Moto X review | Hacker News Reader

Moto X review

engadget.com

53 pointsscholia61 comments

Quick aside: This is a really well-written article in and of itself. Joseph Volpe seems like an actually-great writer, and it was refreshing to see some tech journalism that feels like old-school journalism.

It's not all bad out there, but as the lines between "writing" and "blogging a scoop to get page views" blurs further every day, it's nice to see some people still care about the writing itself.

I cannot comprehend why they did not put this through the Nexus branding (of course with slightly adjusted specs and price). Instead of having one true Google line-up they segment even further away with this purified Google-ish Motorola phone, the Nexus line-up and already existing phones of other brands with stock Android (Google Play editions?).

Where is this heading?

They made a very public guarantee to their other partners that Moto would have to wait in line for their turn as Nexus maker. I think there was some cryptic non-replies which indicated that the next flagship Moto after this might/will be a Nexus product.

It's a great question. I asked a friend who works at Google the very same thing yesterday and sadly got a very non-answer answer - either because he didn't know, he didn't want to say, or because Google is having a case of the corporates.

Something about internal corporate structure, compliance issues having to do with the Motorola acquisition, objectivity when it comes to Android competitiveness, how the Android group has to treat Motorola just like every other Android phone vendor and can't give them special treatment, something about contracts with HTC, etc. etc. etc. I felt more confused than before I asked.

"Where is this heading?" ... "Instead, it comes with an almost pure version of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean."

I think the color shells is misdirection, it's a way to get the Moto resellers on the (almost) pure stuff.

My friend that works at Motorola says there were frictions in having Google brand their own company's flagship phone as a Nexus device. Probably a lot of hard feelings still between Google and Samsung (among others).

What makes you think that Google's goal is to have every single Android phone run unadulterated Android? I'm sure that something like the slow-motion Tizen migration that Samsung is doing is a bit much for them, but these kinds of light customizations (tailored to the specific hardware) are probably exactly what they'd like manufacturers to do.

Google is trying to spread the unmodified Android UX through at least three tiers of branding: Nexus, Google Play Edition, and normal Google-logo branding, but with a greater emphasis on a standard UX.

I think they could have done better. While the UX issue is annoying, the killer issue for enterprise deployments is timeliness of security updates. They could have had a pledge with incentives that would result in update SLAs with OEMs. Then customers could count on getting updates within a certain interval.

The Google Play Editions have announced updates, right after Nexus got their's, so that's something. But even outside the Google Play store, I would like to see some kind of formal commitment from OEMs. I have been pretty happy with ASUS for updating, but their schedules seem to slip.

Every manufacturer slips when they release new top segment hardware. The real problem is Android being too free in terms of support. Google should have set requirements for distributors regarding updates. But then again Android wouldn't have grown this fast this big if they did. Now they try to fix the segmentation with mentioned line ups and work arounds (Google Play Services or something, releasing new core features as installable applications) but I doubt they will ever fix the core problems completley as it makes Android as what it is.

> Google should have set requirements for distributors regarding updates.

Google could have done that as a condition of getting the proprietary apps and Google logo while maintaining unconditional openness in AOSP. And while you are right that they might not have had that leverage in the first year of Android as a commercial product, they could surely have started before now.

Too bad the Droid line of phones with physical keyboards is dead. For those of us who write long paragraphs of text for work or need to ssh into a server, it's a big loss...

I used a T-Mobile G2 for a long time because of the flip down keyboard.

I'm using Swype on my current phone and it's pretty good, but it has a tendency to pick really uncommon words instead of the common word I tried to type.

I've owned several android devices, from the original g1, to a Stock Galaxy Nexus. As far as the actual hardware goes, the G2 was my favourite.

Touch screens are well suited to very specific things. Typing is not one of them.

Agreed. Samsung made a great phone w/ a keyboard though. http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/27/samsung-galaxy-s-relay-4g...

I'm really surprised that there aren't more options on this front. I feel like every day I talk to a non-tech friend who, despite the sinking business ship that is RIM, _really_ loves (or loved & misses) their BlackBerry.

And every. single. time. I ask them why, it's about the keyboard and only the keyboard. There is a solid contingent of people who just don't like touch keyboards and there's very little anyone is going to do to convince them or train them otherwise. Which is fine.

Apple's clearly a lost cause, but it seems to me that a well-designed, BlackBerry'esque piece of hardware (with a physical keyboard) running and properly mated to a smaller-screen Android OS would do quite well.

Have you seen BlackBerry 10? Even as an Android dev, it's my daily driver.

