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Moto X Demo Video Reveals Google's Android Superphone
MojoKid writes with word that "A tech demo posted to YouTube shows off Motorola's upcoming Moto X smartphone, a seemingly high-end device that is sure to win over a few fans with its wealth of new tricks and features. The Moto X handset, which is launching exclusive to Rogers in Canada (no mention of U.S. market carriers) this August, will be available in black and white, but a key selling point of the device comes from its voice activated features. The tech demo heavily emphasizes Google Now, which Moto X users can engage without touching the device. In the demo, a woman is shown asking Google Now what the weather will be like in Toronto while she types away on a computer, never having to reach down to tap the handset. It was also previously leaked that the Moto X will ship with a 4.4-inch display (1280x720), 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 10MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing camera, and of course Android 4.2 Jelly Bean." With a marketing budget said to include up to half a billion (!) dollars from Google, it's hard to imagine that any leaks are actually unintentional.
I can't see anything bad coming of this...
"a woman is shown asking Google Now what the weather will be like in Toronto while she types away on a computer, never having to reach down to tap the handset."
That is the type of "feature" I immediately deactivate to conserve battery. Most features added by manufacturers these days seem like gimmicks where the drawbacks are greater than the benefits.
With a marketing budget said to include up to half a billion (!) dollars from Google, it's hard to imagine that any leaks are actually unintentional.
Or this advertisement.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
These all seem like minor software updates for the next version of android.
Where are the flexible screens, extended battery life and more internal storage?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Do Not Want.
All I can see is yet another smartphone. Nothing in that video made me want to run out and buy one of these things. These smartphones are way more powerful than I need them to be which has resulted in ridiculous prices.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Exclusive to Roger's (and of course any spy agency that feels like listening to your calls).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Looks like my Nexus 4 ... with a Moto badge on it.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Avoid google, avoid android, avoid microsoft windows phones. Both of these companies (Google and Microsoft) are the worst when it comes to sharing your data with the 3 letter agencies.
Buy the Jolla phone when it becomes available or get yourself a Firefox OS phone. Yes, you may need to wait a little while, and yes, you may not get all the features you want, but it is about time we consider our rights and privacy above the next shiny thing.
Vote with your dollars or else forego your right to speak about privacy and rights.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"woman is shown asking Google Now what the weather will be like in Toronto while she types away on a computer,"
The Response she gets are advertisements for condoms (Rain coats) and Tostitos.
Hey, what are you worrying about? If you speak no evil, it'll hear no evil. And if a future upgrade leaves the camera on all the time, just make sure it sees no evil! :-)
It's a design flaw using the touch screen as shuttle button, rather than a dedicated button on the edge of the phone. It means you can't take pictures one handed. Also, pushing the screen causes the camera to move slightly giving blurry photos.
"...it tells you what you need to know even when you're not touching the screen..." And it tells the NSA everything else?
----- obSig
No battery longevity and really for daily use wtf do I need a powerfull computer in my hand for. Yes internet seach i handy but the only other thing I need is a calculator.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...will it bring up a Google map showing the closest bathrooms? :-)
Was a team Startac. They haven't been a player since then.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
>"Moto X Demo Video Reveals Google's Android Superphone"
Superphone? Hardly. Compare to the HTC One/OneX/EvoLTE or the Samsung Galaxy S4/S3 or several other high-end models from other companies (LG, Sony) and it loses in most categories we know about so far.
*Smaller display.
*Lower resolution
*Slower processor
*Less storage (and I am assuming no SD slot either)
*Few special features
*No front speakers
So it is a somewhat midrange phone by the already set high-end standards. And even LESS attractive if you find Google Now" creepy, and REALLY less attractive if you find a phone listening to you all the time and linked into Google, Google Now, and probably Google+ even more creepy. And what does listening all the time and using the main screen for notifications do to the battery life?
It is nice to see Motorola getting back into the game, but let's not go ga-ga over the presented leaks because so far, they just don't look all THAT impressive. I am sure there is a market for a non BEASTLY phone, but this is not the "ultimate" phone, nor the solution for everyone (of course, no one phone is).
I really don't like the tying of software features to specific phones. Phone manufacturers really try to push it as they know it stratified the market whereas if all the software is the same standard Android platform you can compare phones easily. This is why Android is better value than iphone - it puts phone makers into competition and they don't like it.
I take this even further by wanting Cyanogenmod on every phone I buy so it's familiar.
As great as this software is I'm not going to buy into something that makes phones massively more expensive by dividing the market and also giving me less choice.
It's also probably a battery drain so I think have to anticipate automating turning it off when bluetooth pairs with a vehicle handsfree kit.
A blog I run for the wealth
"The device boasts active updates, which translates into display notifications on the screen rather than a vague flashing LED that doesn't really tell you anything."
Awesome. So instead of blinking a little LED to tell me the phone has gotten a message or something else of note, it leaves the screen lit up, wasting my VERY valuable battery life on these phones?
"Moto X owners can activate the built-in camera with two quick flicks of the wrist."
