Motorola Moto X - Specifications. Review of Motorola Moto X - a completely new Motorola The operating system is the system software that manages and coordinates the work of the hardware components in the device
Motorola Moto X is an iconic phone no matter how you look at it. With its appearance, it marked the beginning of closer cooperation between Motorola and the search giant Google.
A smartphone that is positioned as a flagship in terms of price, but in terms of hardware it is more similar to last year’s flagship. A smartphone whose appearance can be customized even before it leaves the factory assembly line. A smartphone that does what no other phone can do. What is this Motorola Moto X really like?
| Motorola Moto X | |
| CPU | Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (MSM8960Pro) 1.7 GHz Motorola X8 System (SoC+NLP Processor+Contextual Processor) |
| Screen | 4.7 inches AMOLED (RGB) 1280×720 |
| RAM | 2 GB LPDDR2 |
| WiFi | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0 |
| Storage device | 16/32 GB, 2 years 50 GB Google Drive |
| Interfaces | microUSB 2.0, 3.5 mm, NFC, Miracast |
| OS | Android 4.2.2 |
| Battery | 2200 mAh, 3.8 V, 8.36 Whr |
| Dimensions / Weight | 65.3 x 129.3 x 5.6-10.4 mm, 130 grams |
| Camera | Main 10 MP Clear Pixel (RGBC), Front 2 MP 1080p |
| Price | $99 (16 GB), $149 (32 GB) with 2 year contract |
Design
Describing the design of the Moto X is extremely difficult, despite its simplicity. By the standards of 2013, Moto X can be classified as a compact phone. Although, I am sure that at the time of the first Samsung Galaxy it would have been classified as a “shovel”. Almost the entire front part is occupied by a 4.7″ screen with incredibly thin side frames. At the top of the screen there is a speaker grille, a front-facing 2 MP 1080p camera and light and proximity sensors. The bottom indentation only has a microphone hole: there are no physical or touch buttons. On the right side there are power buttons and volume keys, and on the left there is a nanoSIM tray (as in the iPhone 5/5s/5c), which can be removed using the included “clip” tool. The entire front panel appears to be one solid piece thanks to the seamless welding of the screen and front frame. If you look closely, you can see small ridges on the top and bottom of the bezel that prevent the screen from touching the table surface when the phone is lying face down.
The back cover is non-removable and has a curved shape. The seam between the front and back panels is clearly visible, apparently, this is how ease of assembly of “custom” Moto X designs is achieved. The front and back parts are connected with latches and glue, depending on the buyer’s choice. The curvature of the back of the Moto X is difficult to describe. The smartphone looks very natural, has excellent ergonomics and fits very comfortably in the hand.
It is noteworthy that the entire space under the complex bend is occupied by a non-removable 2200 mAh stepped battery, made using Lg Chem technology. The material from which the back cover is made, although visually it has the texture of Kevlar, feels more like soft-touch plastic. The phone does not slip in your hands, and it collects smudges and fingerprints much worse than its glossy counterparts. Also on the back cover there is a 10 megapixel camera, an LED flash and the Motorola logo in a round recess. At first glance, this recess should not have any functions, but during a conversation it is very convenient to place your index finger in it, and when you take the phone out of your pocket, it is good to determine what orientation it is in now. The Moto X has three microphones: one at the top, next to the headphone jack, a second at the bottom at the back, and a third under the screen. To charge the Moto X, use the microUSB connector located on the bottom.
In your hands, the Moto X doesn't feel like a cheap phone, that's all. Nothing creaks or crunches in it. It also doesn't feel fragile. I don’t want to quickly put it in a case and protect it. This paradoxical feeling, for example, is caused by the iPhone 5s, which is assembled very firmly from high-quality materials, but at the same time you want to immediately protect it with a case. I had completely the opposite feelings with the Moto X - it looks durable and stylish enough that even a thin case would ruin its exterior. Given the current trend of larger flagships, the Moto X seems like a real treat for compact phone lovers.
Regarding assembly, after two weeks of very hard use, my copy of Moto X began to creak slightly in the area of the power and volume buttons.
