Motorola Unveils 4.7-Inch Moto X Smartphone with 24-Hour Battery and Touchless Controls

[genovelle]

I'm pretty certain they would be telling the truth about the processor on the device listening for the command locally. It would chew way too much battery and data to run the translation all the way back to googles servers and back.

Now, if you were to interject wondering if it listened to other keywords and recorded that... it would be interesting. (Although, with the open source nature of the product, I'm certain someone would catch this behaviour before anyone was at any real risk).

I am a huge apple fan, but these conviences are making me starting to take both feet out of the Apple Sandbox.

-Handsfree requests! Siri just isn't useful enough for day to day scenarios, plus the lag from finding your phone to holding down the home button. It would be nice to just say your keyword and instantly start your task.

-Accelerometer activated camera? Brilliant. Yes it's fast to fire up the the screen on the iphone, and then slide the camera icon... But when you need to get that really fast photo, I think this gesture could be awesome!

iPhone 5S will hopefully come with some serious improvements, or I'll be grabbing a Google Play edition of something. HTC One? Moto X? (Even an S4?)


Further conjecture. I cannot wait until the marketting gurus have to pit the iPhone 5S vs the Samsung S5!

5S vs S5 shoot out! Who Wins? We got to confused to remember!

Sounds like a paid comment. How well do you think voice command will work in a coffee shop or when out to eat. Then there is of course other people that you have convinced to buy this thing yelling Google Now into their phones.

The camera thing is not a good idea. I thought the shake was neat on the iPhone but soon turned it off because it would activate when ever the motion was done unintentionally as well. Frustrating! You will have lots of pictures from purses and pockets and of things you might not want someone who you are sharing picks with to see. Worse would be them getting posted to Facebook by accident.
Almost all of the features the most vocal members of this site, who are always ready to jump ship, fawns over on their beloved Google phones are completely useless and do not get used at all by regular people.

 

[viacavour]

Good to see phone manufacturers concentrating on battery life now, the only bane in existence for smart phones. Hope apple takes on the idea.

They are always after the right balance. Remember Apple pointed out that GoogleNow is using too much battery but Google denied it ? Then they went back and fix it.

Everyone is after longer battery life. But not everyone need to lie like Google's Nexus 7.

 

[sazivad]

Wow! This phone seems super duper spectacular! That "Always Listening" feature is really something.

This message most definitely not brought to you by the NSA.

 

[UnfetteredMind]

Not sure if this was asked before, if all Moto X phones are activated by someone saying "Ok, Google Now", what happens when you are in a room full of Moto X?

You train it to your voice and after that it won't respond to others (according to the article on the Verge).

Sounds like a potentially decent phone and that they're really trying to follow the Apple way (experience over specs), will be interesting to see if it's successful. I'm just waiting for Apple to release their new phones.

 

[teknikal90]

Not but you could be having a private conversation or giving your bank or checking account number to someone and one of those pesky hacked apps you bought from Google play figures out how to tap into this always on feature.

But if an app is already maliciously hacked to do so, it wouldnt require the phone to have this feature..

This always on doesnt make it any easier for a hacker to gain that sort of information from you through hacked apps.

 

[viacavour]

I'm sure they will, but the phone isn't targeted to Android fans. It's target market is "everyone". And "everyone" isn't going to be interested in paying $199 on contract for this phone, no matter how many colors they can choose.

I think it is a nice phone, but it doesn't hit it out of the ball park for Motorola.

It's a $650 phone made of plastic.

Ouch yes. But I am trying to be fair to them. Google fans may buy it anyway.

 

[Georgij]

Only for ATT customers.

What a huge mistake!

 

[mj1108]

Not entirely sure why this is on the front page, but it sounds pretty good...especially the battery life.

Competition is good.

 

[aerok]

I wonder what would happen, if someone else instead of you says "OK, Google now"... Should the phone get activated every single time? This is just a fail!

Most people seem to overlook the fact that the problem with Android is that on paper everything looks shiny, but when things come to user experience... that's hell on earth!

The phone learns your voice so that nobody else can activate it. the Verge and said it worked surprisingly well even in a crowded area.

 

[lucidhysteria]

a nice feature that comes in handy in certain circumstances. I would like to see a usage statistic (for smartphone/human interaction) on Siri and Google Now. I bet its less than 1%

For what it's worth, I use Siri all the time. It saves me a ton of time setting reminders, alarms, calendar entries, adding to lists (grocery list, etc.), doing math, converting units, etc. I rarely have any trouble with it not understanding me – even in the car with music or talk shows on, etc. That's completely anecdotal, and Siri does mis-hear my wife quite often, so maybe it handles certain voices better than others, or maybe people that have more trouble are holding it in a way that blocks the mic, or... I don't know. All I know is for me, Siri is a genuinely powerful and useful feature. If I had to enter every reminder and calendar item by hand, I would probably just not do it on my phone at all. I haven't used Google Now that much, but I imagine it handles those tasks well, too.

Anyway, just had to put in a good word for Siri since it gets so much hate. I do wish it would just handle things like reminders, etc. locally instead of hitting a server for everything.

