’, which appears in the Turbo’s leaking history and system/baseband information. Second, the ‘MDM9625’ in the baseband information. The MDM9625 is an LTE modem from Qualcomm (likely part of the Snapdragon 805 chip inside it). Why’s that matter? Well, the MDM9625 works to get signal to the device, obviously, and it has a select type or types of compatible networks and network technologies. Among them are not Verizon’s, but UMTS, which is found under GSM -technology networks (which Verizon is not). This means that the Moto Maxx is able to be used on GSM networks, as well as LTE. With this in mind, do you think that the rest of the world, or select countries, could get the Moto Maxx, a GSM-version of the Droid Turbo, and use it? How much do you think the Maxx will matter to people if it comes out as a GSM device, which is compatible with far more carriers that the CDMA-based Turbo (setting aside the Verizon-locked nature of it)? Would this be a good competitor for the Nexus 6 about now too, or should it be delayed until after those pre-orders ship out? Let us know down below.
