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Hands On With Motorola's Moto X
adeelarshad82 writes "After months of speculation, leaks, and cryptic tweets, Motorola's new flagship smartphone is upon us. The Moto X runs Android 4.2.2 and is powered by the new Motorola X8 mobile computing system that includes several chips: a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, as well as a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor that handles the sensors. The phone carries a 4.7-inch, 1,280-by-720 display with 316 pixels per inch. Also since the phone features an active display, time and other selected alerts — text messages, missed calls, etc. — are shown without having to wake up your phone. Among the other features that Motorola talked up was the touchless control. Once activated, you can talk to your Moto X from up to 15 feet away. The Moto X differentiates itself from the other droid phones with customization options, and since Motorola is assembling the Moto X in Fort Worth, Texas, the company expects users to have their customized Moto X within four days of placing an order."
yes... but does it run carrier-mandated bloatware that you can't remove?
How unlockable (if at all) is the bootloader? Just an OEM unlock (like the Nexus line), sign in and get an unlock key (like HTC and Sony), or a special "dev" edition like previously.
I love the quality of the radios on Moto products, but for a decent Android ROM, unless Motorola opens their devices up, I'll probably pass this round of their offerings.
So a Google subsidiary can't use Google's latest OS? Lame... I rather get a Nexus instead.
I've been wondering if it is spill resistant like other recent Motorola devices. So far I've not seen any word either way.
"Also since the phone features an active display..." - as opposed to all the phones with inactive displays? Nice slashvertisement, with almost no technical details.
What, exactly, does this mean, and how is it different from my current Android phone and widgets to show me these things on the lockscreen?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Has it got that? That's the key in being able to ditch the laptop.
You lost me at $199 on contract...
The Nokia N8 and N9 have OLED displays and also show time and notifications at all time, with very small effect on battery life. A great feature, of which I've always wondered why other devices with OLEDs didn't use it.
It's $575 for the 16GB ($630 for the 32GB which is AT&T only at present) and no microSD so you're locked to that size. The customizations options are similarly on the worst-rated carrier in the US, AT&T. T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon get a black or white 16GB version. That's it. It's $199 for the 16GB one on a 2 year contract, which is the same as you'd pay for a top-tier phone like the HTC One 32GB or the Samsung Galaxy S4 16GB (with microSD so you can add up to 64GB more space on the cheap).
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Hey, does this Moto phone upload the user's passwords like the other Moto phones?
see here:
http://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/Motorola_Is_Listening.html
It's all just for fucking faggots no matter how you slice it.
So iPhone sheeple will be buying it en masse?
Sheeple? How original! Did you think of that yourself or did you cough up another useless buzzword.
Looks like we got our first Apple user.
Makes sense. It also makes sense that you were modded down assuming that the person was from China.
Unless a phone has a full QWERTY hardware keyboard, I don't really care. Unfortunately, the handset makers and carriers seem to think there's little to no market for such devices, so I'll be keeping my Epic 4G for a while.
Believe it or not, validation testing for carriers takes a long time- months.
Apple manages to do this with most phone launch, have a new version of iOS released along with the phone.
If you were talking about a phone from any other company - yes I would buy they could only validate against a version they had somewhat prior to launch. But Motorola is Google. They should have been validating against a beta version of the OS in the same way Apple does before launch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the carrier installed app can't do anything any more and doesn't show up anywhere, its essentially the same.
Not on a device without expandable storage its not.
And really not even then.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
trollolol PHONE fanboys are so funnay. you and the GP poster you replied to need self worths not defined by BRANDS.
I hate all phones.
Yeah, I was able to get a "modern" phone (latest OS and good processor) with a keyboard for my last upgrade (Motorola Photon Q - coming from the Epic 4G) but I have low confidence that I will find something when I need to get a new one.
I think there is a market for it, especially in the business world. Typing is so much better, and being able to see the whole screen WHILE typing is essentially like having a larger screen. Composing emails or doing something like RDP is fantastic on a device with a keyboard.
I'm the European guy that really wanted to like the new Lumia's but they run crappows and are tanks too heavy. This is very refreshing, and actually very Nexus-looking. I would expect expedient Android updates as it's Google. I'm delighted to see it has the Google aesthetics with the nice bendy, bamboo curves. All the previous Moto's sucked in the style department - too industrial looking with no class, no elegance. But this is miles ahead, and nice color selections too. It's a great start from Google. Only I wish they could completely get rid of the 'Moto' branding and just call them what they are Moto hardware with Google software, style != Moto. Should be called 'Nexus M1123' or something like that.
Apple makes both the OS and the phone
In this case, the same is true of Google. They wholly own Motorola and designed and produced the X.
Nexus phones are different.
Yes they are - they are re-badged phones made by someone else!!! They are not AS close to Google as the X phone and yet they always get the latest release.
What you want is for Moto to crawl up inside the Android team
Do you really mean to say the Motorola team was not working hand in hand with coreOS developers? No way is Google that stupid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ya, but how well does Ingress play on it?
...tell us about the NSA customization options that are shipped with the phone.
"since Motorola is assembling the Moto X in Fort Worth, Texas, the company expects American users to have their customized Moto X within four days of placing an order."
FTFY. Or should it be Texan users..
will it blend?
It's $199 for the 16GB one on a 2 year contract, which is the same as you'd pay for a top-tier phone like the HTC One 32GB or the Samsung Galaxy S4 16GB...
Or the iPhone 5S, the single most popular phone on the market that is also available for $199 on a two year contract.
I'm just sayin'.
(Before anyone claims I'm being an Apple fanboy, which I have long ago admitted I am, I would similarly have said something had you failed to mention the S4. If you're going to name phones in a market category without naming one or the other of the two most popular phones in that category, it's hard to not see a bias.)
ERMAGERD LESS CPU CORES SUCKS!!! I RUN 4 CPU INTENSIVE TASKS AT ONCE, ONE WITH EACH OF MY INDEX FINGERS, AND ONE WITH EACH OF MY NIPPLES.
I LIKE TO KEEP 1BAJILLION MOVIES ON MY PHONE IN HIGHER RESOLUTION THAN THE SCREEN! I NEED A 1TB SD CARD.
I CAN TELL BETWEEN 1080p AND 720p AT NORMAL VIEWING DISTANCES ON A 4.7" SCREEN!
I NEVER EVEN USE MY PHONE, I JUST DROOL AT THE SPEC SHEET!
Yep, that pretty much summarises all the complaints I've seen.
If you look at the benchmarks, it does better than or equal to a Galaxy S4 on everything except GeekBench, where it still ties for memory speed. So I wouldn't call the CPU/GPU 'mid-range', like everybody seems to be saying.
People want 1080p on a 4.7" screen - are they crazy? I really don't understand where that sentiment comes from. It's just more pixels for the GPU to push around, and it means your games will run worse.
So, they have 'just' 2 cores and a 720p screen, this gives better battery life without making the phone massive. I can totally live with that. I really like what they've done here. They've looked at the system as a whole, and instead of loading it with pointless shit like Samsung, or going with massive bezels on something that's meant to fit in your pocket like HTC, they've made almost the entire front of the phone a screen, make it fit in your hand nicely, given it great battery life, and great performance. And it's customisable and made in the USA. It even has 802.11ac.
What else do you want? And be reasonable, this is today's tech we're talking about.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!