Joshua Topolsky's review on the Verge [http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4588922/moto-x-review] seems to contradict the battery life claim:

> "Motorola could have built a monster of longevity like the RAZR Maxx — and it should have — but it didn’t. It definitely gets a full day of use: I used it heavily for 15 hours before it died, and if you use it like most people use their phones, you won’t need to charge it during the day. It lasted for 7 hours, 14 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which loads popular websites and high-res images with brightness at 65 percent; that’s a very good score, far better than the HTC One and the GS4, but well below class leaders like the Maxx or the Galaxy Note II."

But personally, the biggest deal-breaker is this:

> "But there’s a catch. The touchless controls are rendered nearly useless if you have any kind of security lock on your phone. You can still use it to make calls, but everything else requires that you unlock your phone, which requires that you pick it up and interact with it… meaning you just defeated the whole idea of "touchless controls."

That said, I'm very curious about the sensors they've included, and can't wait for Anandtech's breakdown.

Supposedly, in the near future Motorola will release NFC tags and also an update to set a trusted device's (your car or your headphones) bluetooth connection as authentication mechanism to override the lockscreen.

> The touchless controls are rendered nearly useless if you have any kind of security lock on your phone.

Being able to swipe up to launch Google Now on my Nexus 4 from the lock screen is the reason I gave up on passcodes. If I go out clubbing or something I do activate it, but in day-to-day life I find passcodes are more of a hindrance than anything else.

You could at least use Face unlock, no? Still better than nothing.

On the same line of thinking, they already have a pretty good technology that recognizes your voice. So why not have that be the built-in security lock, too? So if anyone else tries to unlock it in any way (either voice or touch), they can't. It doesn't seem like the technology is perfect yet, but it's still better than nothing.

I don't think Josh contradicted him, just that he might be an even heavier user than Engadget's author.

Plus, Motorola never said 24h of heavy usage. They said 24 of mixed usage. The battery life seems better than average, either way, and it probably does last 24h or longer for most people. The 7h test is obviously a stress test using the CPU, screen and Wi-Fi all the time until the battery is drained..

Would it be possible to have voice verification when saying "Ok Google Now"?

It does apparently get "trained" on your voice, however do you really want to shout your passphrase at your phone?

It would be trivial for someone to record you saying it without your knowledge, to unlock your phone at a later date.

Not necessarily, the Moto X seems to have a feature called "Trusted Devices" which gets gets past security when in range of aBluetooth device you've opted in with: http://i.imgur.com/EPKauya.png

Looks like Topolsky missed this.

What sensors does it have? There doesn't seem to be a list anywhere on the spec sheets from Motorola. I'm especially curious if it has a barometer - does anyone know?

Just out of curiosity, what's your use case for the barometer? How accurate is a typical smartphone barometer?

I have an S3 and did my first testing of the barometer while skydiving on the weekend. I was happily surprised by how accurate it was. I'm not about to stop using a wrist mounted altimeter and rely on this alone, but being able to use my phone as an audible altimeter and not handing over $300 for a "real" audible alti makes sense to me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cryptoz

Heh, that answers that. Thanks.

Barometers are also very useful for fitness training, to record hills for biking and running. The vertical accuracy of GPS is not great, and people often get better results by looking up altitudes on a map using the lat/long.

The high-end GPS sports watches generally include a barometer to get more accurate altitude data.

How do you calibrate the sports watches? Or do they only care about deltas and thus don't need calibration?

You can usually override the current reading with a known good value to calibrate. But yes, most people care mainly about relative values, and that the hill they climbed was 1000'.

I'm curious why you're curious about a barometer?

For me it was a must have feature of my new phone because I wanted to use the BASELine flight computer app while skydiving.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.platypii.b...

It helps with GPS locks, apparently, apart from being able to participate in PressureNET.

I thought I remember seeing this on the initial announcement. Not going to hunt that down, but I did find a review stating it has one:

http://tech2.in.com/features/smartphones/moto-x-a-specificat...

I find it odd that they are pushing the, assembled with you, aspect but only one US carrier actually supports this feature (at this time).

Maybe I'm confused, but isn't this just a stylized cover plate? Similar to what is on offer at all the kiosks at various malls?

As I say in my other comment, since it is web-distributed, it "can't" have carrier specific software. "Assembled by me," in black, with (almost) pure Android.

The cover is not replaceable, so once youve made the design, thats it.

(you could still get a case that covers the back i spose)

They seem to be suggesting that you've got two weeks to change your mind and return it for a different style, though I don't know how many times you can do that.

A lot of bla-bla, but missing the two most important questions:

- Is it possible to remove/exchange the battery. This is a requirement for a business cell phone, as its usual that everybody is removing his battery on every phone, when talking real business. Having more then one battery is also a requirement for some games, e.g. Ingress.