Screen
The smartphone has a Super AMOLED panel with a diagonal of 4.7″ and a resolution of 1280×720. I don't like AMOLED screens, but the Moto X doesn't have the worst screen I've seen with this kind of technology. Firstly, in terms of RGB arrangement, this is not PenTile, but the so-called S-stripe (officially, this term is not used by companies to describe such an arrangement of pixels). For the first time, this type of pixel arrangement was used in the screen of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Essentially, the Moto X screen is a smaller version of the Galaxy Note 2 screen. Due to the difference in diagonal, the Motorola screen looks better than in the Galaxy Note 2, but the brightness reserve in it is noticeable more (318 Nits). Despite this, on a sunny day, almost nothing is visible on the screen, and you need to look for the shadow to see at least something. Automatic brightness works very smoothly and adapts to the ambient lighting almost imperceptibly to the eye. The screen looks very good indoors, with excellent viewing angles, rich colors and high contrast. Speaking of colors: traditionally for AMOLED they are obscenely oversaturated, but at the same time the color temperature remains at a reasonable level. The screen does not fade into blue, red or green shades - everything is within the acceptable limits. True, there are also traditional AMOLED artifacts - at minimum backlight, gray appears a purple tint, and if you arm yourself with a microscope, you can see colored halos around white letters on a black background. But if on the Galaxy Note 2 this flaw was clearly visible without a magnifying glass, here it is successfully hidden by the smaller screen diagonal. 1080p screens are becoming a hallmark of modern flagships, and in this regard, the Moto X looks lackluster with its 720p.
But the presence of honest three RGB sub-pixels with a 4.7″ diagonal gives us a density of 312 ppi, which is certainly not the crazy 450+ that we are used to seeing in the latest new products, but this is quite enough not to complain about the lack of screen clarity. Don't get me wrong - there is a difference, and it is not in favor of the Moto X, but from the point of view of everyday use it is absolutely not critical and is not as obvious as it seems when directly comparing the numbers. In any other situation, I would have preferred a nicely tuned 1080p IPS screen, but Motorola was faced with the task of balancing hardware power, autonomy, physical size, and also implementing proprietary “Active Notification” technology, and in this case such a choice is completely justified.
Sound
I attach quite a lot of importance to this point in phones. Nowadays, when a smartphone acts as a phone for 5% of the total time of use, it is customary to ignore this parameter. Moreover, both from the OEM side and from the reviewers/consumers side. The Moto X, despite its single external speaker, sounds very tight and good. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard it for the first time. The phone may lack the bass and stereo of the HTC One, but that doesn't stop it from sounding loud and clear. The quality of speech transmission is excellent, both in conversational dynamics and in speakerphone mode. When playing music, the sound in the standard player is also excellent, and the presence of an equalizer (for both headphones and an external speaker) is also nice. In general, the voice quality alone makes me think about purchasing this smartphone as my main device. I make a lot of calls at work, and with the Moto X I feel much less tired from talking.
The design of the earpiece also contributes to comfort: when other phones begin to cut into the ear with a sharp edge after a certain time, Moto X does not cause such sensations. The intricate shape of the back cover allows you to avoid blocking the external speaker when the phone is lying on your back.
Performance
The Motorola marketing department had a difficult task - how to count processor cores so that 2 turned into 8. In the process, the “X8 mobile computing system” brand was created. 8 cores were obtained by adding 2 Krait 300 CPUs of 1.7 GHz each, 4 Adreno 320 graphics processors and 2 auxiliary processors for processing natural language and context dependence. I am sure that if the marketing department gets to know the engineers even more closely, it will be possible to count all 12+ cores. Thus, a buyer who thinks in terms of “cores” should be satisfied with the potential performance of his phone and not suffer from attacks from friends whose phones boast 4-8 cores. In my review, I already said that the industry made the leap to 4-cores too early, without fully revealing the potential of dual-core solutions. The presence of X8 in Moto X does not upset me at all, rather it even makes me happy.
The Moto X's CPU is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MSM8960Pro with two Krait 300 cores operating at 1.7 GHz each; the GPU is an Adreno 320 (400 MHz). The performance of such a combination is not just enough - in most cases it can easily compete with modern quad-core flagships from other companies. All this, of course, contradicts logic, but here you need to understand that the Moto X screen is 720p. Also, “performance is saved” by the relatively high (1.7 GHz) frequency of both cores, which is maintained for a longer period of time than other flagships. While your beloved SGS4 most of the time runs on one core with a frequency of 1 GHz instead of the four 1.9 GHz promised to you, the Moto X tries to keep the frequencies of both cores high.
