Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has confirmed that the company is developing a lead phone called the Moto X for release by October.

Speaking with hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher during AllThingsD's D11 conference, the Motorola executive said the hero device would sport an OLED screen and sensors.

"Motorola has always been good at managing power on the device, but we're really good at managing sensors. We know when it's in your pocket, we know when it's in your hand, it's going to know when you want to take a picture and fire up the cameras," explained Woodside. "The device will know when you're in the car and it's moving at 60mph and you'll interact with it differently, more safely."

Woodside added that a 480,000sq ft factory in Fort Worth, Texas - currently used to assemble Nokia phones - will manufacture 70 per cent of the Moto X, with processors coming from Taiwan and OLED screens coming from Korea.

Earlier in the interview, when Mossberg asked Woodside what was in store for Motorola, the Motorola boss simply said: "We're relaunching our entire portfolio this year."

Woodside didn't provide any more concrete details on upcoming products while on stage, aside from noting that the Moto X will contend with the iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy devices, but he did tease that the hero phone was in his pocket for the interview. And, no, he wouldn't show it.

"I'll save the details for later, but battery life is a huge problem," he said. "Motorola has some of the world's best engineers and systems designers who spend their lives on that problem.

"There are two processors in the device that create a system that allows you to do such a thing," Woodside, added, before confirming the phone would be widely available in the US on multiple carriers.

In a second interview with All Things Digital after the on-stage chat, Woodside confirmed that the Moto X borrows some of its battery-friendly sensor technology from information Motorola got through its MOTOACTV watch:

"What Motorola learnt was how to manage very-low-power sensors," he said, noting that it was always collecting location and heart-rate information. "They took those learnings to the smartphone."

The Moto X is the first major product announcement from Motorola since Google bought the company.