Next Motorola Smartphones to Get MicroSD Cards, Front LED Flashes [Rumors]

There are rumors that Motorola is about to unveil new smartphones with new great features.

Droid-Life wrote that Jose Arturo, a Verizon device test engineer, stated that the Motorola DROID Turbo is expected to have the Lollipop update by mid-June 2015. Arturo is currently testing the Android 5.1 on the Verizon DROID flagship. He discussed about the bugs and speed problems that need to be addressed. He mentioned that the delay in the latest release of Motorola's high-end smartphones was caused by Verizon's nationwide HD Voice, VoLTE and band 4 LTE usage.

Verizon is aiming to make HD Voice service as acceptable as possible and that it does not impact voice quality. The company is currently working on the transition between their 3G and LTE networks to guarantee that the handsets will work well on XLTE. Furthermore, the delays in software updates were caused by lack of funding for test verifications, according to Arturo.

Based on the same Droid-Life article, Arturo mentioned that Motorola is currently working on a couple of new features for the next Moto X. The test engineer said that Motorola will deliver a front facing flash for selfies as well as microSD slots. Phone Arena reported on rumors that the third-generation Motorola Moto X will include a 16-megapixel rear camera with Clear Pixel technology. The new Moto X's rear cam is also rumored to include OIS for taking clear and stable shots as well as the ability to record in slow motion.

Motorola's current high-end handsets, like the Google Nexus 6, do not include expandable internal memory, so the addition of microSD slots would be advantageous for users. The Moto G and Moto E came with microSD memory card slots, allowing users to store more content over the 8 GB internal storage.

Anandtech reported that it has been six months since Moto G was launched. Motorola is coming up with LTE support for its upcoming model, although the company has not provided specifics regarding frequency support. There will be at least support for bands 2, 4 and 17 in the United States. Android Central revealed that the Moto G 4G will feature the same specs as the one released in November 2014 such as the quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU, 1 GB of RAM and Android 4.4 KitKat. The two big changes are the 4G LTE support and microSD slot.

Users will have to wait for an official announcement in the coming days to determine whether the rumors are true.