Moto X: First Impressions

The MyTouch 4G
After dealing with a horrible Sense overlay and a total lack of rom updates from the rooting community on my T-Mobile MyTouch 4G, I vowed to get only Nexus phones in the future.

The Verizon Galaxy Nexus
My next phone was the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. That was a big mistake.

No, unlike the Nexus One and Nexus S (or the later Galaxy Nexus GSM version), the Verizon Galaxy Nexus did not get timely updates from Google.

Transitions between CDMA 3G and LTE 4G were horrible—if I got in an area with poor LTE coverage, the phone would never be able to make up its mind whether it wanted 3G with three bars on 4G with no bars, so I would just end up with essentially no usable mobile data. Radio updates never fixed this problem.

More importantly, the battery life on the Galaxy Nexus is piss poor. Check out this great chart, where, out of over forty phones, the Verizon Galaxy Nexus rates last for battery life on web browsing (3 hours vs. 7-9 hours on any smartphone you could purchase now). Whether I had the screen dimmed or used an extended battery pack or whatever, I could never consistently get more than two hours' worth of on-screen time. Usually it was about 100 minutes.

What else to consider?
So the past few months, I've been reading about a lot of different potential phones. People were raving about the Samsung Galaxy S4, but my parents got that phone, and when I helped them set it up, I knew the phone wasn't for me (not a fan of TouchWiz, and there doesn't seem to be a stable Cyanogenmod for that model yet).

Over the summer, I seriously considered the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, as well as the HTC One Google Play Edition. I was also curious about what the next Nexus 4 might be like.

The Moto X
When I started reading about the Moto X, I was a bit disappointed. People were comparing number of processors (dual-core vs. quad-core) and screen resolution (720p instead of 1080p) to other top-tier phones, and the Moto X seemed to come up short.

But then the tide turned a bit in the online reviews. All of a sudden, online reviewers were actually using the phone, and they were raving about how well it fit in the hand, how the new Moto X–specific features were actually useful and not gimicky, and how the battery life really was that good.

Some hiccups along the way
Unfortunately, Motorola totally botched the Moto X launch. It wasn't announced with a clear release date. And they made a whole big deal about Moto Maker and customization, but then Moto Maker (initially at least) is available on AT&T only. And the phone itself is available in the U.S. only (sure, part of the marketing was that it's assembled in the U.S. instead of China, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be available in other countries).

More importantly for my situation, once I ordered my Moto X, I immediately got a confirmation saying that it was In Stock (which I take to mean existing and ready to be packed up and shipped—not ready to be assembled in Texas, and then packed up and shipped), ready to ship in 1-2 business days, and then shipped with two-day shipping. I kept logging into my Motorola account to see if the status would change from Not Shipped to Shipped. Maybe I would get an email with a package tracking number.

Nope.

Instead, one day randomly—while my online account still said Not Shipped, the phone just arrived via Fed Ex. The whole thing from order to receipt took six days (not six business days but six days).

still not shipped
Interestingly enough, I now have the phone, and have it activated on T-Mobile, but Motorola still (as of this writing) says it's not shipped.

The Moto X
So I get the phone, and it comes in a white box with a Motorola logo on the front. Included is a power cable (micro USB), a little tool to get the SIM card out, a T-Mobile SIM card in the phone itself, and the phone itself with a nice screen protector already on it.

When I turned the phone on and connected it to my wireless router, this is the first thing I saw once I logged in:
2013-09-26 21.15.57
Am I worried at all that I didn't get a Nexus phone? No. Sure, it's still technically running Android 4.2.2 when Android 4.3 is already out, but I have Android 4.3 on my Nexus 7, and I honestly cannot tell the difference between the two. Still, The Moto X has a fairly vanilla Android–looking interface (no Sense, Motoblur, or TouchWiz), and...
2013-09-26 21.17.54
... it gets updates fairly quickly.

