All the hype and attention for Smartphone normally falls in one of two camps – Apple or Samsung. It’s as if Google didn’t make Android available to all comers and there were no other competitors in the market. However, there are – and lucky for you, some of them are excellent.
Motorola is a company confused. They were doing good stuff, making decent phones. Then Google bought them – could this be the start of something huge? Nope. Sold. Google sold the Motorola device company to Lenovo. Now that in of itself isn’t a bad thing, but lets focus on today and a smartphone they’ve brought to Australia called the Moto X.
This is a great phone. I’ve used it for a solid 5 weeks as my primary phone, and frankly, have forgotten more about it than I can remember. That’s a good thing. It fitted in, it. just. worked.
There are some features Motorola have installed alongside the stock standard Android, but, as a user you’ll get as close to a naked Android OS as you’re likely to get off the shelf from most phones.
Those features are actually quite cool. For example simple settings that change based on time of day to put your phone on silent, or based on motion to move to “driving mode” and auto respond to texts or calls with a message saying you’re driving.
When notifications appear, a simple swipe of the screen lets you preview what just came in – without having to fully unlock the phone and launch the application.
But in all honesty, like with many of the headline seeking features of modern smartphones at launch – after a while I disabled all that and just had a great little phone.
It’s bigger than an iPhone, but much smaller than these huge flagship phones from Samsung, HTC and Sony.
A little heavy in the hand but you’ll get used to that, the rubberish back is a great feel to give you a bit of slip resistant confidence..
The whole device is let down by the camera, which I found desperately lacking – particularly in the simplest of low-light situations and for me that’s a deal breaker. However, it shouldn’t discourage potential buyers.
Overall the main problem with this phone is the price. At $400 this would be the number one phone to check out – but at the mid $500’s it’s a bit pricey – that said, it’s still loads cheaper than other flagships so well worth considering – especially if you’re going for the plan price approach.
I can honestly say I loved using this phone. I took it overseas with me and never questioned if I’d done the right thing – this was a great travel companion and while the camera isn’t perfect, it certainly got me some great happy snaps around the place.
For people looking for a new smartphone, who perhaps can’t afford the flagship models we all know about, I think the Moto X is top of the pile among phones you should consider.