The phone getting jostled in my pocket activating the camera sounds awesome. Bye battery, hello pocket pictures!
"Once it's launched, you can snap photos by pressing anywhere on the touchscreen rather than hunting for a dedicated shutter button"
And how is focusing accomplished?
"It was previously leaked that the Moto X will ship with a 4.4-inch display (1280x720), 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 10MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing camera, and of course Android 4.2 Jelly Bean."
Lower res screen, slower cpu, same ram, lower MP camera, and same OS as a Galaxy S IV. Unless it is like a Maxx type with super battery life, I can't imagine it being any kind of contender for a "Superphone"
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Being able to respond to voice commands requires the CPU to always be parsing audio input. That will have a noticeable, and negative, impact on battery life. When I want to look something up I am in a context switch already, pushing a button on my phone is not an inconvenience. What problem are they trying to solve?
To be honest, as much as I wish you were right, I doubt it. There are still plenty of people out there who didn't even hear the name "Snowden", much less understand what it means to them. Even those few who read the news and understand it, many still think they are not really affected since they don't do anything illegal, and Government says this data is only used to capture terrorists, right?
Trolling is a art!
Outdated components and mostly lower or only equivalent specs compared to other phones. What makes this a superphone exactly other than the marketing claiming it is such?
Really wish they would have upped the specs on this phone's hardware and took a hit on profit like Google does with the Nexus line. We all know (as it's well publicized) that Google makes hardly any direct profit off of the sales of any Android phones let alone Nexus phones. I can't expect a company with hardware as it's focus being able to do the same... but I really don't think that they will make as big of a splash with software alone.
I'm personally not super-obsessed with screen size on phones - I can handle 720p as long as it's high quality at that. I can deal with the shell of the phone being of mediocre materials as well - I'm gonna case it out no matter what it's made out of to protect potential resale.
I do however believe that stereo with amplification is not too much to ask (I'm a fan of the HTC One because of this). I also think cancelling out sound while using the phone (again, referencing the HTC One here) with dual mics is a great idea and not too much to ask. Both of these features are relatively low cost and just make a whole lot of sense - so I hope this becomes standard. Sensors galore come at a price (battery) too - but I'd prefer that they all be included standard with the option to shut them off if you're going with a single unifying flagship product.
Again, small hardware improvements that I really think should just be standard by now.
The moto-x looks kinda "thick" and unless they're doing that to compensate for a freaking huge battery that will make this thing last 2-3 days I'd rather forgo the girth of the phone and have an external standby battery.
Just my 2 cents.
Oh wait, I didn't mean well. I meant the other thing. What was that? Oh yeah, "poorly"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"It was also previously leaked that the Moto X will ship with a 4.4-inch display (1280x720), 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 10MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing camera, and of course Android 4.2 Jelly Bean."
Certainly not a superphone. More like a 2 year old phone, or next year's iPhone.
It means you can't take pictures one handed
I can easily activate the lockscreen camera and take a picture one handed. I do that all the time. How does having a physical button help that in any way? That aspect is all about where controls are located.
Also, pushing the screen causes the camera to move slightly giving blurry photos.
Which is why the camera app takes a picture on release, so you can press the "shutter", wait until you are stable as required, and then takes the picture...
Or in OS7 the picture taking is so rapid you don't really jostle the screen before the picture is taken.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
to own a phone made by the world's largest ad agency!
The purpose of this is certainly not to solve any problem of inconvenience, although you are forgiven for thinking this since that is the marketing angle this feature will certainly be promoted under. The purpose of always parsing audio input is to ---wait for it--- collect a sh%tload of data on it users.
I've never managed to make voice input useful on my Android phone. The reliability is just much too low. I use three languages: Swedish, English and Japanese, and recognition fails all the time with all three of them, including my native Swedish. I end up doing mor ekeystrokes to correct the voice input than it would have taken me to simply type it in the first place.
But what makes it worse is that it doesn't handle foreign words at all. Try to search for "Osaka" or "Watanabe" in English (or Swedish), and you will most likely never manage to get it recognized correctly.
I live in Japan, so I often look for local places or events, and many of my contacts have Japanese names. But with this restriction I can't use voice input for any of it. Initiating phone calls, writing emails and the rest is all basically undoable.
Of course, I could switch to Japanese input - but then I can't look for Swedish or English names or other things. And all those nifty voice actions that are supposed to make voice hands-free use possible only work in English, and only if you've set the phone UI to English as well. Yes, really. I can't have my phone in my native Swedish, select English-language vioce input and have actions work.
So the only thing that would possibly interest me about this feature is how to turn it off permanently.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
the product isn't even out yet! but then again based on your history its pretty obvious that you'll do anything to please your apple overlords. if they aren't paying you then they should be with the amount of shilling and astroturfing you do around here.
But it's not a US company! That is the important difference.
What good is Cyanogenmod if you don't own your own data? With CM and Google apps you still lose. Unless you poison the data collection in some way (fake location, fake searches, fake contacts, take calendar, ...)
