Moto X: The Phone That Really Listens to You

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By Pete Pachal2013-08-07 00:27:19 UTC

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The Moto X is my favorite Android phone right now. Motorola, working as a Google company, has done its best to build a smartphone for everybody — from power users to casual texters — aiming for that sweet spot filled with practical features but doesn't veer into the dangerous territory of overkill (well marked by Samsung).

Let's be clear, though: There's a difference between "favorite" and "best." There are other phones that have better specs and can do more than the Moto X. Creating a mass-market product is more like cooking a group meal than hitting a bulls-eye. Too spicy and you'll marginalize your audience. Too mild and no one will remember it.

See also: 5 Free Android Apps for Tethering

In other words, in creating the Moto X, Motorola had to make compromises to ensure it could appeal the widest possible audience. Its 4.7-inch display is big but not too big. The 1,280 x 720 screen isn't the sharpest either, but it helps the device's battery life, which is excellent. The processor may not be as fast the chips in other flagship phones, but it also enables some differentiating features.

Its through those features that the Moto X makes its case to be your next phone. That, and a captivating design that's the best I've seen in a big-screen phone. The fact that the color you want can be made to order — in the U.S.A., no less — is really more of a gimmick than a feature (and it's only on AT&T at start anyway), but it's worth noting that no other phone offers it.

Designed to Please

From a distance, the Moto X looks like a typical smartphone, but when you pick it up you can tell it's something new. The curved back betrays that it's no iPhone (although it's not significantly larger, overall), and its very grippable texture is nothing like Samsung's plastic backs. It's no Kevlar, like in Motorola's new Droids, but it's slightly friendlier to the touch.

The best part about the Moto X design is that it's a big-screen phone that doesn't feel like one. Motorola clearly labored to make the bezel as thin as possible: The top and bottom only have just enough room for the sensors, microphone and front-facing camera, and on the sides the bezel almost disappears.

The curved back of the phone is very distinct. Motorola says it chose a curved design to feel good in the hand, and it definitely succeeded. The battery inside is a special design to fit the curve so the phone still feels thin. There's also an indented Motorola logo in the middle, which gives your fingers something to feel for if you need another nervous tick.

On the back you'll also find the rear speaker. It looks pretty small, but it actually plays impressively loud. Listening to Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit at full volume, it filled a midsize conference room with not-terrible sound (remember, this is a phone we're talking about) with little to no distortion.

Perhaps the most practical aspect of the design is the charging plug: It has two USB ports instead of just one, letting you charge two gadgets at once.

What Moto X Brings to the Table

The Moto X, along with the new Droids, have some features that are new to both Motorola's line and smartphones in general. Touchless Control is probably one of the better ones: When the phone sitting on your desk, you have it perform tasks via voice commands. Besides the obvious Google searches ("Find me some good Thai food"), you can launch apps, set reminders and make calls just by talking.

Certainly, this isn't the first phone to employ voice control, but Motorola is first to offer a phone that's always listening to you — even in standby mode. Motorola designed a custom processor called the X8 that includes a low-power core whose only job is to listen to the passphrase "OK, Google Now." That way, Touchless Control can always be active without needing to power up the entire processor, ensuring it doesn't drain your battery.

Your passphrase is calibrated to your voice, preventing anyone else from activating the feature (similar-sounding voices may trigger it, Motorola warns). The setup process is simple, although you need a "seriously quiet" room to do it. After speaking the passphrase three times, you should be good to go. It's not customizable, unfortunately — an odd choice given that personalization is supposed to be what the Moto X is all about.

I really like Touchless Control, although — like all kinds of voice interaction, including Siri — it's not appropriate for a lot of circumstances. Still, I was able to use it to schedule meetings with my reporters, call or text my wife, set alarms and reminders and, yes, search Google (no, you can't switch to Bing).

The feature is appreciated, although there's room for improvement. Setting reminders and calendar events requires you to finish the activity by confirming or saving the event — with your hands. It would be better if there was a way to complete the action with voice as well.

Launching apps with Touchless Control is tricky. While I was often successful with the command "Run Pulse/Gmail/Netflix/et al.," I didn't have as much luck when I used "Launch" as the verb. Annunciation and tactical pauses are key ("Launch Box" is easily interpreted as "lunchbox," for example). And forget about complex actions (i.e. "Open the Instagram folder in the Gallery"), at least for now.

The Power of Trust

You may have already figured out the big problem with Touchless Control: You'll run into a wall every time you use it if your phone is locked with a PIN — not good for a feature that's supposed to be effortless and always at the ready. It'll let you make calls without unlocking the phone, but not much else.

Motorola has thought this through, however. If you pair your phone with another device via Bluetooth (such as an earpiece, PC or Google Glass), you can designate it as a "trusted" device. That means if the device is in range and operating, the phone will stay unlocked. In essence, if the device is present, Motorola considers that a form of two-factor authentication, which it is.

Trusted devices are a great idea, and I think it'll provide a good balance of security and convenience for most people. The main issue I can see it running into is many people eschew Bluetooth earpieces because of the "douche" factor.

The Notifier

The Moto X has a novel way of dealing with notifications in a way that saves battery life. On many phones (most notably the iPhone), when a notification comes in — say, an email or breaking news headline — the whole screen comes alive for a few seconds to show it. That's good for staying informed, not so good for your battery since the display is by far the most persistent battery killer on any phone.

