Moto X Early Adopters

jimbo1mcm said:

Will Motorola fix some of these deficiencies in the next iteration? Sure hope so. But the early adopters will not be happy if an upgraded model comes out next year. The Moto X has great potential, but is not there yet.

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From what I've read, the phone is more mid range then flagship quality. Not really what you want when your competing against Samsung and HTC

True not sure what they were thinking when they made it a mid range device

To all the people saying mid-range, mid-range, mid-range. The only thing I don't like about it is the camera, that's the only mid-range part. And as this is an Apple forum, who are we to label specs as mid-range. Do you call the iphone 5 mid-range with a dual core 1 GHz and 1GB RAM, no so wth? The design is great, looks great, feels great and it runs smoother with lower specs than most high-end android phones because its skin isn't pointless bloatware. Motorola and Google are trying to sell the experience, as Apple does, not the specs.

appleisking said:

To all the people saying mid-range, mid-range, mid-range. The only thing I don't like about it is the camera, that's the only mid-range part. And as this is an Apple forum, who are we to label specs as mid-range. Do you call the iphone 5 mid-range with a dual core 1 GHz and 1GB RAM, no so wth? The design is great, looks great, feels great and it runs smoother with lower specs than most high-end android phones because its skin isn't pointless bloatware. Motorola and Google are trying to sell the experience, as Apple does, not the specs.

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Agree with nearly all of this. Only other flaw I've seen is in regards to the screen--ppi is fine (IMO) but it's far too dim and very warm in color tone (yellow to red tint). Others may find it perfectly acceptable but for me, after using a One, I found it a big step down. Otherwise, I really like the design, love size considering it has a 4.7" display, and while I only used it for about 15 minutes, it was very smooth, razor sharp quick.

If Moto never published the specs and you used it side-by-side with an S4 or HTC One, I'd guess anybody would be hard pressed to see any difference in performance.

Looks like a pretty nice phone to me. The reviews I've seen also look positive.

I don't really have an allegiance to any platform (due to the nature of being a Software Engineer) and I must say, wow. The Moto X runs 10x better then my Galaxy S4 (which has been a hard phone to knock out of my pocket for quite some time and take the "daily driver" status).

This phones nothing short of amazing. The screen is perfect, battery life get's me through almost 2 days without charging.. and I actually use the touchless controls/active notifications unlike all the junk on my S4 that never gets touched.

The only thing I'd like to see is a larger display option, but I'm not going to be picky about it. For this device, it is for sure a high end, premium phone no matter how you look at it (unless you're silly and go by just what's on paper).

In fact, I'd like to wager that this phone runs better then any phone on the market now (including my favorite, the iPhone 5) while also being useful.

tbayrgs said:

Agree with nearly all of this. Only other flaw I've seen is in regards to the screen--ppi is fine (IMO) but it's far too dim and very warm in color tone (yellow to red tint). Others may find it perfectly acceptable but for me, after using a One, I found it a big step down. Otherwise, I really like the design, love size considering it has a 4.7" display, and while I only used it for about 15 minutes, it was very smooth, razor sharp quick.

If Moto never published the specs and you used it side-by-side with an S4 or HTC One, I'd guess anybody would be hard pressed to see any difference in performance.

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The bolded part is right on the money. The Moto X is fast very smooth and feels so right. The camera can be fixed with a software update.....maybe. The screen resolution seems fine to me...no difference from my S4. Active notifications are fantastic. They work as intended...they can show what you have and then keep showing you. So you know exactly what it was...text, email, FB, voice or what ever app you want. It is so good...if the phone is sitting next to you on the sofa...it will show the active notification for a brief second. You can touch the screen and preview the the text or email or unlock the screen by swiping up and go straight to the text or email. Very nice. The battery lasts easily 24 hours. I have been playing around with it (new toy!) with 5.3 hours of screen time and it is at 49%. It has been off the charger since 6 this morning.
The Touchless Control (voice activation) software works great! It will recognize my voice even in a noisy room with the football game on. It will recognize my voice even while it is playing music! It will recognize my voice from 12 to 15 feet away! Nice! It will compose texts and emails and make phone calls easily with out touching it. So far for me it has been hit or miss for me to get it to send the email or text.....for some reason i can't get it to do that yet. I have to play around with the right voice commands and will report back......

I've heard the camera woes can be fixed via a software update too. Regardless I think the iPhone 5S will be my next. Not that I don't like Android anymore, but it's time to switch again. I think the Moto X might get my money if the camera was a little better.

The camera kills what could have been a great phone. I don't care about specs as long as the phone runs well and continues to do so 1-2 years later.

But if Motorola was trying to make this the best well rounded phone on the market why mess up the camera? Hopefully it is something that can be fixed with software because it is a shame to ruin what otherwise seems to be a nice phone (even if specs appear midrange).

I am really happy to see an OEM bring to the spotlight the idea that many people are NOT happy with smartphones continuing to balloon in size. I know some love it but they can buy a Note III etc. People who want flagship phones that aren't huge have very few choices besides an iPhone so hopefully the MotoX gets other OEMs to keep phones reasonably sized.

The thing that never gets brought up about this phone is the fact that it is non pentile 720p. That makes a huge difference over the pentile 720p in the gs3 and the galaxy nexus. I'd personally rather have the extra battery life and smoothness over the pentile 1080p screen in the s4. I played with the droid ultra/maxx in the Verizon store and was very impressed. The screen was great and the thing was probably the smoothest phone I have used.


The camera issue seems to be an over aggressive noise reduction algorithm. A software update should be able to address that.

The only thing I think Motorola is screwing up on is not having the Maxx on all four carriers. The battery life on that thing is a huge selling point.

jimbo1mcm said:

Some common themes are starting to come in about the Moto X. The camera is significantly below the current flagship standard. The screen resolution, although at 720p and decent ppi, is lacking in brightness and color vividity. The hand twisting for the camera is okay, but it can be done better and the "okay, Google Now" is lame. Active Notifications can be attractive for some people, but a lot of people prefer a LED notification light that can be programmed for different events and seen across a room.

Will Motorola fix some of these deficiencies in the next iteration? Sure hope so. But the early adopters will not be happy if an upgraded model comes out next year. The Moto X has great potential, but is not there yet.

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-The camera seems to have a slight haze over the pictures. I expect it to be fixed in a firmware update though.

-The screen is perfectly fine. It is quite vivid and the brightness is fine. The screen actually looks quite good, and the images look like they are floating on top of the screen. It looks as good, if not better than the HTC One (which I have had).

-The touchless voice control is a great feature. It comes in handy all the time. When I'm at home and my phone is on the charger, it comes in handy. When I'm in the car, it definitely comes in handy.

-Active notifications are GREAT. Once you've used them, you really see that this is how notifications should be. I wouldn't mind if there was a light in addition to them, but there is no way I'd take a notification light over active notifications.