Everything you need to know about the Motorola Moto X

Motorola has been unnervingly quiet in the mobile industry since it’s take over by Google almost 15 months ago. This is the same company that released several phones one after the other in a short span for a long time. Since the day we came to know of the merger, we have been expecting to see some positive changes in the company’s portfolio of android smartphones. Now after a long wait, we finally have four handsets from Motorola. Three of those are not so different from their predecessors in terms of design and hardware. The fourth, however, is really interesting. Starting from the design right up to the software optimizations, it is vastly in contrast to Motorola’s previous efforts. That, my friends, would be the Motorola Moto X ! It has an aptly sized screen, very ergonomic design, it’s pretty fast and is available in all sorts of wacky colors (something I missed in smartphones till now, apart from Nokia) that you can choose yourself. There are lots of other customization options with this little one. Read on to find more.

Specifications

The Moto X is not about the specifications, what’s under the hood. It’s about the experience you get when all things inside it work harmoniously. But still, to quench your geeky thirst, let’s just get these out of the way. The phone sports a 4.7″ AMOLED display with a 1280×720 pixel resolution. The screen is of the RGB variety and is a pleasure to look at. The whole package is powered by a Motorola X8 Mobile Computing System, which is just a fancy name for a combination of a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC clocked at 1.7 GHz, an Adreno 320 GPU, a Natural Language Processor and a Contextual Computing Processor. For those of you who don’t want to go into the details, that’s a dual-core processor based on Krait 300, coupled with the ‘Natural Language Processor’ for the ever-awake Google Now in the Moto X and the Contextual Computing Processor for the sensors, display and touch interaction, which will also act as the primary processor when the phone is in standby mode. The Moto X will come with 2GB of RAM and two storage options, 16GB or 32GB. At the back, there’s a 10MP Clear Pixel camera with an RGBC filter for better pictures and in the front a 2MP shooter, both capable of HD video recording in 1080p. All this will be backed by a 2200 mAh battery.

Design of the Motorola Moto X

The phone is 65.3mm wide, 129.3mm in heightand weighs 130g. It is 5.6-10.4mm in thickness. Now those are just numbers, if you put this aside any other 4.7 incher, it’ll make them look like a giant. The phone is curvaceous and very compact. The Moto X is ergonomically built and fits into the hand quite naturally and intuitively. The back panel has a rubbery finish with a distinctive design, which enhances the grip and keeps the handset clean. The responsive volume and power keys are on the right side. Motorola have done a great job at designing this phone. The display on the Moto X is nothing to write home about if compared to the 1080p monsters out there. In our opinion, Motorola made the right choice going with a 720p panel as we feel that 1080p panels are a redundant drain on the battery and do not offer that great a difference in the viewing quality at the end of the day. 1080p panels are more suited for tablets is what we believe. But I digress ! The screen on the Moto X has something called theActive Display Feature. Simply put, you can see notifications on the screen without turning on the handset’s display, just like your good ol’ Nokia. This feature has been sorely missed and highly expected in android devices since ages now, thank you Motorola. Now because the screen is an AMOLED, it consumes very little to negligible amounts of power when flashing notifications. This is not an all-time deal like the Nokia phones, but whenever you get a notification or when the phone is flipped over or nudged.

Moto X Maker

If we just talk about the looks, the Moto X is nothing out of the ordinary. What makes it special is the ‘Moto Maker’. Moto Maker is an online portal, a website, which lets you the consumer design the Moto X up to your hearts content. In Motorola’s own words, “With more than 2000 possibilities to choose from, you can design a phone that’s uniquely yours from the front to the back, to the accents, the wallpaper..” and so on. There are 18 color choices for the back panel, the front panel however is restricted to either black or white. There are different color options for the power and volume keys, and also the camera rim. Wooden back panels are also slated for the future. You can also get the back panel engraved and select a custom message when the phone boots. This website is only available to the people of the United States as of now, but we believe (or hope) that it might come to parts of Europe in the near future. A customization level this deep is unheard of and really commendable on Motorola’s part.

Software on the Motorola Moto X

The Moto X comes with android 4.2.2 out of the box and Motorola have taken special care in not adding much bloatware on to the phone. This is rather refreshing for the normal consumer who cannot tinker around with their phones and get rid of the unwanted applications by rooting their device. But Motorola has made some very interesting additions. They have changed the whole camera UI, stripping off everything from it that consumers seldom use (according to them) and just leaving behind a couple of basic controls on a circular dial. Whether this will be accepted or not remains to be seen. You can touch the screen to click a picture, just like in any windows phone, and yes. You also have touch to focus. Some other Motorola additions are Touchless control, Motorola Assist, Motorola Connect and 50GB of Google Drive storage. According to us, Motorola’s approach is much more practical as compared to, say Samsung’s gimicky features. The Moto X is snappy and performs really well. In fact, if you haven’t heard of the phone, you will not be able to tell that it runs on a dual-core processor. Once again, the Moto X reminds all the geeks out there that what you see on paper is not everything, software optimization plays a vital role in the final user experience. And Motorola have done a great job at it.

So what do you guys think ? Does this phone have enough to compete with the beasts out there ? Does it really needs an octa-core processor and a 1080p screen to grab your attention ? We think that the Motorola Moto X is not even trying to compete with the others. Motorola was gunning for simplicity, comfort and customization, not for extravagance. I think they might have hit the target. They did not design this phone for the power user, they made it for an everyday consumer. So if you want a phone that just works, something on which you can do a little bit of everything, head over to the Moto Maker and start designing a Motorola X, yourself.