As mentioned last week, Motorola Mobility and Verizon held an event today where they are expected to unveil the Motorola Spyder, a 4.3-inch, 960 x 540 qHD Super AMOLED display, LTE-capable handset.  But lo and behold, no Spyder made an appearance.  But that doesn’t mean the event didn’t have something worthwhile to show off.  Motorola unveiled two new products, a smartphone and a smartwatch.  Talk about expanding this whole smart device trend.

DROID RAZR

Back in 2004, almost all mobile phones were so bulky that when Motorola released the Razr, a series of clamshell or flip-phones that are thinner than the rest, people went gaga over the device.  But times changed and so did technology–clamshell phones aren’t as popular as they used to be since most of them soon encountered problems as the flex strip tears with constant use and touch screen phones soon dominated the mobile market.

But Motorola doesn’t give up that easily, sticking to their ‘thinner is better’ motto with the new DROID RAZR.  The DROID RAZR is the thinnest 4G LTE smartphone with a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 4.3” Super AMOLED Advanced display, 8MP rear camera and 1080p HD video recording with image stabilization technology, plus it performs well under any condition, according to the manufacturer.  Though it may seem fragile because it is so thin, Motorola assures you that it won’t break easily since they made the device strong with KEVLAR fiber, Corning  and Gorilla Glass to protect the screen from scrapes and scratches, and there’s also a force field of water-repellent nanoparticles that shields the phone against water attacks, including the electrical boards inside.

Additionally, the new RAZR comes with a few apps Motorola hopes will enhance your use of the device, and makes takes advantage of the cloud.  The Smart Actions app exterminates the mundane tasks from your to-do list and lets you take control and mastermind your phone’s settings and actions in an infinite number of combinations. There’s features like Power Max that lets you maximize your battery’s life, Completely Custom for phone settings, and Set It & Forget It, which can make your phone act on its own, like when the DROID RAZR recognizes the Wi-FI connection on your office, it automatically goes to silent mode.

The Webtop app displays your phone’s interface on a monitor or HDTV by just docking the DROID RAZR in a webtop-enabled accessory, and you’re ready to simultaneously surf the web, view images and videos, take a call, collaborate with others on a presentation using your phone.  The MotoCast app lets DROID RAZR stream music, pictures and documents from home or work computers to virtually anywhere and anytime you need or want your files.  This is Motorola’s take on the cloud phenomenon.

MOTOACTV

Fitness enthusiasts often sport a watch which tracks their progress, as in how far or how long they’ve worked out, and also keeps track of their heart rate, along with an MP3 player that comes with earphones connected by a wire which usually gets tangled on a person’s arm.  Though there are wireless MP3 players, you’d still have to wear a watch to keep track of your progress.  So Motorola came up with a product that rolls all these features into one.

MOTOACTV is a GPS fitness tracker and smart music player combined into a small, wearable device that tracks your workout progress/data like speed, distance, and burned calories, and stores the data online by creating an account at MOTOACTV.com so you can also plan your workouts, create long-term goals, analyze your performance and more.  It also stores hours and hours of music and an intuitive feature determines which songs motivate your workout.  And since it’s meant to be worn by people who live an active lifestyle, MOTOACTV is rain, sweat and scratch resistant.  The smartwatch goes well with the SF700, a Bluetooth heart rate monitor, and sports headphones that have a built-in ear sensor to detect heart rate without the uncomfortable chest-strap squeeze. Heart rate data is audible and also transmitted to your MOTOACTV device. And it’s also sweat resistant, so you can power through the toughest workouts.

With Motorola’s latest launches it’s clear that the cloud is enabling connected devices to do more, even leveraging each other to provide a unique and unified experience for the end user.  Leveraging the cloud and focusing on software is something that many players in the mobile industry are doing now, from Google to Apple, building out their ecosystems to support more integrated functions, appealing to consumers’ lifestyles.