Moto X, the much anticipated Android smartphone from Motorola is launched officially. Moto X has seen several leaks and almost all the details are confirmed through earlier leaks. Moto X is significant as this is the first phone coming from Motorola after Google’s acquisition of the former, the phone is designed with Google’s influence. Motorola has designed the phone to be more practical and provide good user experience rather than boasting the never ending rat race of better hardware specifications.
Motorola has chosen 4.7-inch AMOLED display for the phone with just 720p resolution, in the world of HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 we see 1080p resolution screens. After debate Motorola settled for 720p screen because it 1080p screen would suck the battery. Moto X will give a day and a night of battery life. The 4.7-inch screen is the right size and easy to operate with one hand according to Motorola. Moto X comes with Active notifications, the feature allows users to look at the notifications on a screen windows with out unlocking the phone just to check those notifications.
Moto X is powered by a Motorola X8 SoC, which actually consists of a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Pro dual-core processor with Adreno 320 GPU. Along with these Motorola added two lower powered processor to the mix, one out of these is dedicated to the Google Now Voice Recognition and another one for smaller tasks like camera and phones information display. The specifications of the device are not really high end they are of mid-range but what is important is Motorola is focusing on providing user experiences with this phone. “Ok, Google Now” will wake the phone up and and for touch-free user experience on the phone you can issue voice commands to Google Now.
Moto X comes with a 10 megapixel camera at the back, according to Motorola it is one of the fastest camera on a smartphone. Users can open the camera from any app or screen by just twisting your arm with Moto X in hand three times, it will open real fast and clicking on the screen anywhere will take a photograph. The low light photographs also look good thanks to under the hood optimizations. On the front there is a 2MP camera for video calls and selfies.
Other specifications include 4.7-inch Super AMOLED 720p screen, 2GB of RAM, 16/ 32GB of internal storage and a 2200mAh battery under the hood. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.0, micro USB, GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac.
Moto X runs on Android 4.2.2 and not on Android 4.3 announced recently, being a Google company we would expect it runs on the latest software, but Google promises that it will get the update soon.
Designed by You: Motorola is assembling the phone in US unlike other devices which are manufactured in Asian countries. Users can customize the phone to their liking, using an online Moto Maker tool users can customize color, front, back panels, accents, add your name or a short message. According to Motorola some 2000 combinations are possible. Once you have done the modifications and ordered it will take 4 days or less for the phone to reach you if you are in US. If you don’t like the phone you can always redesign or return it in 14 days.
The customized phones can only be ordered online, if you just like the classic ones Black and White you can get them from offline stores. The colored options are first available for AT&T customers through Moto Maker and later to Best Buy customers.
Availability & Pricing: Moto X will be available in the US, Canada and Latin America starting in the late August/ early September. Availability for other regions of the world is not yet known, there is no word on India launch also. In the US it will be available through all major carriers including AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. It will also be available from BestBuy stores across the country and also through the Motorola web site. Moto X is priced at $199 with a two year contract, pricing for other regions is not yet clear.
A phone with md-range specs with a price tag of $199 on two year contract is not cheap, but Motorola is betting big on the customizations, user experiences rather than hardware specifications. We have to see how this smartphone will perform in the market compared to its rivals.
Moto X will be available in the US, Canada and Latin America starting in late August/early September.
