Hands On With Motorola's Moto X

adeelarshad82 writes "After months of speculation, leaks, and cryptic tweets, Motorola's new flagship smartphone is upon us. The Moto X runs Android 4.2.2 and is powered by the new Motorola X8 mobile computing system that includes several chips: a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, as well as a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor that handles the sensors. The phone carries a 4.7-inch, 1,280-by-720 display with 316 pixels per inch. Also since the phone features an active display, time and other selected alerts — text messages, missed calls, etc. — are shown without having to wake up your phone. Among the other features that Motorola talked up was the touchless control. Once activated, you can talk to your Moto X from up to 15 feet away. The Moto X differentiates itself from the other droid phones with customization options, and since Motorola is assembling the Moto X in Fort Worth, Texas, the company expects users to have their customized Moto X within four days of placing an order."

Re:This got me, too.

[Anonymous Psychopath]

What, exactly, does this mean, and how is it different from my current Android phone and widgets to show me these things on the lockscreen?

It uses the screen instead of a notification LED, but only powers the portion of the screen necessary for the alert instead of turning the whole display on. I'm not sure how this works, but that's what they're claiming. It's not at all like a lock screen.

Re:This got me, too.

[safetyinnumbers]

My Nokia C6-01 does this. It has an oled display, so presumably it only uses power for the illuminated pixes, with little power drain (as opposed to backlighting an entire LCD screen). So it always has a clock and other notifications on-screen all the time, without needing to press anything.

$575- 16GB, mid-range CPU, AT&T-only 32GB/colo

[CritterNYC]

It's $575 for the 16GB ($630 for the 32GB which is AT&T only at present) and no microSD so you're locked to that size. The customizations options are similarly on the worst-rated carrier in the US, AT&T. T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon get a black or white 16GB version. That's it. It's $199 for the 16GB one on a 2 year contract, which is the same as you'd pay for a top-tier phone like the HTC One 32GB or the Samsung Galaxy S4 16GB (with microSD so you can add up to 64GB more space on the cheap).

Re:How about the big question...

[Nemyst]

Engadget's preview [engadget.com] claims that any custom Moto X ordered from their Moto Maker site comes with an unlocked bootloader. I'm guessing carrier-sold phones would have a locked one.

Re:Android 4.3?

[tlhIngan]

Well, apple I'm sure has a special deal. But with a droid, that's your problem if you do that. But if the carrier is pushing it out they want control over it.

This is definitely somewhere MS or one of the big Android players could have gone for the jugular in the market and said 'the carrier is a dumb pipe and you control updates to YOUR device".

Except Apple has pretty much DONE that. Hell, they've gotten carriers to bend over and take it too - see Russian carriers dropping iPhone support because of onerous terms.

Samsung is officially larger than Apple now - they beat Apple at their own game - turning $600M more profit than Apple in mobile devices. Profit, not revenue - $5.2B vs. $4.6B. Yes, over 10%.

And Microsoft was smart enough to be able to do this too - while their Windows Phone rollouts are more phased rather than Apple's just-click-upgrade-yourself method, but they control those updates as well.

Hell, Apple still does two things that few Android vendors do - they provide the OS update file so you can update it on your PC (Nexus devices have images you can flash, but it's not as easy or convenient as just clicking "Upgrade" in iTunes). Second, with iOS apps, you can download them on your PC and sync it over to your phone. If it's a large app, it's a lot more convenient to use your PC to download it over its wired connection rather than your phone to do it over wifi. And you have a backup too - doesn't matter if Apple removes it or anything, you always can reinstall it via iTunes sync.

Yes, iTunes is hated, but it certainly has some useful features.