Motorola Moto X (2014): From mid-range to premium flagship in less than a year

Overview

The original Moto X finally made its way to Singapore earlier this year. While we were impressed with its snappy handling, sleek design and innovative software features, by the time consumers were able to actually get their hands on it, it felt a bit dated. It's Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset was passable, but quickly falling behind the competition and, while its AMOLED display was decent enough, at 720p it didn't have the clarity of newer Full HD displays. This time around, however, we won't have to wait for the new Moto X, which will soon be available in Singapore (we're still waiting on the exact release date). The new Moto X has an updated design, a larger 5.2-inch Full HD display, a flagship-level Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and better voice and gesture commands, all while retaining its near stock Android OS.

Here's a closer look at the Moto X (2014)'s specs, and how it compares to the 2013 model.

Design & Build

Like the first Moto X, the new X has a curvy form factor, with a rounded rear that makes it a pleasure to hold. It's one of the most pronounced tapers we've seen, going from 10mm at the thickest part, in the middle where the headphone jack is, to a razor thin 4mm at the edges. While we complained that the iPhone 6's thin edges made it feel a bit uncomfortable in hand, the Moto X has no such problems, thanks to its sizeable hump, which provides a generous surface area for your hand to grip.

Motorola has also upped its build quality, ditching the all-plastic trim from the original X in favor of a dark gray aluminum band that runs around the edges of the phone. On the front of the phone, the new X also sports a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panel, which, like the iPhone 6 and Microsoft's Lumia flagships, has a gentle curve at the edge and a seamless gap-free finish. The net result is a denser, more premium feel that bumps the Moto X up to flagship-level territory.

In the US, you have the option to go even further with the premium look and feel, as Motorola offers a number of customizable options at purchase with its Moto Maker store, including leather backs (made from real Chicago-sourced Horween leather mind you, not that faux stuff found on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4), and a real bamboo wood back. A white front is also available (Singapore will only be getting the black model).

Unfortunately, local models will only be available with a plain matte black plastic back. The black back isn't as nice as leather or wood, but it still looks fairly smart, and the rubberized finish provides a nice non-slip grip. On the downside, it picks up smudges and stains from oily fingers very easily.

On the right-edge of the phone, you'll find the power button and volume rocker in the form of thin slivers of painted plastic. The power button is ridged, while the volume rocker is smooth, providing some useful tactile feedback that lets you quickly find the right button just by feel. The buttons themselves feel solid and sturdy, with a reassuring firmness and weight when you press down on them. The micro-USB port can be found on the bottom of the phone, while the headphone jack is positioned at the top next to the nano-SIM card tray (which requires a pin to eject). There are no other buttons on the phone, with the home, menu and back buttons all being the virtual on-screen type.

Display & Audio

Thanks to Motorola's use of soft keys for navigation, the front of the phone is nearly all display, with just a small block of black at the top and bottom for the speaker grilles. The display itself is a big step up from last year's model, both in overall size (going from 4.7-inches to 5.2-inches) and in clarity, going from 720p resolution to glorious Full HD. The AMOLED display is one of the best we've seen, with deep blacks and crisp whites, and vivid colors that aren't as over saturated as some of Samsung's Super AMOLED displays, but still bring enough pop to pictures. Viewing angles are also excellent, with near to 180-degree viewing without loss of color or brightness. The only real complaint is that the Gorilla Glass panel is very reflective, which makes the phone a bit hard to use under bright sunlight.

The Moto X sports one audio speaker, which can be found right under the display (the one on top is just for making calls). It's fairly loud, and clarity is reasonably good, but it's no match for the stereo speakers found on the HTC One (M8) and Sony Xperia Z3. While overall audio performance wasn't bad, I was still kind of disappointing that the X doesn't boast dual speakers, especially when the cheaper Moto G smartphone does.

Software Features

Like the original Moto X, the new X runs on almost completely stock Android. The phone comes pre-installed with 4.4.4 KitKat and you'll be able to upgrade it to Android Lollipop as soon as it becomes available. I say "almost stock" because, like the previous X, Motorola has added some clever features to the phone.