3D Mark – Demo Epic Cetadel GlBenchmark 2.7 – Egypt HD GlBenchmark 2.7 – T-Rex HD Basemark X
Google Octane Benchmark v1 Browsermark 2.0 Vellamo Benchamark -HTML5 Vellamo Benchamark – Metal
Potentially, this approach has a worse impact on autonomy, since every +100 MHz of the processor is a significant increase in power consumption. However, we get performance from the Moto X that is close to modern flagship solutions, and in some tasks even surpasses them. The absence of four cores in the Moto X needs to be specifically looked for to be noticed. Personally, I didn’t notice any slowdowns or lags either in the system itself or in the games. The Moto X uses the F2FS file system to store user data, which, in addition to improving overall performance, is also immune to the number of overwrites and performs better in conditions where the drive is very full. All these elements, as well as the lack of a huge number of add-ons in the OS itself, make the Moto X a very fast phone. Not the fastest on the market, but significantly faster than most people would think when reading the spec sheet.
Android OS – Clean, but not fresh
Moto X out of the box runs on the not-latest version of Android 4.2.2 JB. Those who say that the Moto X runs on “pure Android” have either not seen pure Android, or have not held a Moto X in their hands. Visually, it really looks like a real default Android, with the exception of a few differences. The panel with on-screen buttons is in most cases translucent (as in Android 4.4 KitKat), and the elements in the notification panel and curtain are arranged slightly differently. Also, quite a lot of items have appeared in the settings menu that relate exclusively to proprietary Moto X technologies. The camera UI has undergone changes for the better. In addition, unlike stock Android, all localizations, including Russian, have been removed from Moto X. This is a completely logical decision, given the complete lack of adaptation to Russian of many proprietary Moto X technologies. But to summarize, the Moto X firmware is truly the most insignificant customization of stock Android that I have ever seen. It is noteworthy that, according to rumors, the Moto X will not be updated to 4.3, but will go straight to 4.4 KitKat.
Autonomy
Motorola beat itself in the chest and stated that the 2200 mAh battery of the Moto X will be able to work for 24 hours without any problems. Quite a loud statement and everyone immediately begins to think that he will work for so long with the screen on. The reality turned out to be much less rosy. In my case, under heavy load in the form of synchronizing two gmail accounts, working as an LTE access point, an hour of calls, the phone offered to charge itself after 8 hours of use. In moderate mode (Internet, Twitter, G+, YouTube, one account and Wi-Fi/LTE) it quite easily survived until the end of the day and showed 2.5 - 5 hours of screen time. Screen brightness was controlled automatically all the time. By the way, in all cases there is a charge leak caused by the “Android OS” process, which makes no sense and sometimes exceeds the power consumption of the screen. I spoke with François Simon (a fairly competent XDA developer) about this and he suspects that this behavior is caused by a bug on the side of the Google servers, and that something similar has recently started happening to him on several devices. According to unverified data, this problem has been fixed in Android 4.4 KitKat.
In general, autonomy is not revolutionary, but quite acceptable for a phone that “constantly listens” to the user’s commands.
Camera
The Moto X camera gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is the first to use “clear pixel” technology, which, without going into technical details, allows you to get less noisy photos in low light conditions. On the other hand, Google engineers have not yet been able to make this technology work to its full potential; in the first version of the commercial Moto X firmware, the camera produced completely insane results, and after the update, the sensor seemed to be replaced out of the blue and the number of cool photos began to grow rapidly. Subjectively, I'm happy with the camera. Although it is worse than the one in the iPhone 5s, if you understand its limitations and capabilities well, it is quite capable of producing very beautiful pictures. However, sometimes, in difficult lighting conditions, color artifacts appear in the form of purple halos.
I liked the camera interface. This is truly a step in the right direction from the stock Android camera. It is not overloaded and simple, perhaps even too simple. By default, the camera focuses on the subjects at all times and takes a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen. In the settings menu, which slides out by swiping to the right from the left border of the screen, you can set the focus on the selected object by tapping on it on the screen. With this setting, the photo is taken after you click on the subject and the camera focuses on it. In the latest leak of the official Android 4.4 firmware for Moto X, there is also the ability to focus by moving a special frame-sight across the screen. In the settings menu, you can set the behavior of HDR (on/off/auto), geotagging, enable slow-motion video mode (720p@15fps), panoramas, and enable/disable camera activation using a special wrist rotation gesture. By the way, this trick of turning on the camera with a similar gesture seemed pretty stupid to me at first glance, but later I started rotating my other phones and didn’t understand why the camera wouldn’t start in them. In a word, turning on the camera in this way is very convenient and intuitive, and in my case no false alarms were noticed.
