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Comment by jonathansizz | Hacker News Reader

This is by far the most critical review I've read. Several others (e.g. The Verge, CNN, ZDNet, BGR) have said the new Moto X is the best Android phone ever.

Ars Technica did a wifi battery rundown test, and the 2014 Moto X lasted 18% longer than last year's model. And the other reviews have said the screen was excellent. So this review seems like an outlier, but I'll find out for myself soon as I ordered mine yesterday.

Everything seems to have improved with this year's X, but the killer features for me are Motomaker and the extra software (the active display, voice control and assistant), and the leather back will I'm sure feel great when reading on the larger screen.

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Anandtech has always given us much better and more quantitative information than Ars. Just to give my pet example, Anandtech sets displays to 200 nits for battery tests. Ars sets them to "50%" which is meaningless. According to Anandtech's measurement the 2014 Moto X has the same peak luminance as the old Nexus One that everybody hated, making it the dimmest phone you can buy today. The new Moto X at half brightness would be like an iPhone at minimum brightness.

Ars Technica: wifi browsing test, 200 nits, 526 minutes. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/review-in-its-second-...

While I haven't looked at this specific example, my rule of thumb is usually to trust Anandtech because their writers are often actual engineers that understand the hardware and software changes and have some discussion and speculation based on that information. Elsewhere you usually just find writing based on hands-on anecdotes and technical information that was simply spoon-fed to the reviewer.

As an aside, I love my 2013 VZW Moto X DE. Between Motorola's goodies and Xposed + GravityBox, I don't have to bother with custom ROMs [for now].

While the battery may be good enough for one day, they are falling behind other brands in terms of battery life. Last year, they released the Droid Maxx on Verizon, which is functionally equivalent to the Moto X, but with a much larger 3500mah battery. I don't know why they don't do the same thing with the Moto X and release two versions of it.

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