[Verizon Motorola Droid Turbo General] ChazzMatt:
Part of the problem was Motorola's failure to sell this phone worldwide. It should have been launched with as big a campaign as the mediocre 2014 Moto X. The Quark was what that year's Moto X could have been -- a top spec flagship phone!

Instead, Motorola cowardly went along with U.S. carrier Verizon's lie that the Droid Turbo was an "exclusive" (it wasn't). But this LIE is why people all over the world tried to buy this FANTASTIC spec phone -- but the one (XT1254) with a locked down bootloader. Thus, no real dev work could be done. Yet there were other Quarks -- one IDENTICAL to the Droid Turbo -- and another which was better for people who don't use Verizon, both with bootloaders which could be UNLOCKED via Motorola and ROOTED, but either nobody knew about them or could get them.

A few weeks after the Droid Turbo was released, Motorola released the bootloader unlock-able Moto Maxx XT1225 to Latin American countries (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico). ONLY FOUR COUNTRIES! Plus, getting phones out of Brazil is VERY expensive. On Ebay people were selling this phone for $1800. I have a brother-in-law in Brazil who was willing to buy one for me and ship it, but at the time with the currency exchange in 2014 it would have been $1100, $1200.

I ended up buy one off eBay from Puerto Rico for $800 in November 2014, and then another from Mexico for at Christmas 2014 around $600 (after all shipping costs). Between the two I averaged $700 -- which is what a 64GB Nexus 6 was going for at the time. This was MY Nexus 6.

Point is, you couldn't just order one of the XT1225 easily unless you lived one of those countries. For the Mexico XT1225 I had to trust an XDA member I never met to receive the phone from Motorola China factory and re-ship it to my U.S. address. :rolleyes: Worked out well, but I couldn't just go to a store and buy it.

But through Brazil fans, soon after launch we got root, unofficial TWRP. This meant we could install Xposed/Gravity box and stuff.

In January 2015 (maybe sooner), U.S. regional CDMA/LTE carriers started selling the U.S. Moto Maxx XT1250 with unlock-able bootloader. It was identical to the Droid Turbo XT1254 in every way, with the same FCC ID. But except for ME, no one else seemed to know that. I got blowback from some ignorant Verizon fanbois who didn't want to believe their precious locked down Droid Turbo was not the world-exclusive Verizon claimed. :rolleyes: I still won, with the facts. ;) FCC ID doesn't lie. (I'm not bashing all Verizon fanbois -- only the ignorant ones who wrongly argued with me instead of doing the research I did.) The XT1250 was the "dev" version of the Droid Turbo -- if devs knew about it, because the bootloader could be unlocked, the phone easily rooted, and it would run on Verizon with a Verizon sim card just like a non-Verizon Nexus 6.

In early 2015 CM dev [MENTION=2228410]Skrilax_CZ[/MENTION] bought an XT1225. He started working on CM12 (Lollipop) for us.

Then in March 2015 (MONTHS after initial release), Motorola released the Moto Turbo XT1225 to India, with 5.0.2 -- but by that time we already had CM12. Yeah, thanks to [MENTION=2228410]Skrilax_CZ[/MENTION] the XT1225 had Lollipop before Motorola gave use Lollipop, just like we have Marshmallow before Motorola gives us Marshmallow. The Moto Turbo XT1225 is identical to the Moto Maxx XT1225, with same FCC ID. It was just renamed because there was a "Max" or "Maxx" carrier in India and Motorola wanted to avoid confusion it was carrier-specific phone. But the high-spec XT1225 was a VERY expensive phone for India market. Most people there care more about low end Moto G type phones.

By this time, of course, the new 2015 LG and Samsung phones were about to hit the market. This was a 2014 phone just being launched in March 2015 in India? WHY?

Meanwhile people in England, Germany and all over Europe were still trying to get their hands on the locked down Droid Turbo XT1254, because all the media just blatantly repeated Verizon's LIES that this phone was not available anywhere else. Arghhh!

For almost everyone except Verizon customers, the XT1225 would be the better phone. More LTE bands, more HSPA bands, no unnecessary CDMA. But no one in the northern hemisphere seemed to know about the other Quark variants! (or could get them)

And for Verizon customers, back a year ago the U.S. Moto Maxx XT1250 was the better phone! (bootloader could be unlocked). But no one seemed to know about that phone.