Moto X video records in 1080p@30fps without options for choosing compression and quality, stereo sound is 128 kbps. “Slow motion” is recorded at 720p@60fps and then played back at 15 frames per second, the iPhone 5s is much better in this regard. Everyone can evaluate the quality of the photo for themselves by looking at the examples.
Touchless Control
You may have already read how much I appreciate this innovation of Moto X. If not, I recommend reading it. It is worth adding a few technical details to what has been written. Moto X doesn't respond to anyone else's voice. And it responds only to the English phrase “Ok, Google Now”, moreover, it does not recognize the words, but rather reacts to the amplitude of vibrations. This is how they achieved a reaction only to the owner’s voice, which, by the way, Moto X needs to be “accustomed” to during the initial setup. Why did I decide this? Because a couple of times while listening to music without lyrics, I noticed how the Moto X reacted and turned on the screen to receive commands. Perhaps certain fluctuations in the composition were similar to a code phrase. However, this is just a theory. I got used to the feature of a constantly active microphone and now other phones seem somehow “dead” to me. Even despite the rare recognition and response errors, it is incredibly convenient when the phone just lies nearby and you can ask it for any information. Let's say you're playing a game and can't complete a certain episode. Without being distracted from the process, you can command the phone to search for the passage of the desired game. When you wake up to your alarm in the morning, you can tell Moto X to wake you up half an hour later. Often, when I am sitting at a computer and having an active correspondence with someone, I can ask for related information by voice on the phone without being distracted from the process. If you don't know where you left your phone in the room, you can say “Find my phone” and Moto X will light up the screen and make a repeating sound to help you find it.
For me, the “Touchless Control” feature represents a much greater innovation than the fingerprint scanner. And only for this alone can I forgive the Moto X for all its shortcomings. To be fair, it is worth noting that for exclusively Russian-speaking people the value of this function tends to zero, but such technology has potential and soon we will distinguish phones by whether they can listen or not.
Active notification
This function is based on a very simple idea - to use the feature of the AMOLED screen not to consume energy when displaying absolutely black color. Thanks to it, a notification system was developed that displays information about them in the form of a small monochrome icon. In other words, if there is a notification about any event, the screen will pulsate, displaying a clock and an image of a ring with an application icon inside it. If you touch the ring while it is highlighted, a small preview of the most recent notification will be displayed. Further options are possible: if, without releasing your finger, you swipe up to the notification, the phone will unlock and transfer you to the application that displayed that same notification; If you swipe to the side without releasing your finger, all notifications will be reset; if you let go of your finger, the phone will continue to pulsate with notifications, changing them if new ones arrive.
Moto X uses its context-aware engine to determine the state of the phone in space and therefore display those notifications more intelligently. By collecting data from the gyroscope, light sensors and other sensors, Moto X determines the location of the phone and its condition. If it is picked up from a table or taken out of a pocket, it will show the time and the screen unlock ring. If you turn it face down or put it back in your pocket, the notifications will stop pulsing.
Motorola Connect, Migrate and Assist
Three nice software additions that, despite their simplicity, can do a lot. Motorola Connect- allows you to see the phone’s charge level, manage call and SMS logs directly from the Chrome browser window after installing the extension of the same name and logging into your account. In my case, the chip began to unpleasantly eat up the battery and I turned it off, but if they fix it, it’s nice to answer SMS and reject or receive calls without leaving the computer, even if the phone is nearby.
Motorola Migrate- allows you to transfer all data (including files) from your previous Android phone to Moto X using a simple QR code scanning operation. It works quite well and transfers everything including SMS and call logs. And just recently, for future Moto X users who order a smartphone through the MotoMaker service, the company offered a new service - transferring contacts and calendar from the Apple iCloud service. Thus, the former iPhone owner receives his “X” with all the necessary data.