Motorola thinks there's a better way, and it's called Active Notifications, another feature the Moto X shares with the 2013 Droids. Instead of lighting up the whole screen, just the middle lights up with the time, the unlock icon and the icons of the apps with new information. Because the screen is an AMOLED and not an LCD, only the pixels that are needed are used, saving significant amounts of energy.

The notifications are considered "active" because the moment you touch the unlock icon in the middle, you can see details on the latest message. Swipe up to launch the app that pinged you, or swipe down to simply unlock the phone.

There are clear benefits to Motorola's approach, although I kind of miss seeing details on my notifications without having to touch the phone at all (especially in news headlines). I also would like to interact with the notifications in more ways — perhaps by swiping sideways slightly to scroll through them — short of unlocking the phone.

Lastly, the Notifications icon pulses in out every few seconds or so, but you have to wait for the icon to appear to interact with them. I would prefer the display to simply know when I'm touching it (this thing has a low-power core dedicated to active sensors, after all) and illuminate the icon immediately. Sure, we're talking only a second or two, but good user experience is in the details.

Regardless, Active Notifications certainly appear to do their job of keeping you connected while saving as much battery power as possible — I never had trouble getting through a day even with dozens and dozens of apps enabled to use them. The feature can improve, but it's fundamentally solid.

Performance and More

In terms of specs, the Moto X is a midrange phone. Its 4.7-inch screen is "only" 720p, a bit short of the 1080p screens you'll find on the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4. Motorola says it's an "octacore" processor, and while that may technically be a correct counting of the number of cores, the CPU is really a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 — not quite the quad-core processors you'll find in those same competitors.

The Moto X did surprisingly well against the HTC One in a benchmark test. Running Qualcomm's Vellamo app, the Moto X scored just slightly lower than the One in the HTML5 browsing test, 2410 to 2472. In the "Metal" performance tests, it scored 721 to the One's 789.

As far as the experience goes, though, it's hard to find fault with the Moto X. Loading web pages and launching apps might not be quite as zippy as on other phones, but it's not like you're in for a long wait. Netflix and YouTube videos look great, and colors in photos really popped.

I couldn't see any tradeoff in sharpness while reading text on the Moto X's AMOLED screen vs. the HTC One's full HD LCD, although it was noticeably less bright, with lower contrast. That can be a good thing, but it's also a hallmark of AMOLED display tech.

Call quality was good. Placing a call on a noisy Manhattan street, the audio came through plenty loud. I was able to converse in a normal voice while a truck lumbered by and still be understood. Motorola uses dual-mic noise cancellation to help in this regard. The Moto X also supports HD voice, although that feature only works with callers on the same network.

Camera

The camera on board the Moto X is a 10-megapixel imager that takes fine photos, with great color even in low light (some sample pics are below). But, although megapixels vary, most smartphone cameras do that. The Moto X's camera stands out with its approach to features and functionality.

For starters, you launch the camera with a gesture — you twist the phone in your hand back and forth. You can do this even when the phone is in standby mode and start taking pictures immediately. Unless you're shooing mosquitoes, it's not a gesture you'd naturally do with a cellphone, which is probably why Motorola chose it.

There's no shutter button — you tap the screen anywhere to take a picture. By default, the camera does not focus on where you tap (you can enable it), and none of the physical buttons works as a shutter — two very poor decisions, in my opinion.

Camera controls are kept to an absolute minimum, a great choice. You won't find anything like Samsung's seemingly limitless Smart modes or multiple menus to access various features. Apart from the front/back camera toggle and video mode, the settings ring that swipes in from the side has just eight controls. Burst mode is simply built in — just hold the screen to take multiple pics.

Motorola says kept the camera simple because it discovered most consumers don't know or care about whiz-bang camera features. I'm inclined to agree. As much as "time-shifting" (found in other phones) gives me a shot of geek dopamine, I have to admit it's a function I almost never think to use.

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X Factors

Motorola has created a very notable phone in the Moto X. I like it more than the HTC One, which used to be my favorite Android phone of 2013. Thanks to its well-thought-out design, the Moto X is more suited for one-handed operation. I also appreciate that Motorola's user interface is much closer to stock Android than HTC's — iconography is subtler, and some actions (creating app shortcuts, for example) are more convenient.

Spec for spec, though, the Moto X is a step down from competing flagships — necessary compromises, no doubt, to accommodate the extra cost of assembling the phone in the United States. And, as Apple has demonstrated, specs don't matter nearly as much as experience.

And on experience, the Moto X has found a sweet spot that'll appeal to many. It cuts away extraneous features and confusing iconography, and its marquee features do add value — that is, if you value battery life and convenience.

The trade-off to mass appeal, of course, is that it's hard to stand out, especially among influencers. There's no Flipboard-like feed or absurdly high-res camera here. The main way Motorola seems to be differentiating the Moto X to buyers is via its MotoMaker made-to-order process where buyers can choose from over 2,000 color combinations.

Perhaps, once they have their custom phones, they'll evangelize Touchless Control and Active Notifications to their friends, pushing Motorola along the road back to smartphone relevance. It would stand a better chance its product line weren't diluted by the Droids, but the Moto X is the perfect smartphone for anyone who was ever intimidated by a smartphone. It's just the right size, it actually listens to you, and it's cooked just the way you like it. What more do you want?

The Lowdown

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Product images: Mashable, Meghan Uno; screenshots: Motorola

Topics: Android, Mashable Choice, Mobile, Moto X, Motorola, reviews, Tech