The rebound phone from my love of the Motorola MAXX had to be something that shared a lot of its features but helped me get over the amazing battery life. Verizon Wireless sent over the Moto X, a phone that shares the same hardware other than a smaller screen and the battery of the MAXX. I have been toying with the Moto X for some time now and I wanted to talk a little today about how it performed. Will it just be a rebound phone, or will things work out between the Moto X and I. Stay tuned for more after the break, these are the Days Phones Of Our Lives.
Product Name: Moto X
Review Sample Provided by: Verizon Wireless
Written by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
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Specifications |
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CPU |
Motorola X8 Mobile Computing System, which is comprised of a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4Pro family processor (1.7GHz Dual-Core Krait CPU, 400 MHz quad-core Adreno 320 GPU), a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor. |
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Memory |
2GB DDR RAM |
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Storage |
16GB |
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Display |
HD 720p (720x1280 pixels) Super AMOLED |
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OS |
Android™ 4.4 Kit Kat |
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Size |
Height 5.09” x Width 2.57” x Curve .22–.41” inches |
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Display Size |
4.7 inch |
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Weight |
4.59 oz |
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Front Facing Camera |
2.1MP |
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Rear Facing Camera |
10.5MP CLEAR PIXEL (RGBC) – LED flash |
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Battery Size |
2200 mAh, 24 hours of mixed usage |
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Wireless Charging |
No |
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Wifi |
802.11 b/g/n |
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Bluetooth |
Bluetooth Class 2 Version 4.0 LE+EDR |
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GPS |
eCompass/Standalone GPS/aGPS (assisted)/AGPS (autonomous)/sGPS (simultaneous) |
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Networks |
LTE, CDMA/1xEVDO Rev. A (800/1900 MHz), EDGE/GSM (850/900/1800/1900), HSPA/UMTS( 850/900/1900/2100), HSDPA 42.2 Mbps (Category 20), HSUPA 5.76 Mbps |
Packaging
There isn’t that much to talk about with the Moto X’s packaging really. You get a white box with the Motorola logo on the cover and beyond that there isn’t much else of importance on the rest of the box. This isn’t all that important because you wouldn’t find the Moto X sitting around in its box in a retail setting anyhow.
Inside let’s take a look at what comes with the phone though. As usual you will get a USB charging cable and an AC to USB adapter. Oddly enough ours were white while the phone itself was black. You will also get a small key to help you open up the SIM card slot on the Moto X. The rest is all of the Moto X’s documentation, consumer information, and getting to know your phone guides.
Design
Although the Moto X shares a lot of its internals with the MAXX, when you have it in hand they are worlds apart. Part of that is related to the small difference in screen size, but along with that the shape of the Moto X is different. The corners are a little more rounded and the screen doesn’t push as close to the top and bottom of the phone. It’s actually very close in shape to the Nexus 4, other than the slight size difference.
Where the Moto X stands out the most is on the back of the phone where the entire back is rounded. The rounded back has its camera centered on the top of the back with a single LED flash directly below it. The speaker phone is hardly visible, but is to the right of the camera in a slightly perforated section. The back of our test phone is black but Verizon also has it available in white as well through their store. You also have the option to actually build your own phone with 18 different back panel colors, two front panel colors, and 7 accent colors. The only thing that was sad for me was the lack of orange as an option on the back panel. Even so, you can’t beat the options and this is one of the biggest reasons to consider the Moto X in my opinion. They even went above and beyond the colors with options to be able set a greeting that will show when you boot the phone , pick the wallpaper that it will have when you get the phone, and even pre-set your google account for an even quicker activation.
All of the Moto X’s physical buttons can all be found on the right side of the phone up near the top. You get a fairly standard up/down volume control as well as the power button. Unlike the MAXX, the volume doesn’t pull out and house the SIM card as well, so freaking people out by pulling the volume knob off isn’t a possibility. You can find the SIM slot on the opposite side, to open it you will need the small tool included with the phone.
On the top edge of the Moto X you have the headphone jack for easy use as an MP3 player when the phone is in your pocket. On the opposite end you have the USB charging port.
On the front of the phone, beyond its screen, you get the same old. You have a small microphone hole in the bottom as well as a thin slit up top for your earpiece. They also slipped in the 2MP front facing camera just to the right of the earpiece.
Performance
When it came to our performance testing, even though the MAXX had the same configuration I was still impressed with the Moto X’s performance in all of the benchmarks. This was especially impressive in 3DMark and Browsermark 2.0 where the Moto X topped the charts by a good margin. Motorola packed a nice setup into a fairly small package with the X. Its X8 “Computing System” does very well with its dual core snapdragon processor, quad core GPU, and two additional cores for a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor.
When it comes to battery life, I think anything would feel low compared to the MAXX that I came from. But the Moto X came in around where you would expect from a phone with a typical sized battery. That put the Moto X in between the Nexus 4 and the S3, both aren’t exactly known for their battery performance, but it’s enough to get you through a day of average use. If you use your phone more than average you might want to consider keeping a charger close or check out the MAXX.
Beyond the numbers, if you pick up a Moto X now you will be getting 4.4 Kit Kat with just a few small changes that are specific to Motorola phones. I love that they keep the phone fairly pure, but the features they do include are really nice. For example you can set the Moto X to open the camera for you when you flick your wrist, making on the fly pictures much easier. The rest of its features revolve around Google Now and its voice controls. Truthfully though, as much as I loved them, I had to turn them off. All too often it would activate itself when listening to music or just when talking.
As for its network performance, our phone was provided by Verizon. As always I was impressed with both the speed and lack of deadzones. Here in the middle of nowhere I still get 4G but when we were in Columbus for MLG we saw what 4G was really capable of with around 20 down and 15 up. Considering that upload speed is three times what my home internet upload speed is, I would say it performed well.
Overall and Final Verdict
When the Moto X came in, I really didn’t think it would be able to live up to what I experienced with the MAXX. The reality of it is they are extremely similar in everything but battery life. So in the end I was extremely happy with its performance. What really sets the Moto X apart from the competition is the customizations that you can do. There really isn’t anything else on the market that allows you to make the phone your own design. Considering how popular custom cases and skins are on popular phones like the iPhone, I think people would really enjoy having the chance to make their own Moto X. Really the only downside to the Moto X is its battery life, especially in comparison to its brother the MAXX. But when you keep that in mind and consider that the Moto X is available for less than $100 on contract, you have a good phone with a little style.