Motorola Assist- perhaps the most frequently used feature by me and the one I'm starting to miss in other phones. The application has only three points: do not disturb, in a meeting and while driving. In “do not disturb” you set the hours of your sleep and the phone goes into silent mode and stops pulsing “active notifications” during this period of time. “In a meeting” does the same thing as “do not disturb”, only it is based on the times of various events on your calendar. “Driving” is the most interesting point - using the context dependency core, Moto X determines that you are moving in a car, and in the case of incoming calls, it will offer you to answer or refuse them. If you allow the call to be answered by voice, the phone will put it on speakerphone. In the case of an incoming SMS, Moto X will read its contents aloud to you and offer to reply to the person who wrote to you that you are driving a car at the moment and cannot correspond. Any of these modes displays a notification in the curtain that it is activated, and you can always cancel it there. This can be useful, for example, if you are not driving a car, but are in the passenger seat.
Moto Maker
One of the coolest things that makes the Moto X different from other smartphones is the ability to customize its appearance before purchasing. On the corresponding website you can customize the color of the front (white/black) and back (18 colors) panels of the phone, specify the color of the buttons (7 colors), select the amount of available memory (16/32 GB), add text engraving on the back panel, select custom wallpaper and welcome text when loading the phone, as well as purchase a Sol Republic headset of any color and form factor. Within 4 days, your custom phone will be assembled at a factory in the US and sent to the specified address. So far, such luxury is available only to residents of the USA, and only under operator contracts, but a Russian person cannot be stopped like this, and I personally know a person who bought and sent to Russia such a Moto X. Perhaps he will find the time and write to us on RN how he accomplished such a feat. I had a Canadian version of the Moto X, but secretly I now dream of my own version of the Iron Man-style Moto X.
Conclusion
There is such a wonderful property that our smart devices are gradually acquiring - context dependence. The device knows what we are doing and when we do it, it restructures and transforms the flow of information depending on our type of activity. This is exactly what the future should be like, in which cars fly themselves and devices know what you think. Moto X may not have made this future a reality, but it showed what is possible to achieve today. I was very skeptical about this phone before writing the review - 720p amoled, weak/outdated (on paper) hardware and high price contributed to this. But after finishing writing this article, I completely changed my attitude towards the Moto X and am quite ready to make it my main phone. You don’t immediately understand the value of all the technologies of this device, but at the moment when you come home, tired, from celebrating a birthday/New Year/Halloween, you throw your phone in an unknown location and fall asleep, after a while you come to your senses in a completely dark room and You don’t understand what time it is, or what day of the week, or where your phone is. Into the void you say: “Ok, Google Now, what time is it and what day is it today?” and your phone obediently answers you with a voice from the far corner. At such moments, you absolutely don’t care how many cores it has or what kind of screen it has, the only important thing is that it helped you identify yourself in space as painlessly as possible without getting out of bed.
I don’t think about what else I could buy for that money and how much bigger/faster/beautiful it would be. I just got freedom that I don’t want to part with now. Even all its shortcomings in the form of a controversial screen and autonomy that did not live up to expectations, I can completely forgive it.
Therefore, it makes sense to consider a Chinese metal phablet. There are several fundamental “chips” in the Meizu MX5 - high-quality sound (a dedicated audio chip helps), Android redesigned beyond recognition and a fast processor in everything except games. In terms of the quality of the body and autonomy, the “Chinese” is inferior to Motorola and Samsung, in terms of power it surpasses them, and in terms of the quality of cameras and display it is approximately equal.
The main problems of the model are the “crooked” adaptation for Russia, as a result of which the smartphone cannot work with the vast majority of 4G networks in the country. In order not to get into trouble with “3G only”, it would be a good idea to check whether the Chinese exotic is compatible specifically with your telecom operator.
conclusions
*Voice of Zadornov*. "Get ready - there's going to be a strange phrase." And the thing is that the dismal results of the Moto X Play in benchmarks did not spoil the impression of our hero. Coming from a reviewer who does nothing but twirl gadgets in tests, this will sound unusual, but in fact our Motorola remains a pleasant smartphone to use, even with “butt-button” power.
Because X Play carefully throws up information every time you take it out of your pocket; because its body is seriously different from the vulgar metal and glass competitors, and at the same time it feels even more expensive. Because the display is of high quality and does not have toxic colors, and the autonomy is such that you can walk around with two SIM cards and not worry about it.
