Moto X in Black

Motorola has put out a great phone here that has a lot of well thought out features. My phone history includes DROID Bionic, Samsung Galaxy S Note II, iPhone 4/5, and now the Motorola Moto X. The phone is well proportioned and has nice combination of responsiveness, battery life, and useful features. Here are my personal pros/cons: Pros: - Ergonomics: For me, this phone is the perfect size and is easy to hold for one handed operation or calling. - Battery life: After about 24 hours, my battery life is just under 50% with moderate use. I think I could easily go 2 days without a charge. - Touchless control or "Ok, Google Now": I really thought this would be gimmicky, but I ended up really liking it. It is very useful when you are driving and don't have to activate any button to make a phone call. There are many useful commands you can use with it as well. Recently, my 2 year old toddled off with my phone - being unable to find it, I yelled "Ok Google Now. Find my Phone!" - the phone started to making a ringing noise which lead me straight to it. - Notification system: Very handy. Just pick up the phone and the black/white screen will appear showing any notifications and options to go the message or unlock. Nice not having to push the power button every time I pick up the phone. - Wrist flick for camera: Another thing I thought would be gimmicky, but have ended up using a lot. Two flicks of the wrist and the camera opens - works every time. Has never opened inadvertently. - Responsiveness: Overall, very quick to open apps, browse web, etc. - Build quality: Very subjective, but the phone does seem to be very sturdy compared to cheap/flimsy Samsung Galaxy series Cons: - No expandable memory (or removable battery): This isn't a huge drawback for me now that I am using Google+ Auto Backup and Google Music as I don't have to store as much on the phone itself. Conclusion: This is a great all-around phone and has a unique feature set (for now). It may take you a couple of hours to get to the Kit Kat version of Android. When I first got the phone activated, etc. - it downloaded and installed three massive updates separately with reboots in between.

This is hands down the best phone I have seen/heard of/used/owned since the original droid came out years ago. The OG droid still is my favorite phone so far, due to it still working in a usable way and not having to be bogged down by anything. This phone's only problem is the locked bootloader. Buy the developer phone and it will have none of my cons. i'm not doing a long review, but if you want to konw, go to reddit and look at the subreddit moto x to get an update of what people feel about the phone and how it really is to own one. Only thing i can add if you are researching this phone, a lot of negative things come up about battery life. The battery life is awesome if you get the settings right. By that i mean there is this one thing called the art cache(Android Run Time) that can be enabled on this phone that allows me to get days off a charge it has also helped some friends of mine on the battery side too. on a light day i maybe loose 30% after 12 hrs. on a very heavy day i can drain it in under 5 hrs, but that's using it as a gaming device. Get this phone!! I know you may think, 'well it's not the fastest processor' or 'it doesn't have a 1080p screen' or 'you can't remove the battery'. Remember back in the day of the just ipod? no video, no internet, no nothing. if it crashed what did you do? open the case and remove the battery? i don't tihnk so, you held down the hardware reset keys. Just like here. It's nostalgic to me. the non 1080p screen. Really? you can see the difference? wow. i still use 1080p on a 50' tv and i think the quality is absolutely fantastic. i don't need that compressed down to the size of my hand. not having that also allows it's weaker gpu to perform better than the others. not the fastest processor? i beg you to show me anywhere i need it. just because it's lacking in that aspect doesn't make it not the most responsive phone on the market ever. i think it very well may be. i have used it stock for over 2 months now. still acts like the day i got it. i have thrown it down stairs, no case on. and there are no blemishes at all. The stock android is not bloated down with other tasks so you actually do see an improvement on speed in almost all cases over the competition. go this phone! If you haven't tried google now or active notifications, they have changed the landscape of how i use a phone. i will only buy phones now that incorporate those features. i hope to achieve that is why google sold motorola.

