What makes the Motorola Moto X special (REVIEW)

What makes the Motorola Moto X special (REVIEW)

The Motorola Moto X has finally been launched and would be made available to all major service providers in the US. This long-awaited phone is a result of a collaboration between Motorola and Google. (Google became Motorola’s owner and parent company about a year ago) which had people thinking that Motorola would produce the next Nexus phone but instead we got the Moto X, a compact, stylish handset with decidedly mid-range specs. While many competitors focus on specs and features you might not see, Motorola is emphasizing touchless voice controls, the ability to preview notifications without having to unlock the phone and its main selling point, ability to customize nearly every facet of it.

The moto X also has it short commings which include running on an android OS 4.2.2 instead of 4.3 in which the Nexus runs on, a dual-core processor and 720p screen, lower than the quad-core and 1080p combo that the HTC One and Galaxy S4 have taught consumers to expect from flagships, and finally a 2200 mAh battery that Motorola says will keep going for 24 hours, which sounds a little ambitious in my view.

Design

There's no doubt that the first thing you'll notice about the Moto X is its handpicked combination of colors. Motorola spent some time studying the human hand to make its Moto X exactly the right size while squeezing the biggest possible screen into its frame. The handset sports a 4.7-inch display, just as the larger and heavier HTC One does, but the Moto X feels much more compact. The back is also slightly rounded to fit your palm, which allows Motorola to include a "stepped battery" inside to fill out the space.

Weighing 4.8 ounces and measuring 5.1 x 2.6 x 0.41inches, the Moto X is shorter, narrower and lighter than the aluminum-clad HTC One (5.4 x 2.7 x 0.37 inches, 5 ounces). It is also built from a polycarbonate plastic that gives it a different feel from other phones on the market.

The Moto X has a sealed design, with no microSD expansion. Which is a bit disadvantageous because you'll be shelling out $200 or $250 for the 16 or 32GB option, with no 64GB model available.

Display

The phone's display is a 4.7-inch AMOLED display, with a resolution of 720 x 1280 aka 720p and a pixel density of 312 ppi. As I mentioned earlier, that's below the standard of a full HD 1080p resolution of the leading Android devices like the HTC One and Galaxy S4 although it uses a RGB subpixel structure, which means each pixel has its own red, green and blue subpixels.

OS and Interface

The Moto X basically sticks with the clean and intuitive stock Android Jelly Bean UI but adds in some very practical functionality. Unlike the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, which come with their respective Sense and TouchWiz skins, most facets of the Moto X's UI look and feel like those on a Nexus device. For instance, the lock screen, app drawer and notification menu look exactly like the stock version of Android, with little changes. It also includes Google's latest keyboard, which features Swype-like typing and next-word prediction.

Touchless Control

The Moto X  touchless Control feature which can wake your phone up anytime by saying "Okay, Google Now" and asking a question or issuing a command is one of the coolest and most useful smartphone innovations to come along in years. With the Moto X, you can also call a contact without lifting a finger, set reminders, check the weather and navigate to a specific address. Before you use the phone, you'll have to quickly train it to recognize your voice, but once you do, the handset won't respond to other voices. Plus, the Moto X can recognize you in an environment with moderate ambient noise because it uses three microphones.

Active Display/ active notification

Moto X has a Super AMOLED display. And unlike an LCD display, in which all of the pixels are either on or off, individual pixels can be fired up on. That’s where these “Active Notifications” come in. When the phone is in sleep mode, you’ll see the time and a little lockscreen icon flash on every few seconds. That’s what Motorola calls “breathing.” It recognizes when you pull your phone out of your pocket and starts breathing. Or when you otherwise pick it up. And it’s smart enough to not do it in your pocket, or when the phone’s face-down. It’s black-and-white, and it uses less battery than waking up the phone with the power button, because only the pixels used to show the time are used, instead of waking the entire display.

When you receive a new notification, the alert have its own icon, such as the Gmail logo. All you need do is simply press the alert to view the notification, which will be displayed at the top of the screen. From there, you can swipe up to launch the notification's accompanying app though active Display works on a last-come, first-served basis, so only the most recent notification will show. You can also just swipe up to unlock the device to whichever app you were using last.

Performance

The Moto X uses the 1.7-GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU augmented by an Adreno 320 GPU. Although the processor isn't the quad-core powerhouse you'll find in the Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola attempts to make up for this with its X8 Mobile Computing System. This architecture boasts additional processors for contextual computing and natural language. This makes the Moto X to be extremely fast when it comes to everyday use.

Quick Launch Camera

The Moto X's 10-MP camera starts with two flicks of your wrist -- a gesture that launches the app in about 2.2 seconds -- whether you have the screen off or on. The camera app has a bare-bones UI. You can touch anywhere on the screen to fire off a shot, and you can swipe in from the left side to reveal a settings wheel. Swiping in from the right brings up the gallery.

Battery Life

Motorola claims that the Moto X offers 24 hours of usage time on a single charge. It uses a 2200 mAh battery.

 Verdict

The Moto X is an excellent smartphone that delivers a great mix of personalization and convenience. If you're looking for specific isolated pieces of technology -- the highest resolution screen around, for instance, or the best possible camera you can get -- the Moto X probably isn't the phone for you. It's by no means a perfect device, and there are absolutely individual areas where other smartphones come out ahead.

But if you're looking for a thoughtfully designed phone with genuinely compelling features -- and, most important, a cohesive and outstanding overall user experience that'll delight you from the moment you pick it up -- you'll be hard-pressed to find another product that matches what the Moto X provides.

Finally for the main time, the phone will only be available for people in the US.