The first Moto X
was a groundbreaking device because it brought near-stock Android to a
third-party manufacturer device that subsequently meant it got Android
updates faster than even some of Google’s own Nexus devices. The Moto X
also ushered in the era of hands-free control, “breathing” lock screen
notifications and the brilliant Moto Maker program for endless
personalization. The new Moto X (2nd gen.) is now here. So is the Moto X (2014)
another game changer like the original, or does it just improve on an
already near-perfect recipe? Read our Moto X (2014) review to find out.
© ANDROIDPIT
Design & Build Quality
This is easily the biggest standout of the new Moto X (2014).
This thing looks great. The curved back of the original is back, but now
you can add an awesome leather back plate or opt for a wood panel.
We’ve got the black leather Moto X (2nd gen.) and it is a thing of
beauty, more so than perhaps any other phone I’ve seen this year.
The new Moto X (2014) is easily the best looking Android I've seen this year. © ANDROIDPIT
The edges of the Moto X (2014) are a gorgeous metal with sectioned
corners for the antennas and that same great curve for a sexy feel in
the hand. The sides are actually a little slippery though and the
leather doesn’t exactly help in that regard either. I repeatedly found
myself almost dropping the new Moto X. In the heat too, the leather
would get a little moist, if you know what I mean. It will, of course,
also scuff up after a while, which may be cool or may be awful.
The metallic design of the Moto X is beautiful and feels great in the hand. © ANDROIDPIT
The little Motorola logo on the back of the original moto X has
festered into a rather ridiculously large indentation that you might
think is a button but is actually nothing more than a finger groove
(which is actually nicely positioned) and a visual counterbalance to the
large LED ring flash surrounding the camera lens.
The curved back and smooth aluminum frame feel great in the hand. © ANDROIDPIT
Everything is nicely centered on the new Moto X, with a top-mounted
headphone port and microUSB port at the bottom. Speaker grills sit above
and below the screen (and are strangely raised), but only the bottom
one emits any sound – there’s no stereo speaker action here, unlike in
the new Moto G (2014). The power button has a nice texture and you can
tell that design was at the forefront of Motorola’s mind with the new
Moto X. You can further customize your Moto X with the Moto Maker
program to include custom trim colors, engraving, front panel color
choices and more.
Display
The original Moto X suffered a bit from its HD display. Sure, it
was decent enough, but it didn’t exactly floor you. The new Moto X (2nd
gen.) has upped the ante by packing a Full HD display, bringing a very
respectable 424 pixels per inch to its 5.2-inch AMOLED screen. Colors
are bright and saturated with great contrast. The screen brightness
doesn’t really ramp up though and our test unit had a rather dull blue
tint to whites. The screen offers a satisfactory balance of size,
resolution and output to deliver what you want from your smartphone
screen without destroying your battery but it’s not exceptional.
A look at the front and back of the bamboo Moto X (2014). / © ANDROIDPIT
The AMOLED display technology also means the great “breathing”
notifications are back, and the various motion sensors will activate
your notifications from a screen-off state simply by reaching for your
phone. This is, of course, a much more battery-friendly way to get
notifications than to turn the entire display on. AMOLED also means
on-screen blacks are pitch black but outside readability is not quite as
great as on an LCD screen. However, the notification benefits brought
to the Moto X by AMOLED clearly outweigh readability in direct sunlight
or the minor failings of the screen itself. You can also set the screen
to dim more quickly if you stop looking at it with Attentive Display.
The Moto X (2014) runs a slightly tweaked version of stock Android. © ANDROIDPIT
Software
The Moto X (2104) comes with near-stock Android,
with a light sprinkling of Motorola features on top. The basic
interface is pure stock, so you won’t get any flashy interface elements,
just bare bones Android 4.4.4.
This of course, means that the Moto X gets Android updates insanely
quickly and is also one of the fastest interfaces around because it is
not bogged down in a manufacturer skin.
It's all stock Android with a few Moto additions like Connect, Migrate and Moto. © ANDROIDPIT
The Motorola additions are minimal but useful. The settings menu gets
a Motorola Privacy section and Moto ID for syncing across devices or
with the cloud. Everything else is contained in a section called Moto
which holds the four cornerstones of the Moto X’s uniqueness: Assist,
which handles profiles that can apply themselves automatically, like
when, for example, you are driving. Actions let you manage the Moto X’s
gesture based controls including the camera shortcut wrist flick and
wave to silence.
Hands-free controls are the strongest point of the Moto X (2014). © ANDROIDPIT
The two major software features of the Moto X (2014) are voice
commands and the intelligent display. Display options include
“breathing” notifications, blocking notification content for specific
apps and app blocking. Voice commands on the Moto X (2014) are like
Google Now on speed. You can now name your Moto X anything you like so
you don’t have to endlessly say “Ok Google” too. This allows for some
pretty unique and also hilarious hotword phrases.
There's an amazing amount you can do with just your voice on the Moto X (2014). © ANDROIDPIT
Getting used to the Moto X’s voice commands takes a little while, and
between hotword detection, voice command recognition and spoken
results, it’s not the fastest process on the block, but for controlling
your phone from across the room it’s incredibly useful. You can
touchlessly send WhatsApp messages, listen to emails, perform web
searches, have your Moto X read out new notifications to you, make calls
and check voicemail when your phone is locked, take a photo, dictate
text messages, set reminders, activate profiles, post to Facebook and
more. It will completely change the way you think about using your
phone.
