The Motorola Moto X is the first phone release by Motorola under Google leaderships since their purchase a year ago. Rumors for this phone were running f or months as initially it was expected to be the next Nexus phone but that didn’t happen. Instead we have a smartphone mixed with high-end and mid range specs that you can customize and made in the USA. Did the Moto X live up to the hype.
Smartphone Design To Fit In The Human Hand
Motorola design the Moto X to be a phone that fit comfortable in the hand. The curved back allows the phone to fall comfortably in your hands and gives you a good grip. This is about the only distinctive trait in the Moto X design as the phone is very clean with only two buttons for volume and power, USB port on the bottom and headphone jack on the top. The phone takes nano-sim so be sure to grab one from your cell phone provider if needed. The Moto X is simple and sleek and has a “phone first” design to it.
4.7 Inch 720 Display Is Mid-range But Performs Well
I’m not going to lie I was disappointment as many were when you hear the display was going to be 4.7 inches and only 720p. These are specs from a year ago and if you are going flagship smartphone, 1080p is the standard. With that said the display is going to be good for daily use from reading and viewing pictures and video. It’s sharp and reproduces colors very well. It’s not something your going to swoon over but it gets the job done.
Stock Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean With A Few Add-on Still Leaves Some Holes
Google owns Motorola, so as expected you have a mostly stock android experience with the Moto X. Android purist are going to love the stock android experience but there are holes in stock android that many of the android smartphone manufactures fill with their custom roms. The stock android experience is good enough to get you by. With Motorola’s X8 platform you do get a nice speedy and snappy user experience when using the software on the phone.
The key software addition is the Touchless Controls using Google Now. The phone is listening and just by saying “OK Google NOW” it will wake up and wait for your command. You can do most simple task like create reminders, appointments, alarms, search, call or text a contact and so on. It’s pretty cool and works accurately most of the time. However it does requires a constant internet connection to work so if are offline on the Moto X it won’t work for you. Another cool feature is the Active Display which instead of showing you a LED indicator for a notification, the screen will wake up when you reach for it and when you swipe an icon it gives you more information about that particular notification and you can unlock to it. This is pretty useful and gives you more than just an icon to look at.
Overall I find the additional features to be cool and useful in daily use of the phone. Call quality is also good with both sides of the call sounding good and battery life is outstanding with getting near 2 days worth of battery life out of the phone with 4 e-mail accounts, 4 social networks and daily using on it.
Moto X 10 Megapixel Camera Is Average At Best
The Moto X comes with a 10 megapixel camera which is by far the best camera Motorola has put on one of their own devices but it still falls behind the current competition. It produces good quality photos that will work for sharing on social networks but they aren’t stunning. Video quality is also average with ok sound quality with it.
The camera has a neat trick where you can do a specific shake gesture to open up to the camera and if you hold your finger on the screen it rapid snaps photos for you. The camera lacks a lot about controls as you can’t change the quality options and there isn’t that many modes to choose from. I do wish Motorola would put more work into their cameras. This is a good first step but more is needed to be up their with the competition.
Moto X Is A Great Smartphone But Not At It’s Current Price
I think the Moto X is a great smartphone that performs on the level of top-tier phones in a lot of categories. Being able to use Moto Maker to customize the phone to what you want is revolutionary and something I want to see more handset makers do. However with a 720p display, average 10 Megapixel camera and not too many software add-ons it’s hard to recommend the phone at the $199 price tag that it now is. This would be a great value at more of the $100 – $150 price point. Still the Moto X is a great phone for those that want a device that puts the “phone” back in smartphone and not a multimedia focused device.
Moto X Video Review
Moto X 1080p Video Camera Sample
Moto X Handset Photos
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