Gadgetory

the long-awaited and much-hyped motox has now been officially unveiled is it here to stay or will it soon be lost in the sea of other phones coming up find out in our review hi everybody I'm Chris wook ever since Google acquired Motorola Mobility we've all been waiting to see what would come of it sure there was that new lineup of droid phones but the Moto X is the first phone that Google actually had a hand in so how is it let's take a look taking it out of the box there isn't a whole lot to see just the phone charger and sim removal tool okay so how about those specs the Moto X features a 4.7 inch 720p display and Motorola's x8 mobile computing system which is comprised of a 1.7 gigahertz dual-core Snapdragon s4 pro CPU quad-core Adreno 320 GPU and two other low-power chips that provide extra functionality it has two gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage no microSD slot here the Moto X features a 10 megapixel rear facing clear pixel camera and 2 megapixel front-facing camera power is provided by a 2,200 milliamp hour battery at the press event I attended in New York Motorola made a point of mentioning that they started with the shape of the phone and Bill everything else around that from the display to the battery they wanted to make sure they built a phone that was easy to use and comfortable to hold I'd say they succeeded as the phone feels very natural buttons are at a minimum here on the right side you have the power button and volume rocker that's it the left side of the phone holds the SIM slot while the top is where the headphone jack is located and the USB port is found on the bottom the Moto X is constructed out of PE T composite and has a rugged feel despite its fairly lightweight I wouldn't toss it at a wall but it feels like it will survive an accidental drop the 4.7 inch 720p AMOLED display in the Moto X has made a lot of people angry specifically those who would prefer a 1080p display it's true we've gotten spoiled and I'll admit even I cringe a little bit when I see anything lower but this is a very nice display nonetheless around 70% of the phone surface is screen and the display here is both very sharp and very vivid especially given the somewhat comparatively low pixel density as we'll see later this has the side effect of being very good for performance and I would say that anyone who is disappointed in the display should take a look at the phone in person before they make up their mind for good of course the major story when it comes to the display is the new active display technology which lights up only a portion of the pixels to show you notifications this happens when you flip the phone over take it out of your pocket or even when you walk up to it in some cases it's definitely a major improvement on the now old-fashioned notification LED in a world where worth is measured by cores and gigahertz it's tough to gauge the Moto X's performance simply by looking at the specs luckily we have benchmarks for that we started with our usual weapon of choice and to to benchmark we ran the benchmark a total of ten times in different situations and recorded the results scores range from just over 18,000 to just over 19,000 our final average score was eighteen thousand six hundred and seventy six it seems that Motorola is doing something right with their x8 system the combination of the Adreno 320 GPU and the 720p resolution led to similarly impressive performance in Epic Citadel we ran the benchmark in all three quality modes ultra-high quality ran in an average frame rate of 50 8.8 frames per second while high quality ran at 50 8.9 frames per second finally and unsurprisingly the high performance mode ran at 59 point 4 frames per second real world use proved to be similar scrolling through home screens in the app drawer was always smooth while viewers of our first impression video were quick to catch the lag while using the Google Play Music app others pointed out that this happens on pretty much any phone out there even those with higher specs gaming performance was excellent I tried a few titles like Real Racing 3 and Shadowgun deadzone and both ran without a sing Hetch the modal X runs Android 4.2.2 and plenty of our viewers will be very pleased to know that this is stock Android just with interface enhancements from Motorola what interface enhancements you asked well there's active display which we already talked about and touchless control which a lot of you probably already know as Google now it may not sound like a big deal and I didn't think it was at first but being able to say okay Google now and have the phone light up from across the room can be very handy between active display notifications and touchless control I'm already beginning to hate having to use the power button on other phones whether or not there's any bloatware installed will depend on which carrier you use my review unit uses Verizon so my Verizon mobile verizon tones and VZ Navigator are installed alongside Quickoffice no matter which carrier you use Motorola's assist app is included which includes modes and settings for if you're driving sleeping or currently in a meeting I'm not sure I'd use it very often but it certainly doesn't get in the way and I'm sure a lot of people will like it there's been a lot of talk surrounding the clear pixel camera in the Moto X and the fact that it uses an RGB C sensor that adds additional light information not present in a standard RGB bayer sensor in practice well it's hit and miss the RGB C sensor is supposed to improve low-light photography and I notice that photos taken in low-light situations were definitely brighter than expected that said there was still noticeable visual noise in a lot of the shots I took to the point where it looked like somebody took a dark photo and just cranked up the brightness on the other hand the 10 megapixel camera in the Moto X can take some very nice photos many of the shots I took at very crisp detail without that / sharp look that many modern smartphone cameras can have the camera UI is definitely worth mentioning as well there really isn't one most of the time and it's great you can use a twisting gesture to launch the camera app taking a photo is done by topping anywhere on the screen to access finer controls swipe to the right to access the galleries to the left very nice like any modern smartphone worth its salt the motox shoots 1080p video it's usable but both the auto brightness and autofocus are way too aggressive and the artifacting present in still photos is noticeable here as well I was skeptical at first when Motorola claim that the Moto X could get up to 24 hours of use given the 2200 milliamp hour battery but from what I've seen they could even have been playing it safe I have the phone on without charging at all for two days and though this included standby time I was heavily benchmarking testing gaming performance and generally putting the phone through its paces quite a bit during that time it's a good thing the battery life is so good as the battery isn't replaceable in order to keep the size down while maintaining the rounded shape on the back of the Moto X Motorola needed to use a specially shaped battery luckily you shouldn't have to worry about carrying a spare over all the Moto X is a very solid release that focuses more on what the phone actually does than just providing the specs in focusing on what it could do at $1.99 with the two-year contract isn't worth the price absolutely is everyone going to agree with that statement not a chance we've got a written companion to this video in Android authority comm you can find the link down in the description now we're not even close to done with the Moto X so if you want to see more on its features or how it stacks up against other phones make sure to stay tuned I am Chris wok for Android authority and as always thank you for watching