- Is it possible to exchange the Linux kernel. Motorola has the bad habit to publish the kernel source to follow GPL by word, but lock the kernel boot loader and prevent freedom by meaning. In result every Motorola phone has kernel bugs with known exploits, and every Motorola phone is ready for trashcan just after unpacking from security point of view.

Wow, those questions don't sound interesting to me at all. I'm sure they aren't interesting to 99% of the cell phone market.

Why do you say that? Being able to change the batteries is extremely useful for many people in countries were you check it out before buying a new phone.

Having security issues is very important for all the business market, and because of them the device might not be allowed in the business phones fleet.

I live in one of those countries...the battery is not the problem, otherwise they wouldn't sell so many iPhones here.

Putting a custom Linux kernel on your phone probably won't convince your IT manager one way or the other to let your phone on the network.

If I were in charge of security in a company handling sensitive data I would consider enforcing that all connected devices run a stable and open source os with root access and would add a special app checking for odds and phoning home regularly.

That would be a nice ideal, but that hardly represents the real world.

But we are not the 99% of the stupid end users. We are the 1%, the HN readers, hackers who want to own a phone, and dont want to be owned by the phone.

The benchmarks are impressive considering its older architecture. Combined with the fantastic battery life and novel features, this may be the Android phone to buy. I'm not exactly sure why Engadget concluded that it isn't worth $200.

That's $200 on contract, an important distinction for some of us.

But the battery life is definitely one of the killer features of this phone. If you want good specs, without paying a lot, there is the very nice Nexus 4 (likely due for a refresh soon), but that phone in its current incarnation certainly can't boast great battery life.

I would say that the battery life is the killer feature. Everything else is sort of "nice, but on <X> they have ..."

For me that was refreshing to hear because when the first Android Phone came out (the G1), battery life was so poor that it made the phone seem unusable (well you were afraid if you used it at all you wouldn't have charge in an hour or so).

I've seen people claim that the Nexus 4 has bad battery life, and just don't understand it. I charge my Nexus 4 roughly every other day. And not because it runs out of charge at that point, but because I don't like to have the battery go much under about 40% or so. In my normal usage, the battery would easily last at least 3 days. (I've got a screenshot of the battery being at 25% after 4 days since last recharge).

My use case is roughly:

- About half an hour of screen on per day, mostly web browsing

- About 2h of audio playback per day

- About 3-4h on HSPA every day, on WiFi for the rest of the day

- Several kinds of automatic syncing going on (for example all default Google services, Google Now enabled, automated podcast polling + downloads)

Now, that might not be the heaviest workload in the world. But it's certainly realistic, and at least compared to any other Android phones I've used the battery life is nothing short of amazing.

"The benchmarks are impressive considering its older architecture."

Blame Qualcomm's idiotic naming scheme. They are calling this a Snapdragon S4Pro, same as what's in the year old Nexus4.

In reality, it has the same Adreno 320 GPU as of the Galaxy S4 and the HTC one. Also the same Krait 300 CPUs of the S4 and HTC One, just 2 of them instead of the 4.

www.anandtech.com/show/7197/a-quick-look-at-the-moto-x-motorolas-new-flagship

I wish people would elaborate more on the 'always on' access to Google Now. To me, that's the most exciting, futuristic feature, since Google Now is already an amazing product.

Perhaps not enough people use Google Now to care?

engadget and theverge seem to have fairly different impressions on battery life. Hoping anandtech will clarify. "mid-range" is not a bad word, and I'm willing to support locally assembled products.

Midrange isn't a bad word, but a midrange phone at high-end prices is a bit of a turn off.

Battery life alone makes this best phone on the market at the moment.

Except that a phone is more than its battery alone.

You're right. If the battery's dead all the time, it can also be a paper weight!

It's funny, all this advertising...

They report and store everything their devices hear, now they're telling us that the devices are ALWAYS LISTENING.

when you think; for $199 you can buy a HTC one and flash an AOSP ROM vs pay the same for MotoX. I would go with HTC One every time.

I agreed with you at first, the day they announced the Moto X. But now all the head-to-head comparisons are showing the X to perform either on-par with, or better than, the HTC One. Plus the X is a smaller form factor for the same physical screen size (since it doesn't have the two front-facing speakers of the One which I don't need). And it supposedly has better battery life, likely in part due to having less pixels to power (which again I don't need) and two less cores (which I obviously don't need if it performs the same or better for all practical usage). In short, I'm now leaning back toward the Moto X developer edition, which will have an unlockable bootloader.

EDIT: I should mention, the benchmarks I'm referring to are these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmO5LeWUEeM&feature=youtube_...

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/smartphones/motorola-moto-x...

And I swear I saw one with Sunspider et. al. benchmarks that more or less contradicted the benchmarks in this article.

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