Moto smartphones releasing this year will feature a fingerprint scanner; Google Play coming to China and more

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Published 11 Jan 2016

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Speaking to Tech Sina, Chen Xudong, the SVP of Lenovo Group and president of the company’s China and APAC regions, has revealed details about future products from both Lenovo and Motorola that will be released later this year.

Speaking about the product portfolio of Lenovo, Chen said that the company launched too many smartphones last year that cluttered its lineup. This year the company aims to cut down on the number of smartphones it will release to make things easier for consumers to understand. He also made it clear that Motorola’s products will now focus towards the high-end, while Lenovo’s Vibe series will fill the bottom end.

When questioned about the lack of a fingerprint scanner on all smartphones from Motorola released last year, the president expressed his surprise and said he did not understand this move as well. Nonetheless, he reassured that all smartphones from Motorola released this year will feature a fingerprint scanner. He also confirmed that Motorola will not launch any smartphone with a screen size of around 4.7-inches as the original Moto X. Any smartphone that Motorola launches this year will feature a minimum screen size of at least 5-inches. Xudong also mentions that while he likes the design of Motorola’s handset, the company will be tweaking it to better suit the tastes of consumers from the eastern and western part of the world.

Worryingly, Xudong said that both Lenovo and Motorola will merge their Vibe UI and Moto’s near stock Android UI into a new UI that will be unveiled in 2017. It is unclear if this means that future Moto handsets will run a stock version of Android or not.

Additionally, the president also confirmed that Google will indeed be launching Google Play in China this year. Reports and rumors about Google bringing a special version of Google Play to China have been making their way to the internet since last year. The company was initially supposed to announce a China-only version of Google Play with the launch of its new Nexus handsets last year, but that did not happen for some reason.

[Via Tech Sina]