Google takes phone battle to Apple

The factory in Fort Worth that 15 years ago built Nokia handsets is to start work this summer on what Google claims will be the only smartphones made in the US, The Guardian published.

The fruits of two years of work, since the company's purchase of Motorola in 2011, will go on display this autumn, when it launches an entirely new range of handsets led by a flagship device named the Moto X. It is claimed the phones will be able to predict what their owner wants to do next. The devices will be packed with sensors that can detect whether they are sitting idle in a pocket or in use on a car dashboard, and change their behaviour accordingly.

While Apple's critics say the once wildly inventive company is running out of ideas, Motorola's chief executive, Dennis Woodside, has promised to bring "audaciousness" and "innovation" back to mobile computing.

In a future-gazing presentation at the AllThingsD conference in California, Woodside, who has been charged with turning around the company that invented the first mobile phones of the 1980s, said he was also working on wearable technology.

Motorola executive Regina Dugan, a former director of advanced projects for the US military who has been described as an "impresario of mad science", showed off an electronic "tattoo" and a pill which contains a transmitter whose battery is powered by stomach acid, both of which can be used to send signals that replace passwords for unlocking devices.

"That becomes my first superpower," Dugan said. "My arms are like wires; my hands are like alligator clips; when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, my car, I'm authenticated in." The pill, made by a company called Proteus, changes the swallower's whole body into a password. It has already been approved for medical uses and put on trial in Motorola's labs.

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