Moto Actions involves a small cluster of IR sensors on the X's face, positioned at all four corners of the phone. They're actually invisible on the black model, but you can spot them on the white model (which is only available in the US). The IR sensors let you wave your hand over the screen - the range is about 25 cm -  to silence an incoming call or snooze an alarm. You can also do the same hand wave motion to turn the screen on to check notifications on the lockscreen. When you've got the phone in your hand, Actions also lets you make a twisting motion with your wrist to automatically activate the camera.

It's a little gimmicky, but I can't deny that I loved making that Jedi hand wave action as often as I could.

Moto Display is a feature that takes advantage of the AMOLED display's ability to only turn on selected pixels on the display. The X uses this to show notification icons from the lock screen. You can then jump straight into the related app by swiping these icons. As the AMOLED display is only powering the pixels for the notification icons (as well as the time) it won't drain your battery.

The final piece of wizardry Motorola has thrown into the X is its ability to listen for voice commands even when the screen is off. While Google added an always listening option for all Android devices as part of its Google Search update at Google I/O earlier this year, that still requires your phone display to be turned on before it will respond. The Moto X on the other hand, has a chip that lets it listen all the time, even when the screen is off. Additionally, while you used to have to utter "OK, Google" as the key phrase, you can now define your own command phrase. As a fan of Motorola back in the day, naturally, I went with "Hello Moto".

On top of searching Google with your voice, you can issue voice commands for setting alarms, reminders, make voice calls, ask it questions about the weather and as a neat extra, I've found that you can also use it to locate your phone. You see, I have a habit of putting down my phone and then forgetting where I put it moments later. For example, last week, having misplaced the Moto X, and failing to locate it, I sheepishly tried calling out "Hello Moto?" and sure enough, it sprung to life under a small pile of mail i'd carelessly dumped on top of it, chirping out with an audio cue.

I generally haven't gotten along with the many digital assistants I've tried, but I actually found my time using the Moto X to be quite refreshing. Not having to turn on the screen means that you can leave it on your desk and just bark out commands and it will respond accordingly. It almost feels like having a real personal assistant. Its microphone is surprisingly good too, so you don't have to get too close to it to relay your orders, or enunciate really slowly like you're chatting with some partially deaf octogenarian.

The only downside is that, for all of this to work, you need to leave your phone unlocked. Otherwise, you'll be prompted to unlock your phone each time you want it to do something. That could be a deal breaker for some because once you have the the phone in your hand, you probably can engage or perform your required tasks quicker than voicing them out and having to check if the device did perform the intended function in proper. Someone needs to come up with a software enhancement so that some of the non-invasive functions can be performed without unlocking your device.

Performance Benchmarks

The original Moto X was powered by a decidedly mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1.7GHz processor. Not so for the Moto X (2014), which gets bumped up to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core 2.5GHz. It's still not the best-of-the-best (that would be the Snapdragon 805) but it's more than capable of competing with the flagship phones of other manufacturers.

For this review we'll see how the new Moto X does against the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z3, Apple iPhone 6, and the original Moto X.

SunSpider JavaScript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience.

The Moto X performed slightly better than the Xperia Z3 here, and much better than the old X. The iPhone 6's excellent score can be attributed to great optimization between Apple's A8 processor and Safari. The S5's equally great score is somewhat questionable, so take that with a grain of salt.

In actual real world performance the Moto X delivered a smooth and snappy browsing experience.

Quadrant

Quadrant evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performances.

The Moto X again performed well here, beating the Z3 and far outpacing the old X. 

3DMark (2013)

Originally developed as a PC benchmarking tool, 3DMark is now expanded to support multiple platforms including Android OS. The Ice Storm benchmark is designed for smartphones, mobile devices and ARM architecture computers.

For an in-depth understanding of 3DMark for Android, do head over to our article, "3DMark - Android Device GPU Performance Review." In a nutshell, it is an OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark test that uses fixed off-screen rendering to run two graphics tests designed to stress the GPU performance of your device and a physics test to stress its CPU performance. The benchmark consists of three test portfolios:- Standard (720p resolution rendering), Extreme (1080p resolution rendering with higher quality textures and post-processing effects) and Unlimited (disabled v-sync, display scaling and other OS factors that make it ideal for chipset comparison).