I have the Razr Maxx HD. I love it. When it came out, it really was a super-phone for its time. I've been using it for what feels like forever now; my ridiculously rapid phone upgrade cadence (about one every 3 to 6 months!) has stopped dead in its tracks as soon as I got this device. It simply meets my needs. It's not perfect, but it has proven to be extremely durable (without an Otterbox), and is generally there when I need it. I'm a heavy phone user, typing out forum posts, email, RDP, tethering, MLB At Bat (variously audio and video), Netflix, etc. and I definitely push the limits of my unlimited data plan.
The Razr Maxx HD, however, has been plagued by a few problems that I had hoped they could resolve either in an OTA or in a successor device, which I enumerate below. Judging from the leaked specs of the Moto X, it is looking extremely unlikely that the Moto X would be an upgrade by any definition of the word, and this is extremely disappointing and frustrating to me, because I had hoped to retain brand loyalty to Motorola for bringing me such a (relatively speaking) long-lasting device in the Razr Maxx HD. Instead, it looks like I'll be jumping ship to Samsung for my next phone purchase once I psychologically break down from being unable to withstand another choppy bluetooth song playback on this phone.
1) The bluetooth audio is terrible. Either due to background tasks, bad drivers, bad task scheduling, or some combination, it skips and pops all the time. It's not dependent on which bluetooth client is receiving the audio, either: I've tried my car stereo, my bluetooth headset, and a portable bluetooth speaker, and they all have the same symptoms. I was hoping that a switch to a more capable processor might help it task switch better between background sync tasks and bluetooth audio; I also figured there's a distinct possibility that the bluetooth chipset in the SoC might just be bad. However, and this is a colossal disappointment, Motorola's next-generation phone uses the EXACT SAME CHIPSET -- down to the exact processor model -- that the Razr HD / Maxx HD uses! This is an incredibly foolish move in my opinion, as it shows that Motorola is not committed to pushing the envelope in the technology of their phone, and are comfortable sitting on their laurels and using last year's processor. It also gives Razr HD owners EXACTLY ZERO motivation to upgrade.
2) The battery life, despite having an enormous battery capacity in terms of mAh, is not all that great. There are phones with 2100 mAh batteries with the same or slightly better battery life. The battery life can be extended tremendously by turning off background data, turning off data, going into airplane mode, or disabling all background sync tasks, or any combination of these; but I feel that doing so seriously limits the utility of the phone, as I'm one of those people who actually LIKES the sync features of the phone, and having data and cellular voice always enabled keeps me wired in. Also, the screen drains an ungodly amount of energy when it's on, eclipsing even the power consumption of the LTE chipset, which is no slouch either. For a screen of this quality and size, it seems to use way more energy than it should, compared to other high-end smartphones. Now, granted, it's quite possible that the Moto X may improve upon the screen's power consumption, but that may be negated by having the mic and voice recognition processing always on.
3) Although it's way more power-efficient than LTE, the WiFi chipset leaves a lot to be desired. WiFi Direct appears to be broken, even to other Motorola smartphones, and the reception is below par. I was hoping that 802.11ac support would help address that in the successor phone, but nope, Motorola is sticking with the tired old Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, instead of the new 400/600/800 series with 802.11ac.
The only thing I think the Moto X may improve upon is the general responsiveness of the phone. I can see them making software tweaks in the operating system and the graphics driver that would
Whoever wrote the article or submitted it here on Slashdot must not be too heavily involved with Android devices or the news and specs going on...
this should improve all road surfaces ALOT: everytime "you get flicked two times" running
over a pothole with the phone in your car/pocket it will take a geotaged photo. awesome!
Anything that doesn't have a 1080p display and a quad-core (or more) CPU doesn't qualify as a superphone in the current market.
Dear Google, if I wanted to buy soapbox with screen - I can go to Samsung. If I wanted to buy a brick with patented rounded corners - I can go to Apple. But where should I go now to buy that unique design that I always had with Motorola?
Also annoying when you turn the camera and are about to reach awkwardly to push the button using a finger from the same hand you're holding it only to have the fucking thing rotate...The people who wrote both the iOS
Nice story bro.
Except the iOS camera app, does not rotate even if you tilt the phone... or at least it doesn't on iOS7 and I don't remember it doing that on iOS6.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All I do is call 'em like I see 'em.
You want the truth? You obviously can't handle the truth. Because I gave it to you and you just whine like a little baby.
Why is this not the next Nexus 4? Why would Google create the Nexus brand, only to promote a Motorola phone as? Why would Google compete with themselves? Why does every Android phone have to have a slightly different set of features and OS versions? Why wouldn't touch-less voice be a part of every Jelly Bean phone?
Would someone please send Google a big crate of Ritalin so maybe they can focus on one business strategy in the phone market that makes sense?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Apologies to everyone for my late arrival, but I note that no one seems to have picked up on the fact that this phone is only available in black and white!
Clearly Motorola have some catching up to do with the likes of Appel and Sumsang.
Could this be the reason they're only trying to sell it in Canadia?