Motorola Moto X Hands-on and Initial Impressions: Bring this to the PH!

Meet the Motorola Moto X!

We were able to play around with an actual unit of the Motorola Moto X a few days ago during a meeting with one of the top executives of Google here in the Philippines. We ended up taking a break from our meeting because my tech blogger side just naturally came out and I started playing around with the device and eventually started taking photos, lol.

If you don’t remember, the Motorola Moto X was announced in August and it boasted of customizability (you can design how it looks on the Moto X site before ordering), almost vanilla Android, and more importantly a decent price tag. Motorola also claimed that the device was made in the USA.

Let’s take a moment to go over the specifications again of the Moto X before we move on to our initial impressions.

Motorola Moto X Spec Sheet

1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 Pro Processor
Adreno 320 Graphics
2GB RAM
16GB/32GB Internal Storage
4.7-inches AMOLED Capacitive Touchscreen, 1280 x 720 pixels (312 pixels per inch)
Corning Gorilla Glass
10.0-megapixels primary camera with autofocus and LED Flash
2.0-megapixels secondary camera
3G, HSPA+, LTE
WiFi, WiFi Hotspot, Bluetooth, GPS/aGPS/GLONASS, NFC
Android Jelly Bean 4.2, Upgradeable to Android Kit Kat 4.4
2,200mAh Battery

The spec sheet can be a little bit underwhelming especially if you zero in on the dual-core processor and the 720p display. However that dual-core processor is actually one of the best dual-core processors around and can easily run circles around the quad-core processors offered by a lot of local brands. The display is also quite nice despite being only 720p since you only have a 4.7-inch screen which actually still turns out very nice. Anyway, let’s go to the initial review!

We Go Hands-on!

The Motorola Moto X is the perfect example of how to use just plastic in trying to build a world-class smartphone. It feels very solid and compact despite the plastic material and the soft-touch surface gives it a much more premium feel. Up from we have the scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass. It’s also good to note that Motorola reduced the bezel size to unnoticeable levels which in effect gives users more “screen” to play around with. All the ports and buttons are situated in their usual places along the sides and top/bottom areas of the device.

At 4.7-inches the Moto X is easy to manage and use with just one hand. It’s a very pocketable phone that’s easy to draw out or slip back in.

When it comes to the hardware, the Motorola Moto X does not look or feel cheap at all.

Bunch of new apps and software features!

On the software and performance side, the Moto X ran Android Kit Kat 4.4 smoothly and fluidly. There were no traces of lag despite running only on a dual-core processor. It really felt like we were using a quad-core device. This speaks volumes for the capabilities of the engineers and developers of Motorola/Google.

For the unique Motorola software features, the only one we appreciated is the Active Notifications. It basically shows you if you have any emails, messages, or calls, on your lock screen. This is what the lock screen should be for all Android phones by default, hehe.

Hoping that they bring this to the PH

We walked away very impressed with the Moto X. Add to all of this the fact that you can customize the color and build of your phone via the Moto X website and you have a surefire winner. That’s the reason why we want Motorola and Google to bring the Moto X (and it’s lower end brother, the Moto G) to the Philippines.

Two thumbs up Google and Motorola!