Motorola says Samsung stole their always-on display, but Motorola stole theirs from someone else

Motorola was one of the first Android manufacturers to bring out always-on display. It started way back on the original Moto X, and it’s been a hit on all their phones since.

The Moto X’s successor.

But you may have noticed that folks like LG and Samsung have since joined in, and it seems Motorola’s not taking a liking to that.

In fact, they took a pretty direct shot at Samsung on Twitter with the following:

In what galaxy is it okay to steal competitor phones’ cool features? #TheOriginalAlwaysOnDisplay #motozdroid

We can only imagine the “galaxy” bit is aimed at the big electronics company in South Korea (where LG is also conveniently located). It’s true, Motorola was the first to popularize the always-on display for this era of phones, but were they the first ever?

Nope. In fact, it was Nokia who first introduced such a thing back when Symbian was still chugging along. Nokia also late reintroduced the feature on the Windows-based Lumia 925, which was made available months before the original Moto X.

Nokia started it, Motorola popularized it, and now more of the big guys are borrowing it. No one “stole” anything unless you have a working patent, and that’s just the way the business goes these days. But very nice try, Motorola.