Motorola has hinted buyers will be able to customise the design and hardware specs of the still mysterious Moto X handset in a new advert scheduled to appear in U.S. newspapers over the 4th of July holiday.

In a new ad, revealed by AdAge, the company promises the device will be "the first smartphone you can design yourself" while boasting that the handset will be assembled on home soil in the United States.

Within the full-page ad, the company teases Moto X is "coming soon" and that "users should have the freedom to design the things in life to be as unique as you are."

What Google-owned Moto means by 'design yourself' isn't exactly clear yet, but earlier this year Google advisor Guy Kawasaki did (sort of) suggest the device could be personalised like a Porsche sports car.

Phones are like shoes

In real world terms, that may mean users could choose colour options, build materials, extra memory, processing power and a wealth of other variables usually determined for them by the manufacturer.

In an interview with AdAge, Moto's Motorola's Vice president of Global Brand and Product Marketing Brian Wallace said it was about time those decisions were put back into the hands of the consumer.

Without revealing which elements would be customisable, Wallace said: "Smartphones are very different than other tech products a consumer owns.

"They're closer to shoes or a watch. You carry it with you everywhere you go. Everyone sees what phone you're carrying and they judge you on it. Yet, it's the one thing you carry that's the least customisable."

USA! USA! USA!

The ad, which will appear in the July 3 edition of the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post is nothing if not patriotic.

"Imagine what it'll be like when you have the world's best design, engineering and manufacturing talent here in the U.S.," the company purred.

"Some people said it couldn't be done. But we're not just any company. And nothing this exciting ever comes easily."

The ad is also the first time we've seen Moto's new Googley logo in any form of public communications.

• Are you excited for the Moto X? Look for it by October

Samsung might not be the only manufacturer in the eight-core processor game for much longer if new reports are to be believed.

According to a leaked company roadmap uncovered by Sina Weibo, MediaTek is fast-tracking development of its own octa-core chip, which it hopes will be ready by November of this year.

Though Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa does indeed feature eight processor cores, only four are ever active at once.

Based on the reports about MediaTek's new Cortex-A7 MT6592, all eight of the processors will truly work in unison, and at a lower cost to boot.

Eight is enough

Taiwanese site UDN first picked up on the Cortex-A7 MT6592, which it reported will run at 2GHz, and has already been shown to several potential MediaTek clients in the past week.

The chip purportedly scored a 30,000 using AnTuTu's benchmarking, which puts it just behind Qualcomm's quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800, but MediaTek's chip is believed to cost quite a bit less.

MediaTek is supposedly planning to use TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process starting in November, with the first phones using the octa-core processor due to arrive in early 2014 around Chinese New Year.

The Taiwanese company is also believed to be ramping up its 4G LTE compatibility alongside its new chip, as a separate UDN report revealed more than a 100 new jobs had opened up at MediaTek last month.

Quad-core coming too?

The octa-core MT6592 might not be the only new processor coming from MediaTek this year either, as the company appears to be readying a quad-core version, too.

The leaked company documents uncovered named a 1.7GHz MT6588 quad-core processor as arriving in Q4 as well, though it sounds like more of a faster upgrade of the existing MT6589 chip than an off-shoot of the MT6592.

While more details on the MT6592 are sparse at this time, those same docs did reveal the octa-core processor would be able to decode 1080p video at 30fps.

What's more, both of the new chips are purportedly compatible with the upcoming quad-core 1.3GHz MT6582, which will help keep the costs down on the later-arriving chips.

MediaTek's MT6290 LTE modem will also be compatible with all three of the chips, which bodes well for the company's plans to finally delve into faster cellular space.

Even if MediaTek's new chips aren't quite as powerful as Qualcomm's offerings, the value incentive may be enough to sway some Chinese manufacturers to the cheaper processors.

With Sony already reportedly on board with MediaTek for its upcoming C3 smartphone, there's no telling which others will follow suit.

• Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 may be the next smartphone to arrive powered by an octa-core chip.

There are minis coming in all across the market, and a new report yesterday claimed that devices from Samsung, HTC, Huawei, and Lenovo are on their way to store shelves this year.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini - which already launched in the U.K. - will hit shelves elsewhere in the third quarter of 2013, Taiwanese manufacturers told DigiTimes.

Those sources confirmed that the HTC One mini, another highly anticipated device, will arrive at the same time, lending credence to previous rumors.

Also on the docket are previously unheard-of mini editions of existing Lenovo and Huawei smartphones that will arrive during the second half of the year, either Q3 or Q4, according to this report.

Why not just make them smaller to begin with?

This image is the only alleged photograph of the HTC One mini that we've seen so far.

The photo leaked last month with a set of alleged specs including a 4.3-inch screen, Android 4.2.2 with HTC's Sense overlay and a 1.4GHz processor that may be Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400.

The Galaxy S4 mini, on the other hand, is much less intangible; it launched already in the U.K. with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED 960 x 540 display, 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage.

TechRadar asked AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile whether and when the Galaxy S4 mini might be arriving on their networks, but all four carriers responded that they have nothing to share at this time.

As for those Huawei and Lenovo minis, the sources gave no indication or further details about what exactly they might be.

They also mentioned Apple's rumored iPhone mini, though they had nothing concrete to say about that either.

• Speaking of minis - rumor has it the iPad mini 2 could ship in August.

HTC can't seem to stop showering the love on its flagship One, what with the whole Nexus version and all, but one phone is being pushed to the has-been bin.

The company confirmed today that its mid-range One S will stay stuck on Android 4.1, never seeing Android 4.2 and beyond.

"We can confirm that the HTC One S will not receive further Android OS updates and will remain on the current version of Android and HTC Sense," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We realize this news will be met with disappointment by some, but our customers should feel confident that we have designed the HTC One S to be optimized with our amazing camera and audio experiences."

For further quasi-consolation, HTC offered that the ROM community will be able to build out "their favorite ROMs for the One S," while the One X is still on track for updates.

More blips!

We're waiting on FDA approval, but we're pretty convinced a few blips a day keeps the doctor away.

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