Rumors that Google and Motorola are quietly working on a new handset known as the X-Phone have been making the rounds for weeks now (thanks in large part to a Wall Street Journal report from late December), but those rumors may have gotten a big boost in credibility earlier today.
You see, Motorola was apparently looking for a special someone to fill a job opening of theirs on LinkedIn. The position? “Sr Director Product Managment [sic], X-Phone.”
Naturally, it wasn’t long at all before Motorola yanked the listing, but that doesn’t mean that the company has necessarily stopped its search for someone to fill the position. A near-identical version of the job listing can be found if you poke around on Motorola Mobility’s job search site, with all references to the X-Phone carefully excised. Here, see for yourself: an image of the original LinkedIn listing (courtesy of Droid-Life) can be found below, and here’s the cleaned up listing from Motorola’s job portal.
There’s nothing technical to be gleaned from the listing so those of you hoping for a better understanding of what the X-Phone will bring to the table should just cool your jets now. The Journal’s recent report pointed to a high-end flagship device meant to better compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple (an approach that mobile also-ran Sony may soon run with), as well as greater focus on camera performance and design. That lack of more recent hard information hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from kicking into high gear lately, and some of the reports floating around are downright kooky.
There are murmurs that the X-Phone will be available for $299 unsubsidized for “all carriers” for instance, and that it’ll officially be introduced to the world at Google’s next I/O conference in May. Then again, there are just as many reports that an LG-sourced Nexus 5 will take the stage at that time, so for now your guess is probably as good as mine.
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