There's a few nice little additions in the new Moto X (2014) like Attentive Display. © ANDROIDPIT
Motorola made a conscious decision to keep the Moto range minimal,
with near-stock Android and very little bloatware, if you can even call
it that. Motorola Connect syncs your devices in the cloud via your
Motorola ID, Moto Migrate helps you transition from one device to
another, Spotlight Stories are a lovely 360-degree immersive experience
from Motorola (you may already know Windy Day), and Moto Assist (now
called Help) gives you 24-7 access to help from Motorola Customer
Support as well as handy tips and tricks for your Moto X.
Motorola Help is always ready to assist you, either through FAQs, chat or on the phone. © ANDROIDPIT
The greatest part of it all is that Motorola simply uploads updates
to the core Moto X features to the Play Store, so as new sensor
services, Moto Display options or Moto Actions controls are made
available they can be updated via the Play Store rather than through
waiting for a slow OTA firmware update. This is one of the great lessons
Motorola learned under the tutelage of Google (the same thing happens
with Google Play Services these days).
Thanks to great specs and stock Android, the Moto X (2014) is blisteringly fast. © ANDROIDPIT
Performance
The Moto X (2014) is packs very standard internals for a device
in its class: a quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset clocked at 2.5 GHz with
Adreno 330 GPU. There’s a 16 GB or 32 GB model available but there’s
no option for microSD expansion. The new Moto X has 2 GB of RAM and of
course runs the latest version of Android: Android 4.4.4 with an
imminent update to the Android L release. Due to the stock interface and
very few system apps, the Moto X is super-fast and responsive and
stands up well to any other flagships around right now, outperforming
both the Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8) in benchmarks and feel.
The Moto X (2014) has a 13 MP camera with dual-LED ring flash, but it's not a standout. © ANDROIDPIT
Camera
The new Moto X gets a slight increase in the camera stakes: to a
13 MP camera with 4K video, slow-motion capture, panorama and HDR. You
can tap anywhere to shoot a picture and launch the camera app through
the slightly gimmicky wrist flick, which works quite well and delivers a
satisfying buzz as it launches. Not sure why, but I like it. It’s one
of the fastest ways to launch and shoot I’ve seen.
Despite being super fast to access and shoot, the camera interface is a little clumsy. © ANDROIDPIT
The results of the camera are less impressive, however. There’s no
manual mode on the new Moto X and the camera doesn’t quite live up to
the premium look of the phone as a whole. It performs acceptably, but
not brilliantly, which, when compared to many of the other flagships
around, is just not good enough. It struggles to focus up close and
doesn’t produce particularly rich colors. There are only two resolution
options, no timer, no manual mode, no optical image stabilization and a
slightly awkward camera interface. Definitely the weakest part of the
Moto X so far.
Battery
Perhaps I spoke too soon. The Moto X (2014) comes with a very
mediocre 2,300 mAh battery, which is a lot lower capacity than many
competitors, which tend to sit around the 3,000 mAh mark with a
similarly sized screen and resolution. While part of this decision is
clearly due to the battery saving possibilities of active notifications
on the AMOLED screen, the reliance on voice commands still demands more
power and the increase in screen size and display resolution really
required a larger bump (the original Moto X had a 2,200 mAh battery that
was equally weak).
Motorola has delivered some useful gesture controls with its new Moto X. / © ANDROIDPIT
Technical Specifications
Motorola Moto X
System Android 4.4.4 KitKat
Display
5.2 inches, Full HD AMOLED (1,920 x 1,080 pixels, 423 ppi)
CPU Quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor (MSM8974-AC), 2.5 GHz
GPU
Adreno 330 GPU (578 MHz)
RAM
2 GB
Internal storage
16/32 GB
Battery 2,300 mAh (8 hours of battery charge in 15 minutess with turbo charging)
Camera 13 MP (f/2.25) with dual-LED Ring Flash, HDR, UHD (4K) video capture, 4X digital zoom
Connectivity GSM, HSDPA, LTE, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
Dimensions
72.4 x 140.8 x 3.8-9.9 mm
Weight 144 grams
Extras Aluminum metal frame, optional wood or leather battery cover, custom voice prompt
Final Verdict
After starting out so well, and
making such a great impression based on the new Moto X’s stylish
appearance and lightning quick interface, the two critical elements of
camera and battery burst the bubble (not to mention minor screen issues
and that odd speaker decision). Is this a case of putting style before
substance? Maybe. The battery may be a big letdown, but the camera is
still an improvement over the original Moto X. The issue is that the
original Moto X introduced so many innovative features they made up for
it and the new Moto X doesn’t.
The Moto X (2014)
updates a successful recipe but doesn’t bring anything particularly new
to the table. Unless metal edges or naming your phone is the one
feature you’ve been waiting for, it seems clear that Motorola could have
done more. Not necessarily in terms of tons of new software features or
gimmicky add-ons, but perhaps a little of the budget reserved for
making the new Moto X look so great would have been more wisely invested
in a larger battery or better camera software.
Still, these are things that can be tweaked by software updates, so
if you’re looking for a great looking phone (that can be custom built
via Moto Maker) with a fast interface, barely-there bloatware, speedy
updates and fantastic hands-free capabilities then the Moto X is a great
choice. Especially when you consider it only costs 499 USD for the 16
GB version: the new Moto X is easily the best looking, best feeling, and
most premium-styled device in its price range. But if a
better-than-average camera and all day battery life are key factors you
may just have to wait for the next one
Post a Comment