But, of course, there are also contraindications - the smartphone is very massive, well-fed, and in cloudy weather and at night the camera works stupidly. X Play games are difficult to run even at medium graphics detail, and in the operating system the lack of power is compensated with varying degrees of success by the perfectly “polished” Android.
Moto X Play is not a geeky device. This is simply a pleasant-to-use alternative to Korean and Chinese “pop”, one of the most well-made and durable phablets today. It is recommended for everyone who is looking for a “normal smartphone” with good battery life and a good body. But for more demanding Motorola lovers, it makes sense to wait for models produced jointly by Lenovo-Moto - the Chinese promise to present such smartphones by the end of 2016.
Motorola's Moto X smartphone is the second generation of phones with an improved screen, high-end processor, and endlessly customizable design, making the 2014 Moto X a true flagship device.
Motorola Moto X Phone - Reviews
Last year, Motorola turned smartphone design on its head. Although the Moto X smartphone had a special beauty and personality, it could not compete with high-end smartphones.
This year's Moto X stays true to its core, but adds high-end specs that put the device on par with every other flagship Android smartphone of 2014.
Customizable Motorola Moto X
If you've seen the stylish Moto X, any other smartphone will seem boring to you. Thanks to Moto Maker, anyone can become a designer and make their phone the way they want it to be.
Appearance
Those who buy the new Motorola Moto X Smartphone will be able to choose from 25 different back panels, including four types of genuine leather, natural wood, and other bright, colorful options.
The new Moto X smartphone is very similar to the previous model, but this time it has a premium metal bezel instead of plastic. The metal looks and feels high-end. It also adds a nice shine to the phone. The slight curve of the body on the back makes it very comfortable to hold in the hand, and the matte surface gives a good grip.
The volume key is located below the power button on the right side, and the power button itself has a subtle texture to differentiate it from the volume button, which adds another small touch to the device. The headphone jack is placed at the top, while the micro USB port is located at the bottom of the phone. Two speakers are located at the top and bottom on the front of the Motorola Moto X, while the camera, which features a round LED flash, is mounted on the back of the device.
Screen
This year, the Moto X is slightly larger than last year's model, mainly because the screen size is 5.2 inches. Even so, the difference in size is minimal at first glance, thanks to thinner bezels and space savings along the top and bottom of the smartphone.
Screen The display is full HD, 1080p OLED so images look bright and clear. If you're obsessed with pixels, you won't immediately notice that this isn't a Quad HD screen.
The new Moto X phone runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat and unlike most other smartphone manufacturers, Motorola offers the software in its purest form, with only a few changes and additions.
Excellent voice and gesture features
An interesting software extension is the voice assistant, which recognizes your voice and responds only to it.
Moto X voice assistant Gesture control on X is also possible. All you need to do is move your hand over the phone when it is “sleeping”, and the watch will show you the time. We found this feature to be incredibly useful and makes checking the time on the Moto X much easier than on any other smartphone, including the LG G3, which has a similar thing called proxy influence.
You can also turn on your phone, turn on the camera at any time, and perform other cool gestures for common tasks.
The first Moto X phone was a solid, mid-range smartphone, but this time Motorola is giving us a true flagship. The basic specifications of the Motorola Moto X are the same as other flagship smartphones, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 2.5801 and 2GB of RAM.
The Moto X was very fast in all tests. Downloading and launching applications go without a hitch, web searches are done at very fast speeds, and in streaming mode, watching YouTube videos without buffering happens in one go.
In addition to the processor and large amount of RAM, the Moto X offers your choice of 16 or 32 GB of memory. Unfortunately, there's no MicroSD slot, so you're limited in terms of storage, something you'll never see on the Galaxy S5, LG G3, and HTC One M8.
Motorola Moto X photo and camera
The 13-megapixel camera on the back has a much higher resolution than the 10-megapixel shooter on the previous version. The camera focuses very quickly, but sometimes misses. In bright environments, everything tends to be in bright colors, especially if you're focusing on the wrong things.
In low light conditions, the Moto X's photos are slightly grainy, and so are videos.
The 2-megapixel front camera works well for selfies and will handle video chatting needs without issue.
Overall, we're not too impressed with the cameras. They work fine, but like most Motorola phones, they're far from impressive.