 

[WoodyTheMilkMan]

That 24 hour battery doesn't sound too bad, but I wonder if that's with heavy usage though.

 

[Analog Kid]

[deleted]

 

[viacavour]

Sounds like a paid comment. How well do you think voice command will work in a coffee shop or when out to eat. Then there is of course other people that you have convinced to buy this thing yelling Google Now into their phones.

The camera thing is not a good idea. I thought the shake was neat on the iPhone but soon turned it off because it would activate when ever the motion was done unintentionally as well. Frustrating! You will have lots of pictures from purses and pockets and of things you might not want someone who you are sharing picks with to see. Worse would be them getting posted to Facebook by accident.
Almost all of the features the most vocal members of this site, who are always ready to jump ship, fawns over on their beloved Google phones are completely useless and do not get used at all by regular people.

After so many months of busted claims and astroturfing, I think we already know how to filter out the Android noises and malware.

 

[Deedlez]

Apple needs to step up with the iPhone 5S - phones like this, the huge Samsung Galaxy and the HTC One make the iPhone look a bit small and quaint. I would not be surprised if Apple unveiled a surprise large-screen iPhone with the same resolution as the current 5 this year. Waiting for next year would be missing the boat...

 

[Georgij]

In locker room shout:
– GOOGLE NOW, SHOW ME ...!

 

[Analog Kid]

Samsung must love that they now have to compete with seamlessly integrated hardware and software from their OS vendor.

Either Google pisses off their OEMs by competing with them directly, or the OEMs get along just fine because Google competes as effectively as Microsoft in the hardware market. I just can't see how this ends well for everybody...

 

[tigres]

Not saying I like Goigle Docs, but choose your words wisely. Siri's beta. Is that crap too?

Yes. Siri is nowhere near google now- unfortunately.

 

[viacavour]

The phone learns your voice so that nobody else can activate it. the Verge and said it worked surprisingly well even in a crowded area.

Nobody else is an exaggeration. The phone tries to discern its owner's voice but it can make mistakes.

When you speak close enough, it is more accurate.

Working in a noisy environment is fine. Siri works in my car with loud stereo too.

 

[Tiger8]

Google servers listening on every conversation … waiting for a command? no thank you.

your iPhone does that too! I remember back from dumbphone Nokia days, big brother can listen anytime they want. If you don't want them too, take out the battery, but then again, you can't with your iPhone.

 

[viacavour]

your iPhone does that too! I remember back from dumbphone Nokia days, big brother can listen anytime they want. If you don't want them too, take out the battery, but then again, you can't with your iPhone.

Huh ? You activate Siri by pressing on the home button long enough, or raising it to you mouth, or use Siri Eyes on.

It doesn't always listen. That would drain too much juice.

Give iOS7 beta a try for the latest enhancements.

 

[bobenhaus]

Google servers listening on every conversation … waiting for a command? no thank you.

Get over yourself and understand once you connected to the internet there is no more privacy even though you might think so. So stop complaining about Google or other companies because it’s not going to get you anywhere. I'm tired of hearing all these tin hat people and all their worldly smarts. Believe me your land phone, cell phone; internet connection is being logged by your providers. The providers need a way to protect themselves from law suits. I'm sure if you owned a company you would do the same thing. Also convenience is what you signed up when you got any type of free account in return to some of your data being stored or sold. The only way to do is disconnect from modern life. Thank you kindly

 

[viacavour]

Get over yourself and understand once you connected to the internet there is no more privacy even though you might think so. So stop complaining about Google or other companies because it’s not going to get you anywhere. I'm tired of hearing all these tin hat people and all their worldly smarts. Believe me your land phone, cell phone; internet connection is being logged by your providers. The providers need a way to protect themselves from law suits. I'm sure if you owned a company you would do the same thing. Also convenience is what you signed up when you got any type of free account in return to some of your data being stored or sold. The only way to do is disconnect from modern life. Thank you kindly

Not really.

There are privacy technologies vendors can deploy to protect the users.

Google refused to obey the do-not-tack RFC and were fined in EU. There are other privacy tech that should be implemented. If you watch the WWDC videos, you can see these solutions in iOS too.

 

[iAi]

Hello, Moto! The phone looks bulky, unimpressive.

They are actually targeting the Nokia fans and spilled-over Phandroids of other devices, "big is better and innovative crowd."

 

[Twixt]

Ambitious price for a less ambitious phone.
It should have been priced at 300 usd max unlocked, it is a solid mid range product only with disappointing battery (let's see what tests bring).
My wife wanted it but immediately thought it is just 2 times too pricey!

 

[nutmac]

It's a phone that will look pretty, perform decently for last year specs.... and that's about it.

That's the key point though.

Most flagship Android phones are too focused on winning the spec and feature wars that they have forgotten what really matters: make the phone easy to use and make it work the way most people want it to work.

To that end, Moto X has longer battery life (while opting for appropriate amount of technology, such as lower resolution screen and slower processors), few but what appears to be very innovative features, and simplifying the experience by minimizing customizations and additional apps.

IMO, Moto X still looks to be phone that appeals more to geeks and engineers than the masses, but it is still a big step in the right direction.