Gadgetory

everyone has their own particular reasons for being excited over a new Moto X it might be the model maker it might be the customization that it allows you to have the somewhat Nexus like experience or it just might be the different features that it can provide compared to the rest now that last one is something that wasn't true for the last couple of iterations but this year we have a moto X that is trying to provide more than plenty of the other flagship smartphones out there and if you haven't seen the launch great review of the Moto X of which he had a lot of great things to say you can click on over into the corner up there so you can watch and read his review but what I'm doing right now is providing you my opinion on what has been a pretty good experience with the Moto X it stretch of regard from Android authority what's going on everybody and these are my second opinions on the Moto X now I will say that pretty much everything about the Moto X returns here with its general shape even the dimple on the back even though it's a lot smaller this time around and the singular bar right here is a kind of a welcome change I did like the larger dimple but this isn't so bad either the actual size of the phone is actually a little bit thicker than before which I'll get into a little bit later as it has to do with the handling and I will say that when you use the white version like this you still get the two blemishes down here these are of course the motion sensor so that you can use the Moto display very easily by just waving your hand over the device like I am right now the problem with the bamboo and the backing however is that it does provide a very slippery touch and that's true about the metal chassis all around if you don't get that sort of rubberized plastic that long had in his review then you don't really get any benefits of grip on here and that's my biggest issue with this particular phone it's the fact I'd had five point seven inches in the screen it's actually just that little bit too hard to handle in one hand it's not impossible let's put it that way the curve on the back is still able to make a dress pretty nicely in the hand but still I'm not all that happy with the handling experience when I've already dropped this phone on my face a few times to be honest and when I'm constantly trying to balance it with my pinkie here on the bottom it's easy to sort of topple over from side to side that's really my only big issue with it and I know I did not really help the situation by getting a slippery backing but if you're going to have a phone that's this large and you get a slippery back you should just know that handling on here is not all that it's cracked up to be as I move into the display I actually think that this LCD is performing well enough that I'm not truly missing AMOLED yes I do wish that AMOLED was on here because I'm used to that particular color profile but at least Motorola I give them credit for this has been able to put in a good enough level of saturation on here that really it's just remained a pretty good experience and of course we have quad HD resolution in this 5.7 inch display so everything from work and play has been very enjoyable on here especially video gaming which I've done quite a bit of on this particular device even if the overall size and thus handling of the device has been detracted from just a little bit at least I've had a good time just looking at everything playing everything watching everything on this pretty good display which brings us into performance and I guess I have to highlight mostly that media consumption has been awesome on here not even mentioning the front-facing speakers just yet we're saving that for the hardware section i've already had a good time just having media in the background while i'm looking up stuff on let's say chrome and pretty much doing anything else that i wanted to on here this is what a typical day might look like for me i'm not only browsing on chrome i'm also listening to podcasts i'm watching HBO now which has been amazing recently i might add and there are even some other things like going on twitter or going to the gallery and just downloading a couple things here and there that have been very smooth with this snapdragon 808 I really had no problems on here and I do have to say that I might give some of the credit to what has been a pretty stock like experience for this Android iteration here on the Moto X it's really in hardware though that things actually start to get mixed up a little bit and yes that's mostly because of the expandable storage this little slot on the top right here is able to house not only a SIM card but a micro SD card but it's not just the fact that the Moto X provides expandable storage it's how a Moto implemented it that I think is really great see when you'd use other phones like a samsung galaxy or even an apple iphone you tend to find that as you add storage on to those particular models you have to really jack up the price from 16 to 32 to 64 to 128 gigabytes you're gonna be paying a lot of money just for storage what moto is reminding everybody right now is that you can have a very low base model 16 gigabytes with this one right here which for us here at Android authority we do think that 16 gigabyte base models are a thing of the but luckily with the Moto X you can save a little bit of money getting 16 gigabytes and then you can add your own storage with the expandable SD card slot sound quality on here is also really good and yes I'm talking about the front-facing speakers pretty much from my games I don't find myself having headphones on most of the time because I'm having a good enough time just with the stereo experience with those two front facing speakers yes by the end of the day I am usually afraid that I'm not going to get back to a charger in time and I'm going to have a dead phone for maybe an hour or two before I get back to my home but if I'm just in my house or just sort of in places where I'm able to plug in pretty easily I even have a fast charging portable battery that's available if I'm able to just plug it in for a little bit in the middle of the day actually those worries about power kind of go away now again this is definitely not the way that we want our battery life to move forward when it comes to our smartphones but at the very least fast charging is kind of a crutch that we can already pretty much lean on and in camera I do find that the Moto X has had a very improved experience with the camera and that's saying something because if you've had the Moto X from before then you really should be checking out the one right now because the camera while not one of the best that's out there is a vast improvement and is able to pretty much tout that it has the quality that anyone can have on the daily here are some pictures that I took during a weekend out now what I did like about the Moto X was that I didn't feel like I needed to have my DSLR all of the time in order to take some nice pictures so that was really nice but also the best part about the camera experience is the fact that you can get into it so easily just twist the phone a couple of times and you're in and ready to go but that kind of ended there because I really don't like the application that Motorola uses for its camera it's not only lacking in a lot of manual controls but the way that it expects you to be able to take photos by tapping on the actual viewfinder it's just not the way that I would really like it I want a dedicated button on the side because if I'm going to tap on the viewfinder I expect it to focus on that particular point having to drag the focus point around is not necessarily the way that I want to be able to cater a shot to what I want oh and speaking of the front-facing camera yes you do get a flash up there now and it's now 5 megapixels but unless you're taking a lot of selfies all the time and even then if you're in a club all the time reason then those might be the only situations that you might actually use that flash even then it kind of washes out the subject too much for them to even look that great and finally in software despite not being under the Google umbrella anymore motorola is still providing a pretty nexus like experience with the Moto X and so you can see here that I've already catered the phone to my liking with all of the folders on the bottom I don't like any extra home screens aside from Google now on the side and I have my own custom background on there there are a couple of additions like mostly the Moto actions in which contextually it will be able to know when to change itself to silent mode for example or you can use your voice to do certain things on the phone and of course you have the phrase that you can customize on here which is another layer of customization to the Moto X like with mine hey X activate I don't get Motorola a lot of credit because they still are providing a pretty good phone at a pretty good price point there may not be the lower price of the Moto X that we've had before but then again you're getting a more premium product especially with the quad HD display and even more options inside of the Moto maker so even if you're going to be paying a certain amount for the extra features that you want on here for the most part it's still cheaper than plenty of the high-end smartphones that are out there that don't even provide expandable storage see that's the thing about the Moto X it's about choice and that's what we give Motorola the most credit for and that's the reason why we gave the Moto X such high marks and I do have to agree with lon that despite the small caveats that I have here I do think that the Moto X is one of the better offerings that we have this year in Android so keep it tuned to Android authority for even more including our full review of the Moto X that lawn did and again I've had it in a link in the corner so if you haven't seen it already make sure you do and then you can see all of the content from my colleagues in Android and download the Android authority app which is also up in the corner over there so you can get access to all of our content from our written post to our forums to our Android or D podcasts discussing topics in Android every single week and then when you're done with all of that subscribe to this channel and then head on over to Android or decom for even more because we are your source for all things Android