Moto X Review: Specs, Price, Release Date, Features

Motorola finally introduced its very first product, after being bought by Google last year; Moto X. The new born child of Google and Motorola is not a flagship with the most CPU core possible, or highest pixel density or with a 41 mega pixel camera. Motorola focused on customizing and providing what the users really need instead of adding some features which drains battery more than being useful. Moto X is available for all the 5 major USA carriers (AT&T, Verizon...) and has been assembled all in the USA.

Moto X will be available at the end of August and is delivered 4 days after submitting the order. The price for a 2 year contract and 16 GB version is $200 and to get twice the memory, you need to pay 50 bucks more. The SIM free version will cost you $575 and $629, for 16 GB and 32 GB versions respectively.

Design

The most important thing about the design of this plastic body phone is the option to customize it. You can use the Moto Maker website to order your personalized device. Available customizations are: Change the back and front color, change the accent color around the camera lens and volume buttons, Add an engraved signature at the back of the device, and choose a case. After styling the design and the storage you need, you can also choose wallpaper, add a name or greeting that will pop up each time you turn on your phone, and simplify the process of transferring information from your old phone. The last step of customization is about selecting different accessories with different colors for your device. AT&T customers are having more options when speaking about colors of the device.

Hardware

The 4.7 inches AMOLED screen comes with a 720p resolution (The dpi is 312) which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. Motorola believes more screen resolution is not distinguished with human eyes and it just brings more battery usage.

As mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t expect a CPU with the highest speed and cores among other smartphones, but you should expect a CPU with optimized performance for different actions. The heart of Moto X is pumped with the new X8 series, which is exclusive for mobile computing systems. Let’s review the details of this structure: A snapdragon S4 pro with a 1.7 GHZ dual core Krait as the CPU, and a quad core Adreno 320 as the GPU. What about the other 2 cores? Motorola uses a kind of unique way to control the battery performance (as claimed, the battery lasts for a whole day), which one core is dedicat ed to managing the language interpretations (yes, we are talking about the battery friendly version of Google Now) and the other core is responsible for the phone’s sensors.

The 10 Mega Pixel camera can also record with a 30fps full HD quality.

Software

The default operation system of Moto X is really surprising, since we don’t see the Jelly Bean 4.3 on the device. Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with Motorola User interface provides some unique features as follows:

Touchless communication with phone: Google Now is always at standby and starts at your call. Thanks to the X8 structure there is no worry about the battery usage and you can easily communicate with your intelligent assistance touchless.

Active Display: This feature notifies you about all the events and notifications as well as the time, without the need to even turn on the screen. It is really energy friendly, isn’t it?

Instant Shots: you can open the Camera application by just shaking your hands, and to increase the speed of taking pictures, the entire screen turns to a big shutter button. We haven’t tested this feature yet, but Motorola claims, it only takes 90 seconds from taking out the phone from pocket to taking some shots, which is at least half the time to take picture with other phone.

Identification Confirmed: This in another Touchless feature of Moto X, which needs an active NFC and a NFC tag. In other words, the phone unlocks as soon as it gets close to a pre-defined NFC tag. (Read more about, NFC on Android)

Moto X Main Features