Overall I have been very happy with this phone and would highly recommend it. This is a great Android phone for an unbeatable price. I have been using it for about 10 days now since purchase. I'll hit a few things here that I like and a few areas for improvement. The four stars is simply because I have suggestions for improvement that should be implemented. My previous phone was a Motorola Droid 4, so any comparisons are to that. General Use/UI: The almost stock android is great. The UI is very quick and has not locked up on me. There's no visible indication at all that this phone is not at the top of the specs. My Droid 4 would occasionally have trouble keeping up on the UI. Physical Design Coming from the Droid 4 which was thick due to the physical keyboard, this phone is MUCH thinner and somewhat lighter. It feels good in the hand. The screen size is just right to handle with one hand, and the power and volume buttons are also located well for one handed operation. Fingerprints don't show on the back and are easily wiped off the screen. Overall seems sturdy and well constructed, though I'm a little concerned about the volume and power buttons eventually having problems. Camera: After figuring out the gesture to unlock the phone (twisting wrist twice) I have found this feature to be very nice and has always activated the camera very quickly. Camera images and video are of comparable or better quality than my Droid 4, but the camera app is MUCH faster to activate. Active Display I thought I would have no use for this feature and would disable it, but I've found it's kind of nice to be able to pick up the phone and then unlock it without having to find and press the power button. You can also go straight to a notification from the active display, but if you have a pattern lock or pass code you still have to enter that, kind of defeating the purpose of it. I have noticed that the active display does seem to turn on more often than it should (sitting in a locker at the gym, sitting on my leg while driving, etc) but it does not appear to have a serious impact on battery life. Battery Life I'm pretty impressed so far. It gets through a whole day of moderate use (which for me means a bunch of texting, checking Facebook and twitter several times, and running some other apps several times). Usually by the end of the day (starting at 8:30am and being ready to plug in at 10:30pm) I'm hovering in the 20-30% range. I am on Wifi for a large part of my day, and I know that helps. I did notice what I thought was more significant battery drain in a low signal environment (leaving it in my gym locker), but worked around it by connecting to a nearby open wifi network. I'll be very curious to see how the battery holds its ability to charge after 12-18 months. Moto Connect This is a very useful addition for those who are in class (like me) and want to see who's calling or who texted without having to check their phone. However, it needs some work. I had some initial trouble getting it set up (had to go activate it on the phone, it looked like it was going to suggest it to me at some point soon). It also frequently does not sync correctly and has to be re-opened on the computer to force it (this usually happens after I send a message, the message I sent doesn't show up for a few minutes on the computer, but sends immediately from the phone). That being said, I haven't had it fail to send or receive messages yet. It cannot handle multi-media messages, only SMS. I also don't like that it's integrated into Chrome, but Google made it so I guess I can't blame them. Most of the problems with this seem to be on the Chrome side, not with the phone, and I would expect these to be fixed without having to change out the phone. Voice Activation I've found this kind of nice, the phone wakes up about 75% of the time when I use the wake up phrase. When it does, it does a good job of recognizing my voice and what I want it to do. Setting reminders using this is awesome. So is asking it to call someone or text someone. My one big complaint about this is that if you have a lock of some kind (I use a pattern lock), you have to enter it before you can do a lot of functions with voice. My suggestion of how to fix it: Have an audible pass phrase or pass word that you say to unlock the phone. Entering the pattern most times is not a problem, but when driving, cooking, or other times you have dirty or unavailable hands, it would be awesome to use an audible password to unlock. That covers everything I have on this phone for now, I'll come back and update it if I have anything to update.

