Google's Eric Schmidt Reveals Moto X Smartphone

As he played up the improving relationship with Apple, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt openly uses Motorola's as yet unannounced Moto X smartphone.

Companies like Apple and Google typically want no information about up-coming products to leak ahead of time. And so while they may be fighting a losing battle against the internet rumour mill, they don't typically expect one of their own to openly use an unannounced product.

But that is just what has happen with the Moto X smartphone which is being manufactured by the Google-owned Motorola and due to be launched sometime this year. At the annual Allen and Co media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on Thursday Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt openly walked about with an unidentified smartphone which is widely believed to be the Moto X.

The device looks similar to the HTC One featuring a curved silver/white rear with a camera enclosure in the centre above a flash and next to a speaker. Other details which can be extrapolated from the images taken by Reuters at the conference is that the headphone jack is in the middle of the top edge and the front is covered by a single pane of glass.

At the end of May CEO of Motorola Dennis Woodside confirmed a smartphone codenamed the Moto X was in development and when it does launch would become the first smartphone to be designed, engineered and assembled entirely in the US.

The most recent rumours suggest the phone, which is likely to have a different name, will be launched next month.

Taken over

As well as being the first phone made entirely int he US, it will be the first phone released by Motorola which has been developed entirely since it was taken over by Google in a £8bn deal finalised in May 2012.

The phone will run Google's own Android operating system but it is unclear if Google will launch a new version of the software along with the phone. The search giant has said all along that its ownership of Motorola wouldn't give it an advantage over other Android smartphone manufacturers.

Speaking at the event this week, Schmidt touched on the company's relationship with its biggest rival in the smartphone space - Apple. And while the two companies have been battling each other in the market and in courts around the world in the previous couple of years, Schmidt reported that the two companies have had "lots and lots" of meetings over the last 12 months, and that the relationship between them has improved.

While details of the meetings or what they discussed were not forthcoming, Schmidt did say Google Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, who joined him at the press briefing, was leading many of the discussions.

The two companies are in "constant business discussions on a long list of issues," Schmidt said.

Self-driving

While Google Glass is the product most are talking about in 2013, Schmidt addressed another of Google's Moonshot projects saying the company's self-driving car technology was years, rather than decades away from commercial availability but that "the exact way in which it all plays out is not obvious to me."

"The technology has to be right. The regulation has to be right. The partnerships have to be right," he said, noting that Google has talked to "every single car company."