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Whoa-ho-ho! Way to keep these releases on lock, MetroPCS! Striking while the iron is luke warm, they’ve released the Motorola QA30, a mere six months after it first became available.

With Stereo Bluetooth and the QWERTY keyboard being the primary notable features, the specs weren’t exactly mind boggling when the handset first launched - so half a year later and priced at $249 (albeit without contract), it’s a tad underwhelming. That said, MetroPCS needs more QWERTY handsets something fierce, so any new messaging friendly mobile is probably a welcome addition.

There have been no shortage of legal wranglings in the electronics space lately, usually between two well-entrenched corporations, but this one's a little more interesting: a former officer taking the offensive against his former office. Paul Liska, previous head of all things financial at Motorola, is alleging that the company has been misleading investors for quite some time regarding the performance of its Mobile Devices unit, and that when he raised his concerns to the board he was given an escorted trip out the building for his troubles. Moto, on the other hand, is saying that the company's current financial mess is all thanks to a scheme concocted by Liska himself, who then attempted to blackmail the company before trying to paint himself as a whistleblower. That's an awful lot of intrigue, but given the thrilling, cut-throat world of chartered accountancy (as depicted in Monty Python's documentary The Meaning of Life), truly anything can happen.

[Via Phone Arena]

How many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies can brag that their total compensation package for a single year equalled a full percent of their firm's market cap? Actually, with stock prices in the toilet as they are these days, probably quite a few -- but no one would seriously expect Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of embattled Moto, to be a member of that elite club. The Qualcomm hire -- who worked less than five months for Motorola in 2008 -- managed to rake in over $104 million between his salary, stock options, and other benefits, which seems criminal in light of his company's continued fight for survival, its multiple rounds of layoffs, and a recent pay cut (that, by all appearances, probably should've included some of those lucrative options). Realistically, Jha hasn't been at the helm long enough to prove whether he's worthy of this kind of dough -- but when you lose $3.6 billion in a single quarter, these sorts of packages just don't seem kosher by any measure, you know?

Long time MobileCrunch readers may know that I have a bit of an aversion to Motorola. They’ve never done anything wrong to me, personally - it’s just that every handset they’ve released in the past 4 years is a mundane, haphazard piece of garbage. However, I’m glad (though a bit reluctant) to say that they’ve strayed from this path with the Evoke QA4; it has its flaws - but as far as phones that tiptoe the line between smartphone and featurephone go, the QA4 seems pretty nifty. Check out our impressions and the full hands-on demo video after the jump.

The main screen is primarily dedicated to a widget panel, which always show one of seven widgets (Myspace, USA Today, RSS feeds, Google Search, Weather, Picasa, and Youtube). Hopping from one to the other is a matter of a quick finger slide, and any panel you don’t find yourself using often can be disabled within the settings. Unfortunately, the Motorola rep said the seven widgets that come out of the box are all that we can expect; they don’t currently plan to release any new ones, nor open up development to others.

Our main fault with it is that they went with a number pad for the slide out layer, rather than QWERTY. If you’re going to bulk it up with a slider layer, at least make it a keypad that can’t be almost faultlessly replicated on a touchscreen. Beyond that, it seemed like a decent piece - the slider was smooth, and the touchscreen was responsive. The silver bezel around the face seems gaudy, but we’ll write that one off as a personal nitpick.

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Yesterday, Cricket announced their plans to carry Motorola’s just disclosed Evoke QA4. What wasn’t announced, however, was whether US Cellular would also be carrying the device, as previous rumors had indicated. If the demo phones on the floor at CTIA are any indication, it just might.

We just met with Motorola for a quick hands on demonstration of the Evoke (video of which just so happens to be uploading now). After they’d handed it over to us, we accidentally powered the device off while learning to work it. For about 3 seconds while the device was booting, the US Cellular logo was on screen, clear as day. Alas, our camera had already found its way back into our pocket, and the logo was gone by the time we whipped it back out - but it was undeniably there.

Of course, this doesn’t absolutely mean it’s destined for the US’s 6th most popular carrier. It could have been a place holder, and plans might change - but as far as we can tell, it’s likely we’ll see it hit US Cellular within the next few months. Motorola, as expected, declined to speak about unannounced carrier plans.

Today, like everyone else, Motorola announced a brand new handset to showcase at CTIA this week. The Evoke QA4 features a 2.8-inch touch-screen, slide-out 12-key pad and a touch-screen QWERTY. The handset is enhanced with widgets for RSS feeds, MySpace or YouTube. Also equipped with a full HTML browser and accelerometer, the Evoke evokes memories of all the other touch-screen handsets to come out in the last two years.

This one doesn’t do much for me and probably won’t do much for you either. The CDMA handset has a 2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, aGPS and 256MB of internal memory (only supports up to 8GB via microUSB).

No word on price or carrier but it will launch sometime in Q2.

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