Motorola reveals plans for its own Android interface skin

PanARMENIAN.Net - Despite officially becoming a Google-owned company earlier this week, it appears Motorola won't be utilizing the stock Android interface on its phones. Instead, the company has revealed it plans to release its own skin for the Android interface, Neowin reports.

The skin won't actually differ greatly from the stock interface, according to videos on Motorola's Japanese site. Some notable changes include new icons and formatting issues, as well as changes to the standard lock and home screens. Motorola's new lock screen includes quick access to the camera, text messages, phone book and home screen. Additional widgets have been added to Motorola phones as well, including specialized social networking tools. Additionally, Motorola has overhauled the stock Android camera to include the ability to capture stills while recording video.

It's unclear if any of the changes Motorola's made to the stock Android experience will alleviate some of the legal issues it faces from Microsoft's ownership of key smartphone patents, although that seems an unlikely scenario, the report says.

Microsoft recently won an injunction against Motorola for Android's use of multi-part text messaging. Microsoft and Motorola are facing numerous other patent disputes relating to Android as well, however. Motorola and Microsoft are also facing a lawsuit over the use of H.264 encoding in Microsoft's Xbox 360, among other issues.