While I was totally unaware that Moto had lost its groove, apparently I have been completely wrong about their groove status (or something clever like that). Pays to read articles like this I guess, huh?

It’s a muggy Friday morning in mid-July and a group of Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - News) designers are gathered on the 26th floor in the company’s downtown Chicago design center. They’re looking over prototypes for a new mobile phone when CEO Edward J. Zander pokes his head in the door: “Can I come in?” Dressed casually, in jeans and a polo shirt, he quickly gets down to business. The models on the table are for the Q, a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard designed to compete with the wildly popular BlackBerry, from Research in Motion Ltd. (NasdaqNM:RIMM - News).

No detail is too small for Zander’s attention. He and the employees put one Motorola prototype alongside a competitor’s. “Ours is longer,” Zander worries out loud. “Yeah, but it’s half as thick,” retorts designer Sean Daw. Zander picks up another model and starts poking keys. “I don’t know,” he says. “The Good feels better to me,” referring to a device that uses software from Good Technology Inc. The Q prototypes look alike but have infinitesimal differences: keys raised a few millimeters more, buttons that require a tad more forceful punch. Finally, Zander finds one he thinks has the right feel. “Now this one feels pretty good,” he says. [Read the rest]