As all of the recent flagship smartphones have been maxing out the scores for the Standard and Extreme tests, we will only be looking at the scores for Ice Storm Unlimited. The new Moto X was once again on par with other premium devices and, in fact, managed to record the highest score this time, beating both the S5 and Z3, as well as the iPhone 6. Once again, as expected, it vastly outperformed the old X.

Camera Performance

The new Moto X sports a 13MP camera, up from the 10MP shooter found on the original X, and now boasts dual-LED warm/cold flash ring module that surrounds the camera lens. The camera interface is very simple and easy to use: just tap anywhere on the screen to take a shot. Long press the screen and it will shoot in burst mode, firing off as many shots for as long as you hold down your finger. For anyone used to tapping the screen to focus or focus lock, it can take a bit of getting used to, as you have to swipe in from the left edge to access the control menu that lets you adjust your focal point. This menu also has options for HDR, flash, slow-motion video and panorama settings. You won't find any exciting features like background blur here, but it has most of the controls you need.

Unfortunately, image quality on the new Moto X is rather average. The focus is a bit soft, and there's also an alarming amount of noise present. This was a bit of a surprise, as the original Moto X's camera was very clean, with very little graininess. It's possible that this is a software or optimization issue that needs to be resolved, and hopefully Motorola will fix this problem with a future firmware update.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones includes the following parameters:

• Looping a 800 x 480-pixel video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The new Moto X has a marginally larger battery than its predecessor, but it also has a larger display and, at only 2,300mAh capacity, it falls way behind the likes of the Sony Xperia Z3 (3,100mAh) and Samsung Galaxy S5 (2,800mAh). As expected, battery life was quite underwhelming, with the X lasting just 6 hours and 22 minutes in our video looping battery benchmark. In real world usage, it was also quite poor, running to less than 10% juice by around 8 or 9PM of a full work day. 

Portability

We measure the portability of a device by calculating its battery life to (weight x volume) ratio. The new Moto X's poor battery life let it down here and it fared far worse than any of our other compared smartphones as a result. It's worth noting that the original Moto X scored much better here due both to its longer battery life and its smaller size.

Conclusion

The Motorola Moto X (2014) is a definite step up from last year's model and puts the Moto X squarely into the premium flagship category. Even without the benefit of the Moto Maker store and its premium add-ons, the phone's design holds up well, and the aluminum frame and curved edge glass screen make it look and feel luxurious. Its nearly stock Android OS is fast, clean and really needs to be experienced to be appreciated. The few software features Motorola has added only enhance the experience, and once again, the always on listening chip is the phone's standout feature. Using it really feels like how all digital assistants should work - if Apple actually wants people to start using Siri, it should follow Motorola's lead here. 

Still, the Moto X isn't perfect. Its camera is rather middling at best and lacks any of the clever features that set apart some of the other flagship smartphone cameras. Battery life is also rather poor and you will likely need a mid-day charge to ensure the phone lasts the distance for intensive usage. A less critical but somewhat annoying aspect is that some of the phone's digital assistant features only work best if the phone is unlocked, which somewhat defeats the purpose of a true hands-free experience for making full use of it. There needs to be a software improvement that would allow the digital assistant to perform non-invasive functions without having to unlock the device first.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that in Singapore at least, only the 16GB model will be available. Stock Android 4.4.4 KitKat and Motorola's extra features takes up about 5.4GB, leaving you with just over 10GB to use. Without an expandable memory card slot, this is woefully inadequate in an age where some games can take up 2GB of space (Asphalt 8, I'm looking at you). If you don't install many games or apps, and you're willing to clear up your camera roll fairly often, you might be able to get by with just 16GB, but it's definitely something to be aware of if you're thinking of picking up the Moto X locally.

Unfortunately, local availability and pricing isn't available at the time of this review, however, based on previous Motorola device pricing for this region, and the US retail price of US$499, we estimate it to retail locally for about S$698. That's just our guess but given difference in exchange rates, adding some local mark-up, and factoring in the phone's features and capabilities, we think it shouldn't stray too far from our estimate. At that range, it's not markedly less expensive than other premium phones it's up against from the retail channel.

Stay tuned for further updates when we'll be able to confirm the actual price and availability.

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