Data transfer speeds are fast and we didn't have any problems with the network. Call quality was also excellent; we had no problems with hearing or the microphone.
Battery
The Moto X smartphone has a 2300mAh battery that allows you to use the smartphone intensively for a full working day.
Conclusion
The Motorola Moto X is an improved second-generation smartphone that features a new screen, a high-end processor, and an infinitely customizable design.
The first Motorola Moto X was a solid mid-range smartphone, but this year's new Moto X is undoubtedly high-end and already on the same level as most other flagship phones, but it is the most customizable smartphone you can buy.
As you know, in 2014, Lenovo acquired the Motorola brand and already in the next year, 2015, showed the world new functional models of the X series.
On this page we will take a quick look at the Moto X Style, Moto X Play and Moto X Force.
These devices have large high-resolution screens, high-quality cameras and fairly powerful batteries.
Motorola Moto X Style
The Motorola Moto X Style smartphone is one of the first devices in the series to come from the pen of Lenovo engineers. Note that the device also has the name Motorola Moto X Pure Edition, used in the US markets.
This model has some of the highest characteristics among the smartphones reviewed on this page.
It is enough to mention the large 5.7-inch IPS display with a high resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. The screen is protected from external influences by glass Gorilla Glass 3rd generation.
The device is supported by a 64-bit chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 808, which includes a pair of 2-core and 4-core processors. Graphics tasks in the model are processed by the accelerator Adreno 418. The installed 3 GB of RAM position the smartphone as a truly top-end model as of mid-2015.
It’s impossible not to ignore the 21-megapixel camera installed in the Moto X Style, which has an f/2.0 aperture and is capable of shooting video in 4K resolution. Note the presence of a dual (and having a different backlight tone) LED flash. However, we invite you to evaluate the quality of the resulting photographs yourself.
The front camera of the model has a resolution of 5 megapixels, as well as its own LED flash. It is possible to record video with a resolution of 1080p.
The smartphone in question is also interesting for its high-quality sound, the presence of stereo speakers, as well as a fairly powerful non-removable battery with a capacity of 3000 mAh.
The water-repellent coating (IP52 protection) will protect both this smartphone and all models in the series in various “wet” situations.
Moto X Play
Do you want to have the same high-quality camera as in the flagship discussed above (except without support for 4K video recording)? Don't chase screen size, but value your device's battery life more?
Then we invite you to get acquainted with the Motorola Moto X Play model, which has a slightly smaller size and more modest characteristics compared to the Moto X Style.
A special feature of the model is the ability to choose about 200 different color combinations for the front and rear panels, frame and camera highlight (not available in all countries).
We will show the differences between the devices in the table at the end of the article; here we note that the Moto X Play has an FM receiver (perhaps this is important for some), as well as a really powerful battery with a capacity of 3630 mAh.
Motorola Moto X Force
The Motorola X Force smartphone (aka Droid Turbo 2) has a unique, ultra-durable display made using Moto ShatterShield.
The display protection (the manufacturer can give a 4-year warranty on it) is provided by five levels, including a protective lens, two layers of touch control, and a hard aluminum case.
Note that the phone has as many as 5(!) microphones, ensuring high-quality transmission of your voice even in very noisy conditions.
This device has the highest characteristics among the Motorola X series phones under consideration and is also characterized by the presence of the most powerful battery with a capacity of 3760 mAh.
Differences between Motorola X smartphones
We show the fundamental differences between the Moto X Play, Moto X Style and Moto X Force smartphones in the table
 |
 Moto X Play |
 Moto X Style |  Moto X Force |
| Screen | 5.5 inches, IPS, 1920x1080 points |
5.7 inches, IPS, 2560x1440 points |
5.4 inches, AMOLED 2560x1440 points |
| Display protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 3 |
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 | Moto ShatterShield |
| CPU | Snapdragon 615 4 cores 1.7 GHz |
Snapdragon 808 2 cores 1.8 GHz |
Snapdragon 810 4 cores 1.5 GHz |
| Graphics accelerator | Adreno 405 | Adreno 418 | Adreno 430 |
| RAM, GB | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| 4K video recording | - | Eat | Eat |
| Front flash | - | Eat | Eat |
| Stereo speakers | - | Eat | - |
| FM radio | Eat | - | - |
| IR port | - | - | Eat |
| Battery, mAh | 3630 | 3000 | 3760 |
| Dimensions, weight | 148x75x10.9mm, 169 g |
153.9x76.2x11.1mm, 179 g |
149.8x78x9.2mm, 169 g |
Alexey S. 4 years ago
Yandex Market
Almost all the shortcomings are just nitpicks. The phone has stood up to 2 years of use. Of course, there are also problems with the purchase, but I won’t mention them.
d 5 years ago
Yandex Market
I have been using Moto X (1 gen) since 2013, it is the ideal device for me, both in size, performance, and autonomy. In 2015 I bought myself the same one, 2 years later it remains a current model.
