Motorola "Moto X" Mobile Complete Review with Video 2013
The good: The Motorola Moto X squeezes a speedy camera and futuristic voice command capabilities into a well-crafted design that hits the sweet spot between screen size and comfort. The phone has great battery life and is available in an endless variety of customized designs.
The bad: With no expandable storage, space could get tight, especially on the 16GB base model. The screen isn't as big and sharp as those on some competing handsets.
The bottom line: While in screen quality and storage capacity it lags behind rival superphones, the Moto X's superbly compact and comfortable design, whiz-bang voice controls, and long battery life make it a worthy Android contender.
To put it bluntly, Motorola has never created a true flagship ubersmartphone on the level of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. But the company aims to change that with the Moto X. The $199 smartphone is Motorola's first handset fully developed under the auspices of its corporate parent (and Android godfather), Google. And it'll be available on most major U.S. carriers when it hits stores later in August.
Make no mistake the Moto X isn't a fire-breathing mobile monster that will blow away the competitors in a spec sheet battle -- the screen isn't cutting-edge, and there's no expandable storage. Storage is the phone's biggest weakness: with just 16GB in the $199 model (the 32GB Moto costs $50 more) and no SD card slot for adding more, it's got an uphill battle on the value scale versus the HTC One (32GB by default) and Galaxy S4 (expansion slot onboard).
Storage qualms notwithstanding, though, the X is a nimble, compact handset with advanced capabilities that targets ordinary phone users. The Moto X boasts many of the same features that Motorola's new trio of Verizon Droids flaunt -- especially always-on Google Now voice control -- plus a few slick extras. Better yet, they're all crammed into a highly customizable design built for maximum comfort. This is a scrappy smartphone with enough going for it to bring the fight to the big boys.
A more thoughtful design
Under the thumb of Verizon's macho Droid brand for years, Motorola's smartphone industrial design has been well, industrial. Ever since the original Droid device hit the scene, Motorola has cranked out flagship machines sporting sharp angles, Kevlar coatings, and hard metallic trims.
To be fair, that's not a bad thing; those devices have been very popular. Plus the company's upcoming Droid mobile machines are less stark than their predecessors, featuring smoother curves and no metallic highlights. All three devices, though, the Droid Mini, the Droid Ultra, and the Droid Maxx, keep the traditionally aggressive red or sober black color scheme that's in keeping with Verizon's intimidating robotic franchise.
The Moto X, however, pushes this history aside and attempts to turn an all-new page and gain broader appeal. Instead of harshly chiseled lines, the Moto X is sculpted with softly rounded curves. The phone's back is gently rounded for a more comfortable grip. It's an approach many hardware makers are taking these days, including HTC with its One and One Mini. The Galaxy S4 handset is also similarly contoured, but unlike Samsung's slippery, smudge-prone runaway hit, the Moto X has a textured soft-touch finish.
Motorola takes this contoured design a step further, shaping the back of the Moto X with left and right edges that slope at a sharper angle than the middle of the device. Motorola claims that this careful molding fits your hand better than a simpler uniform arc. The handset even uses a specially formed battery (2,200mAh, embedded) to match the Moto X's unique curvature.
I have to admit that when I picked up Motorola's latest creation, it felt pretty damn good, its rounded frame fitting my fingers and palm like a glove. While I experience a similar reaction when I grip the HTC One, the Moto X's contours and solid chassis exude just as much quality and luxury to me. I also like how the phone's soft-touch backing wicks away moisture and fingerprints and has an almost metallic rigidity.
These colors don't run
A huge part of the Moto X's design story is its made-in-America (or at least designed-and-assembled-in) moniker. As Motorola has explained earlier, it will design, engineer, and construct all Moto X units in the United States; Fort Worth, Texas, to be precise.
A huge part of the Moto X's design story is its made-in-America (or at least designed-and-assembled-in) moniker. As Motorola has explained earlier, it will design, engineer, and construct all Moto X units in the United States; Fort Worth, Texas, to be precise.
Consumers will have a choice of two basic colors to choose from when purchasing a new Moto X handset, white and black. Motorola, however, will offer buyers the option to personalize their phones with custom hues, patterns, and engravings crafted to order at Motorola's new Texas factory.
These tweaking options, done through the Moto Maker online studio, include 2 front colors, 18 on the back, and seven accents. Motorola claims that this variety allows for thousands of permutations. There will even be custom wallpaper designs and cases to gussy up your device with. And thanks to the plant's Fort Worth location, shoppers who order the gadget can expect it to hit their doorstep within four days. Be advised that Moto Maker will be available for AT&T versions of the Moto X exclusively, at least at first.
Screen
In many respects the Moto X's display is a step down compared with what you get from the latest crop of premium smartphones. Competing devices such as the Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, and Samsung Galaxy S4 all have screens of 4.7 inches or larger. These gadgets also flaunt displays with full-HD resolutions (1,920x1,080 pixels), translating into massive views that still manage to offer high pixel densities.
In many respects the Moto X's display is a step down compared with what you get from the latest crop of premium smartphones. Competing devices such as the Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, and Samsung Galaxy S4 all have screens of 4.7 inches or larger. These gadgets also flaunt displays with full-HD resolutions (1,920x1,080 pixels), translating into massive views that still manage to offer high pixel densities.
By contrast the Moto X's 4.7-inch 720p (1,280 by 720 pixels) OLED screen, while no doubt large, doesn't serve up quite the same level of sharpness as HTC's and Samsung's mobile hot rods. I must stress, though, that unless you've had bionic eye implants or carry a jeweler's loupe, you probably won't pick up on any lack of detail. Additionally, the Moto X's OLED screen technology produces vivid colors, deep blacks, and wide viewing angles.
Of course a display's impact isn't based on just resolution, brightness, and color quality. Case in point: the Moto X's screen has an extremely thin bezel that lovingly hugs the front edges of the handset. Similar to those found on last year's Droid Razr M and the company's newly announced Droids, this helps the Moto X's display appear larger than life and command your attention.
Core components
Motorola calls the engine that propels the new Moto X its X8 Mobile Computing System, the same electronics under the hood of its new Droids. Claimed to include eight distinct processing cores, the system sure sounds impressive. When you break it all down, though, the X8 essentially is really just a souped-up 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm S4 Pro processor paired with quad-core Adreno 320 graphics.
Motorola calls the engine that propels the new Moto X its X8 Mobile Computing System, the same electronics under the hood of its new Droids. Claimed to include eight distinct processing cores, the system sure sounds impressive. When you break it all down, though, the X8 essentially is really just a souped-up 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm S4 Pro processor paired with quad-core Adreno 320 graphics.
To bring the core count up to eight, Motorola also throws in two additional low-power processing centers, one for contextual computing and another for analyzing spoken language. OK, so this may help the Moto X's total "core" tally reach the magic number, but I'm sure I'm not alone in crying foul.
When I think of numerous CPU cores, I envision multiple electronic brains of equal power and speed working in unison to tackle every smartphone task. Since not all of the X8's cores are created equal and they are relegated to specific tasks (all but two outside of general number-crunching), the Moto X is no true octa-core phone in my book.
That said, its power is nothing to sneeze at, either. The question remains how it'll compare with handsets with faster quad-core Snapdragon 600 chips. Hopefully the Moto X's 2GB allotment of RAM will keep the performance gap from being too great.
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