I can't believe how much I love this phone. I've been running a rooted Motorola Droid Bionic and remain partial to the quality of the Motorola brand so even though I could have upgraded a couple of years ago, nothing excited me enough to buy. When I finally read the reviews of the Moto X, being a veteran geek who is also a spec-freak, I was frankly, disappointed and didn't even put it on my consideration list. Well, a one day special allowed me to get a super deal on this phone and with my Bionic getting older by the minute, decided to take a chance. Boy was I surprised when I set it up and started using it. First I'll point out that I didn't know about the new sync software that allows you to transfer data from you old phone to your new one via bluetooth. I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was as well as how fast, and it got everything from contacts, music, video, texts and key application data and took around 15 minutes to complete. No wires, no PC, no pulling of online backups, just plain old simple. Second, I can't believe how fast this phone performs! I don't run benchmarks and don't normally subscribe to test results since I'm not using the phone for gaming or other majorly high-end tasks. And due to reading some benchmark test results, didn't expect this to be any faster than my souped up Bionic was. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've yet to say to myself that I wished the phone was faster. Yes, it's that fast in day to day use. As well, I've now learned that I'll never own another smartphone without an Active Display such as this one has. A number of reviewers complained about the lack of notification LED's for texts, emails and Facebook so I was expecting things to be compromised. No, no, no! The Active Display is a new feature I'll never live without. Pick up the phone, it lights the display with the time, an unlock function and a list of what your phone has received. It'll show if you have emails, texts, voice messages, missed calls, software updates and Facebook updates. So obviously simple and useful, I can't believe this is the first phone to have it. I don't miss my Bionic's LED notifications at all. Third, concerns about the 720p screen where almost everyone has 1080p are the buzz in most reviews of this phone. I can say this, I love the display, it's depth of color and all. Some complain it's too color-saturated, but to me, it's better than some that claim to have much better color accuracy. It's like using Velvia film in an old 35mm camera. Rich and saturated can be beautiful and for me, a preference. Another point on the screen, it is way more accurate and sensitive to touch than the Bionic or even my original Droid. That makes navigating the phone so much easier, I'll never go back. Fourth, the camera isn't rated among the best when compared against the current crop of phones out there. But, it is still better than what I had on the Bionic and better than my wife's Droid 4 and my daughter's iPhone 5, in my opinion. The coolest part about the camera isn't the camera itself, but the "launch" procedure that allows you to open the camera and start shooting in mere seconds. A couple of quick twists of the wrist, like you're twisting a key in a lock, and wallah, camera launches without any other action required. This, to me more than makes up for it being slightly behind the cream of the crop cell phone cameras out there. And I believe it really isn't far behind the best of the best. Fifth, my Bionic had the upgraded extended battery that I upgraded to since I'm rarely stopped anywhere long enough during my work day for a recharge. On my Bionic, I got probably 30 hours before I needed a recharge. So far on this phone, I've gone 17 hours and still had 13% charge left, and without doing any power management which most other phones would need to match that. I'm not disappointed with the lack of a changeable battery at all. Sixth, lack of an SD slot was a big negative for me since I've had a 64GB microSD in my Bionic which was loaded with data, files, music, movies among other things. I expected I'd miss that, and to a small extent, I almost do. But, it only took a minor adjustment on my part to get used to pushing and pulling things from the phone as needed and so far, I don't really miss the extra storage capacity. I won't go so far as to say that having access to data on the cloud is a direct replacement for on-board storage, but it does help. Seventh, I expected such a tiny phone to have limitations with regards to the internal "radios". I can say I've lost nothing with regards to voice, WiFi, Bluetooth or 4G connectivity. The Bionic was praised for its' radios as are the Droid 4 and other Motorola phones, and this one doesn't disappoint. I still get signals with decent to good connectivity where my iPhone and Samsung brethren still can't. This surprised even me as it seems amazing that they can create effective antennae in such a small package. Eighth, I thought the smaller screen, albeit the same size as I had on my Bionic, would make me want to await a model with a larger display such as the Samsung GS4. Instead, I found I miss nothing and for the first time since I've been using a smartphone, I no longer put it in a case to sling on my belt. I tried and liked putting the Moto X in either a back or front pocket and forgoing any type of case. It also shows off the sexiness of this phone! Lastly, this phone is the first effort by the now Google owned Motorola where they did their best to keep the phone as close to "stock" Android as possible. To me, I find this to be way above the original Bionic Android "overlay" known as MotoBlur. Which, by the way, is way less of a change from stock Android than what Samsung does on their phones. The far cleaner OS, I think, is what makes this phone so fast. No I/O exchange between the overlay and the OS to slow the phone down! Motorola continues to be my phone of choice and I'm so happy I jumped on a deal on the Moto X! I thought I was compromising just to get a great deal, instead, I find that I got way more phone than I ever expected! I'll never go back now that I have a Moto X! I'm so glad Amazon had this on sale! If it weren't for them, I'd still be using my Bionic and awaiting the "next best thing" in phones without knowing it was already out there in the form of the Moto X. Even hard core users are now coming around and being far less critical of the hardware specifications now that they've had a chance to live with the phone for awhile. If you're considering a new smartphone, please give serious consideration to the Moto X, and if you get one, I'm pretty sure you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was. And I've been in IT for 30 years and actually attended meetings where the original cell phone concept was being proposed. How far we've come, indeed!

Had the Moto X for 4 days and... it got returned. Let's just say I've had better phones. Here's a list of issues: 1. My last phone gave me 5 bars at home, I get 3 with this phone. Very poor reception. 2. After the 2nd day the screen would go black during a phone call and not return, so I couldn't end the call or use keyboard for prompts. 3. Every time the phone would ring, the custom ringtone I put on the phone would cause the music player to come up. 4. If the phone is laid down, you can't wake the phone up and get to the lock screen by tapping the screen, you have to pick it up (not a big deal, more of an annoyance) **I do have to mention this though, the battery life is amazing on this phone. Took it off the charger at 5:30am, used it extensively for the day, still has 30% battery at 10pm. Anyway, Motorola rushed this one to market way too quick and I would not recommend it.

