Gadgetory

do you guys remember the motox no I'm not talking about the one that we just saw a couple of weeks ago at Aoife in Berlin I'm talking about the original the one that came after Google acquired Motorola before Lenovo came into the picture well we're going to take a look at what made the Moto X so well liked it's Joshua for Gaara what's going on everybody and this is a look back at the Moto X now before we get started I do want to direct you to an article that has already been published on Android 30.com by Adam Dowd he dives further into the Moto maker that I will touch upon later in my video and you can go and read that wonderful article over at Android authority comm also don't forget to tell us what you think about this topic and let us know what you feel about the Moto X the current one or even the old ones in the comments below the Moto X was a little bit of a departure from what people knew of Motorola at the time and it was a little bit more in tune with the image of Google and Android that we were starting to really like a clean inside meant that the phone was rocking a very lean version of Android the concept was further popularized later on by the Nexus and then the pixel line a user experience that is as close to minimal stock Android as possible moto did put in a few of their own additions including the moto actions and of course the moto voice as it was called touchless control on the original Moto X where you were able to say okay Google now in order to activate the device Thoreau on top of that B moto display and you have what is basically the precursor to the always-on display as we see on LG and Samsung devices as well as the ambient display that you'll see in other kind of stock Android iterations so moto wasn't necessarily a pioneer when it came to all of these features but they were one of the first ones to make them incredibly fun and incredibly practical but then came the icing on the cake moto maker customization is almost a given in the Android world as fans really enjoy making Android pretty much anything that we want it to be but when it came to the outer look of the phone there wasn't much differentiating all of the different plastic designs and then if you kind of fast forward to today's landscape all of the metal and glass phones that we have moto sought to change that with the Moto maker a way of customizing the X that included colors and materials for the bag that ranged from traditional plastic to even leather now quick story if you followed me here at Android authority back in around 2014 you would know that bamboo backs were kind of my jam however to get the review done I had to use this plastic black version of the phone and I was a little bit salty about it at the time but with the next iteration of the Moto X I was actually able to finally get the bamboo backing along with an inscription on the bottom that was my life's motto and honestly that's what really made the Moto X so popular back then personalization smart phones especially flagship phones really found a stride after the Moto X 2015 pictured here and the thing is all of those phones continue to be really recognizable for one big reason the designs haven't exactly changed from year to year since 2015 not a whole lot at least at least with the Moto line in 2015 there was a chance to change things up not just because the company was iterating but because it was something you wanted this time around don't get me wrong there are remnants of the Moto maker that are still found today only they are in the successor to the Moto X line the Moto Z has a number of attachable backings that changes look effectively but it is almost literally a band-aid compared to the actual hardware level changes that the Moto maker provided and if you're using a mod then you're basically just adding more bulk to the Moto Z so up until this point we thought that the Moto Z was all we were going to get rumors of the Moto X returning were kind of abound right before Aoife and then we finally got our hands on it and this is what we got this is the Moto X 2017 or better known as the Moto X for a metal and glass design that tries to look a lot like the original X but just seems different it's almost like the phone is a moto Z trying to masquerade as an X for example the front has that fingerprint reader that's not quite a home button because there are soft keys and the overall design is something that we've seen in numerable times with other phones it is smaller than the Moto Z so it does have that in terms of ergonomics but otherwise there's very little differentiating this phone from even the rest of the devices in Moto's lineup so you have the Moto Z that is the high-end flagship that uses the Moto Maude's and then you have the Moto G and the Moto e which are mid-range and budget devices respectively so where does the Moto X fall aside from a really cool multiple Bluetooth audio stack made by tempo there really isn't a whole lot that differentiates the Moto X or really makes it exciting it's decidedly mid-range and its specifications when users are demanding the absolute best and greatest more than ever plainly put the Moto X has been put into a state of limbo and the one thing that could have made it exciting even on par with the Moto Z is that level of personalization that we once had years ago imagine the motox that came back with even singular parts of the Moto maker like for example a different choice when it comes to the backings maybe there's a leather version or maybe there's a wood version and it would literally be the only device that actually tries to be different without relying on covers or cases these days we are basically at the whim of the phone companies and their hardware choices camera bumped this home button that fingerprint reader here and only some colors available there and the Moto X was one of the few phones that actually tried to give some of that control back to the user that's not to say that the Moto X is a bad phone per se we still have to test it and give our full review but it only has a couple of main features that differentiate it from even other Motorola devices and holding that phone in my hand at Aoife for our hands on I couldn't help but remember what was and wonder what could have been and I always came back to the same thought each and every time I miss the Moto X