Recently some of the system dumps from the upcoming Motorola Sholes/Tao/Droid hit the Developer community, and they have been trying to piece the puzzle together of what the Motorola Sholes/Tao/Droid is all about. We got our hands on a new app which looks like it will be front and center when the device finally hits the shelves, Motorola Phone Portal.
Those that remember using the Motorola Phone Tools app to hack their Motorola’s back in the day (I’m getting all “Ahmad – Back in the Day” about my v600, v810, and RAZR) will instantly recognize this little gem, but it’s been updated for Android and provides some pretty cool functionality. Basically, Motorola Phone Tools (MPP) serves as an all-in-one phone manager that allows users to easily view, edit, create, delete, and play their contacts, ringtones, photos, wallpaper, and media. The key difference now is, the app is web-based and you log into your phone from directly from your browser! No installing “modems” and drivers on your Windows machine (painful), just fire up the app and press the “Connect with Wi-Fi button. When you press the button, the app prompts you to either turn on Wi-Fi, or connect over USB. For this experiment, I chose Wi-Fi.
MPP lets you add/edit/delete/browse your contacts, photos, bookmarks, browser history, and media in an easy-to-use interface. Playing media directly from the device in the browser worked very well, and the picture viewer/slideshow feature is pretty damn cool. So with MPP you’ll be able to play/show-off your media anywhere from any browser. If Moto adds a Social/Sharing aspect to this, they will have a winner on their hands.
So there you have it kids, a little taste of what’s to come with the Sholes/Tao/Droid. The original Moto Phone Tools was a pretty handy app (when it worked), and the new MPP looks to be just as functional, if not more so. I am sure it will help a lot of users manage their contacts/media/content when it gets released, and the ability to do slideshows and play media from your device directly from your browser is pretty slick. I hope Moto adds more features and functionality to it as time goes on, but this seems like a sign of good things to come. Grab the .apk file below and play away!