At that point in time, the Droid Turbo XT1254 was actually the worst Quark phone for dev work, due to the locked down bootloader, but the other hardware-identical Quarks didn't have the media hype, so people didn't know about them or couldn't easily get them.

Once we got CM for the XT1225, then other ROMs started appearing. [MENTION=5747496]baybutcher27[/MENTION] in Brazil came along and pulled together OFFICIAL TWRP, for us plus a custom kernel (based on CM kernel work), plus two custom ROMs. Others joined in. We had 5 custom ROMs at one point -- and all of them use CM [MENTION=2228410]Skrilax_CZ[/MENTION] kernel. Sure, it's not the same quantity of dev work compared to the Nexus 6 and other Nexus phones, but it's very appreciated.

Regrettably, it also made Droid Turbo owners jealous. We were all sharing the same XDA forum. In late September 2015, people here in the Droid Turbo forum got XDA mods to split the forum into two parts -- the dead Droid Turbo forum and the active dev "Moto Maxx" forum because their bootloader was still locked down and they didn't want to keep seeing dev work (full root, TWRP recovery, 5 ROMS, custom kernels) they couldn't participate in. Ironically, two months later, in November 2015 (a full year after release) the Droid Turbo bootloader was finally unlocked via vulnerability specific to Snapdragon 805 chipsets and the Droid Turbo could join the dev party. CM dev [MENTION=2228410]Skrilax_CZ[/MENTION] adapted his kernel code to work with the newly freed XT1254 and graciously duplicated his CM thread over here -- which had originally been here, but had been removed when the forums were split. But the other devs kept their threads over in the other Quark forum (Moto Maxx -- which isn't entirely correctly named, as the U.S. Moto Maxx XT1250 is IDENTICAL to the Droid Turbo XT1254, and a some Verizon owners used that as it has unlock-able bootloader from Motorola, and there's also the Moto Turbo XT1225. )

Really the forums should be joined again, as we are now one happy family. All the kernels and ROMs all work on all the Quarks and we can share all the dev work.

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To sum it up, Motorola screwed up royally in launching, selling this fantastic spec phone. They only sold it in SIX countries, and never clarified, corrected the Verizon LIE that there was only the Droid Turbo XT1254. There were two Quarks with identical hardware, sold under three model names: Droid Turbo XT1254, Moto Turbo XT1225, and Moto Maxx (international XT1225 and U.S. XT1250).

FCC ID IHDT56PK1

Droid Turbo XT1254 (sold by U.S. carrier Verizon; 32/64GB internal memory)

U.S. Moto Maxx XT1250 (sold by U.S. regional CDMA/LTE carriers; 32GB internal memory)

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FCC ID IHDTS6PK2

"international" Moto Maxx XT1225 (64GB internal memory)

Moto Turbo XT1225 (sold in India, but identical to Moto Maxx XT1225)

If Motorola had especially launched the XT1225 variant all over the world -- Europe (adding LTE band 20), North America (U.S./Canada), ALL of Central and South America, and India -- like the Moto X or Moto G, this would have been a game changing phone. I know Motorola had considered the XT1225 for North America as it has all the AT&T LTE bands (2, 4, 5, 17) as well as for Canada. But Verizon made them bow to the "exclusive" LIE. So, they dumped the XT1225 in only four Latin American countries (where LTE band 5 isn't even used), and then months later in India. :eek:

Motorola sold the XT1254-identical U.S. Moto Maxx XT1250 very quietly to small regional CDMA/LTE carriers in the U.S. so Verizon could keep LYING about "exclusivity" and most of the tech media still doesn't know about that Quark. If you Google XT1250 Moto Maxx, most of the posts you will find are MINE where I tried to tell people about it in various forums or in reader comments to erroneous media articles that just quoted Verizon verbatim.

It was like Motorola was ashamed of this phone, when this was THE BEST phone of 2014! And still beats most 2015 phones!

I recently bought a third Moto Maxx XT1225, because I was afraid they would disappear. But at least it was now half the price what I paid for the first two. Love this phone.