Motorola and Google joined forces to make the Moto X and it is quite a refreshing experience. First, a little background. I've been on the Android bandwagon since the original Moto Droid, then moved onto the HTC thunderbolt and then the galaxy nexus. I really have grown very fond of stock android and the moto x runs very near to stock android with some very useful additions, including active notifications, touchless control, and a suite of useful moto apps (Assist, Moto care, Migrate). First I wanna talk about active notifications. When you pull the phone out of your pocket and look at the screen the time appears on the screen and any notifications you have received. This feature alone makes the moto x amazing, think of how many times a day you pull your phone our of your pocket to see if you have a message or to check the time, I know I do it a lot. So this was such a brilliant idea. Next touchless control, the phone will have you train it to your voice saying "OK Google Now" and the phone will wake up and wait for you to issue a command like set alarm for 5 am or send a text message. Its really useful especially if your busy doing something and you want to send a quick text or whatever. I really like the assist app as it detects when you're driving and will read texts to you and automatically respond to those whom text you to let them know your driving. Plus it had settings for meetings and sleeping, it's a great feature. The Moto care app is nice cause it gives you tips based on how you use your phone to help you improve performance or battery life for example, I feel like it is a great feature that is helpful for those new to android. As far as the performance of the Moto x, it fly's, its very smooth and handles just about any game I throw at it in stride. The screen, 720p, yeah but it looks gorgeous, and really who needs 1080p on a phone screen. I've also been really impressed with the sound of the speaker, it has a real rich sound. Phone calls are nice and clear. I am amazed with how good the reception for 4G LTE and 3G is on this phone, on all my previous phones, I very rarely could get any reception at work, I have yet to have a day at work where I don't get great reception. And the battery life has been fantastic, with my usage which is a couple of hours on screen time and texts and some gaming the battery has been making it through about a 15 hour day with around 25 - 35% left, and that's leaving the data on all day, couldn't even dream of doing that with previous phones, as my battery would just drain. If I have one gripe its the camera. It's not horrible, it's just that it doesn't always take the greatest pictures. Outside it takes fantastic pictures, but inside, if not in very good lighting pictures tend turn out grainy. I have noticed that if the lens get dirty the pictures will consistently be out of focus, so do yourself a favor and wipe off the lens prior to taking pictures. I will say I am impressed at how well the camera can see in low lighting situations, but unfortunately the low light pictures tend to be less than satisfactory, but really its a camera on a phone, I don't expect to it take professional grade low light pictures. In conclusion, I think the Moto x is a real winner. With all the innovative features that Motorola built into the phone to me it makes the Moto X one of the greatest smart phones in years. And you owe it to yourself to check it out and see what a smartphone should be.

I have had this phone for about three weeks and I loved it. The only thing I have to complain about is the quality of the video when you want to send it via text message. The video taken from the phone normally is flawless but the file will be too large to send via text. If you need to send a video via text you will need to record the video as an attachment with in the actually text message and the file will be reduced automatically to the correct size to be able to send via text, which will be a very blurry crappy video. This feature is important to me so I loses two stars for me for that. Other than that I have no other complaints so it has proved to be a pretty good phone.

I have had this phone coming on 6 months now, and I honestly couldn't be happier. My last two smart phones were the HTC Droid Incredible and the Galaxy Nexus. Both of these phones had issues with memory, restarting, stuttering and lagging after just a few months. Plus, I was charging both of them at least 3 times a day. In my Moto X, I haven't noticed many stutters or restarts. I do have some, and that's just gonna happen with any phone, but it is minimal. Plus, I regularly get to the end of a full day of moderate-heavy phone use wihtout even getting the low battery warning. I also very much like Stock Android. Motorola has added a few features to this phone, but fortunately they didn't alter Stock Android.The hands free stuff is great, if a little finnicky. However, my favorite addition is Active Display. This desparately needs to be on all Android phones. As soon as you flip your phone over, take it out of your pocket, or get a text, it will display the time and if you have any notifications. You can then simply tap the screen to view the message, while only partially powering the screen on, saving battery. Not only does it give me the information as soon as I want/need it and saving battery life for messages I won't reply to immediately, it also saves how often I use the power button, theoretically making that less likely to bust like on some phones. Plus, you can fully customize which apps can display notifications on Active Display. It's nothing short of revolutionary. In the past, I was always the first person to compare phone specs, and on paper, this one had me worried. The processor just didn't seem to have the same "oomph" as the other big hitters out there. However, Motorola and Google have done a fantastic job optimizing the OS and device to get the most out of the processor, without sacrificing battery life. It can hold it's own with the graphics heavy games. A lot of people have been ragging on the cameras, but I've had no problems. Granted, I'm just a very casual photo taker. But when I do take photos, I always open the camera by twisting the phone twice, like a door handle. This takes you straight into the Moto X camera, and is very handy for when you need that pic on the go. Like I said, this phone performs great with excellent battery life, near stock Android, and that perfect Active Display. When I got this phone, Verizon did not offer Motomaker. I would customize my phone had I had the opportunity, but I'm still very happy. Get a good case, and I think this one will be able to hold out past the average 2 year contract.

Blue screen appers