Yesterday, Motorola announced the WiFi-only Xoom would be hitting stores March 27th; but they never mentioned anything about pre-orders. Well a few retailers have answered the question of many  and put up pre-orders..right now. Head to Amazon, Costco or Staples to jump on the pre-order, no need to hurry though, they won’t be running out any time soon. The 32GB WiFi model will be $599. Staples is planning to ship on the 25th so that customers get it on launch day, while Costco is saying they will ship April 1. [via engadget, Amazon, Staples, Costco ]

Verizon Wireless releases the Motorola CITRUS entry-level Android phone for $49.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. The affordable CITRUS features a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen, a 3 Megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth and a microSD/SDHC expansion slot. Verizon Wireless, the company with the nation’s largest and most reliable wireless 3G network, and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that Motorola CITRUS™ will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com tomorrow for $49.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Powered by Android™ 2.1, Motorola CITRUS delivers

Handset maker Motorola has launched the successor to its Milestone high-end smartphone – appropriately named the Milestone 2. The Milestone is essentially the same as the Droid in the US, but this one is analogous to to the Droid 2, not the Droid X. We hope that’s clear now. One thing they all have in common is an SoC upgrade. While Motorola hasn’t named the chip, it has revealed it clocks at 1 GHz and we understand that to mean it’s a TI OMAP 3640. Despite being almost twice the speed of the OMAP 3430 in the original Milestone, the 3640 still uses ARM’s Cortex A8 and Imagination Technologies’ SGX 530 designs. We have to wait until the OMAP 4 SoC fi

Motorola announced in the UK its new Milestone XT720, one of the world’s slimmest 8 Megapixel Android smartphones and the first to have a Xenon Flash. This XT720 is basically the Europe version of the Korea-bound MOTOROI and the upgraded version of the XT701 for Asia. While the XT701 gets only 5 Megapixel sensor, the new XT720 is equipped with 8 Megapixel camera with Xenon flash, 10x digital zoom, and 720p HD video recording. It features a 3.7-inch 480×854 capacitive touchscreen, a ARM Cortex A8 550MHz processor, HDMI output, GPS, microSDHC card slot. It comes with Google’s mobile applications including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube as well as MOTONAV turn by t

German network Mobilcom and box-shifter Amazon have decided to swim against the HTC tide and release the BACKFLIP in Germany this month, with a 499 euro price tag attached to it. That’s very brave of them. That’s one of the bravest things anyone’s done in mainland Europe for a good 60 years. Here’s a German-language press shot of the BACKFLIP to help everyone celebrate. Petra is going shopping, we think, and it looks like Norbert fancies hooking up with her. Read the official press release (in German) here. The tech specs easily translate to other languages. It seems “stereo Bluetooth” is a universal phrase that transcends cultures and international boundaries. Link

Motorola is placing two new bets on the open-source Android operating system with the release of its Backflip and Devour smartphones. The uniquely designed Backflip began selling through AT&T Wireless late last week, and the Detour is now available from Verizon Wireless. The 3G/Wi-Fi Backflip, at $99 after rebate and with a two-year contract, is gaining a lot of attention for its unique flip-out QWERTY keyboard, which AT&T has described as “an original reverse flip design.” Big Selling Point — MOTOBLUR By flipping the keyboard backward, the device can be set up in tabletop mode for listening to music, looking at videos and photos, or acting as a digital alarm cl