Motorola’s custom user interface that runs on some of the company’s Google Android phones is getting an update. The company announced this week that the next generation of MotoBlur will feature support remote wiping of your phone if it’s lost or stolen, better backup of your contacts and other data.
MotoBlur will also include support for location based social networks and new Connected Music and Gallery apps for media synchronization. While I’m generally not a huge fan of third-party overlays for Android such as MotoBlur, some of the new apps sound pretty nice. For instance, if I’m not mistaken, the new music app is the Connected Music Player that was leaked a few weeks ago, and it’s all kinds of awesome, thanks to integration with TuneWiki, SoundHound, and Shoutcast, and other services.
The Connected Gallery app will let you view albums from Facebok, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and other web-based services. You’ll also be able to upload photos to those services from your phone. The standard Android Gallery app does something similar, but only with Google’s Picasa service.
Motorola is also introducing a MotoConnect suite of services for synchronizing your content between a PC and smartphone. MotoConnect is at least partially built on ZumoCast, a service which lets you stream media from a PC to a mobile device. Motorola bought ZumoCast in December.
Some of the most recent Motorola phones including the Atrix 4G and Cliq 2 will receive updated MotorBlur apps as over the air downloads in the next few months. Phones that ship later this year will include the whole new suite of apps and services.