Anton O. 5 years ago
Yandex Market
My wife broke her iPhone 4S, so I had to give her my iPhone 5S. New Apple phones have become too expensive, so I had to try Android for the first time. In 2014, I heard various good reviews about this phone (in podcasts, etc.), so I decided to take it. I went to study in the USA and now live there, so there were no problems with the order. So, this is my first Android, before there were iPhone 3G, 4, 5S. I especially like the screen, despite the fact that the resolution is NOT full HD, but 1280*720, the pixels are not visible, the colors are very pleasant, and excellent blacks thanks to Amoled technology. Active Display is when notification icons periodically appear on the AMOLED screen (so you don’t need to constantly turn on the phone and check them manually) and directly through the icon you can go to the corresponding application, and also thanks to the additional. processors and accelerometers, the phone immediately opens the unlock screen (with notifications) when you take the phone out of your pocket, you don’t need to press the ON button - that’s cool. Good shape, it's normal to use one hand. The sound from the speaker is normal, but through headphones it is noticeably worse than on the iPhone 5s. Android 4.4.4 makes me happy, updates arrive without problems. The battery lasts NO LESS than the iPhone 5s, I’m especially happy about this fact, I didn’t expect it from Android.
Guest 6 years ago
Yandex Market
Even at the moment (July 2014) I consider this device to be the best on the market. While everyone is chasing megahertz and megapixels, Motorola simply made a good phone with attention to detail. At first, the lack of indicator lights was disappointing, but the ative display eliminated the need for them. Then I realized that there is no protruding frame around the display, but later I noticed that there are small protrusions at the bottom and top, so you can safely put the phone with the display down. Overall the design is very nice and unlike anything else. Launching the camera by shaking the phone deserves special praise. It works just perfectly: not a single false positive. It is also necessary to mention active display. As soon as you lift the phone from the table or take it out of your pocket, the time and notifications (if any) immediately light up. I just can’t get enough of the device, despite the fact that I bought it almost six months ago.
Pavel 6 years ago
Yandex Market
One of the best devices for today. What we have: 1. Dimensions. At 4.7" the screen is smaller than some with 4.3". Perfectly controlled with one hand. Well, this is the most compact device with such a screen. This is facilitated by on-screen buttons - when needed, they are there. when they are not needed, they hide and do not take up space. Very comfortably! 2. Screen. 4.7 inches is the maximum possible size for one-handed operation. unless, of course, you have telescopic fingers. 3. Processor. Many people turn their nose up - ugh, 2 cores. But no one can reasonably say why this is bad and why they need more. Meanwhile, it copes well with any content, but does not consume more battery than necessary. 4. Video accelerator. Adreno 320 is one of the most powerful accelerators at the moment. There are more powerful ones, yes. But again - what for is a goat button accordion if everything goes with maximum graphics? 5. Screen. Bright, juicy. Sometimes you really want to reduce the contrast. 6. Active notifications. A very convenient thing, you quickly get used to it. 7. Convenience. Due to its curved shape, it fits very comfortably in the hand. 8. Battery. It lasts me 2-3 days, and I don’t deny myself anything. Excellent result! 9. Excellent work all peripherals. Wi-FI, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC - no complaints 10. Camera. After buying a phone, the camera became covered in dust on the shelf. No, it certainly won’t be suitable for printing posters. But for viewing on a monitor (24" FullHD) and TV - excellent quality. 11. Pure Android and fast updates. And finally - goodies from Motorola. Nobody talks about this, but there are enough pleasant little things. Take for example the interactive cartoon that starts from the hat flying across the screen And it starts up on its own, without warning. You take the phone in your hand - and there the hat flies... Interesting, curious, cool!