A few annoyances
One really annoying thing about the Moto X is that when I got it, there was already a voicemail notification (which makes no sense, because I hadn't actually activated it on T-Mobile yet, and there was no phone number attached to the phone). The worst part about it was that there was no way to clear the notification. I couldn't swipe it away. I couldn't actually listen to the voicemail to get it to go away.

2013-09-26 21.21.47
Here you can actually see me trying to call the voicemail to get the message to go away as the Moto X is interrupting me to tell me the software update installed okay.

The other thing that's annoying is the overwhelming number of how-tos. Any time you launch an application or do anything, every app is trying to tell you how to use it. I signed in with my Google account. Google, you know I've had four Android devices before this. You should know I know how to use these apps!

And, of course, there's a very convenient auto-backup of photos to Google Plus, which oddly gets its own separate app called G+ Photos. The horrible thing about the app is that it notifies you (with your default notification sound) every time photos get backed up. There is no option to have the photos back up silently in the background. My temporary workaround? Disable all notifications for Google+.

There is a little nub or dimple you can rest a finger in on the back of the phone, but generally the phone back is pretty slippery. I guess the assumption is everyone would get a case? I don't know. Slippery expensive phones... not good.

One last small annoyance: there doesn't seem to be a way to disable the vibration that occurs when you unlock the phone (yes, even if general haptic feedback is turned off in the settings).

Okay. What's good about the phone?

  • I mentioned before that it comes with a screen protector. It does. Most phones will come with some kind of temporary screen protector that is ugly and not meant to be used permanently. The Moto X comes with a screen protector that covers the screen fully, with a little hole for the mic. There is no branding on the screen protector that covers up the screen. The only unsightly bit is a small white triangle on the bottom-left corner that you can scissor off and still have the rest be useful to protect the screen.
  • Active Notifications is the bomb, even with a pattern or pin lock. I love that I can pick up the phone to check the time without having to press the power button to wake it up. The phone just knows you want to check the time and displays the time for you. It also knows you're picking it up to unlock the phone to use it, so you don't have to press the power button first, and then unlock it. It's also nice (yes, even if you have pattern or pin security in place) to be able to swipe notifications from the middle of the screen instead of from the top down. My hands aren't huge, so one-handed (yes, I ride public transportation, so I don't always have two hands available) it's nice to not have to get my phone into an awkward position so I can swipe down to see a notification.
  • The double-twist to activate the camera really works. And it is really convenient. I'd read some criticisms about the camera and the shutter speed for the Moto X. Coming from the horrible camera and shutter speed on the Galaxy Nexus, though, the Moto X camera is like a dream to me.
  • I know I'm not the first person to say it, but the phone feels nice in the hand. All the pictures and videos you see online of the phone make it look like a rectangular brick, just like any other Android phone. No, it's not. The phone has a big screen that doesn't seem big. The phone feels very snug and small in your hand—comfortable (apart from the back being slippery).
  • It feels fast. I don't know anything about dual-core or quad-core or processor speeds or GPUs. I do know my Nexus 7 has a quad-core processor and 2 GB of RAM and is generally fast but can sometimes be sluggish. The Moto X has a dual-core processor and 2 GB of RAM, and it is just the buttery smooth that Jelly Bean was supposed to be last year on every Android phone. It is certainly much smoother in terms of getting up the list of recent apps or returning to the home screen. This phone does not lack for performance.

Other notes
The whole OK Google Now thing doesn't really work well, and I don't personally see any use for it in my daily routine.

Where I am, I'm getting much better data service from T-Mobile than I got from Verizon. Very shocking to me!

I don't really understand why people got all excited about being able to customize the colors on the phone. Maybe I'm boring, but black works for me.

I haven't had a chance to really test out the battery life on this thing. I'll update the post or put up a new post about battery life when I get the chance.

This is the first Android phone I've gotten that I didn't want to root and install a custom rom on right away! I highly recommend this phone!

1 comment

  1. I will keep this in mind. Thank you. Although, I have the opposite problem-big hands.

    The review I mentioned that that dimple in the back makes a very convenient “marker” so you don’t cover the camera. That to me was smart engineering.

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