Last Thursday, Motorola revealed the first phone built from scratch since the Mobility division was purchased by Google in May 2012 for $12.5 billion. Simply titled "Moto X," the phone will be what is referred to as a flagship device for the company. Much of the marketing surrounding it has been focused on its customizability and the fact it is "Designed and Assembled in the USA," as the read of the phone reads. Available for pre-order now, the Moto X supposedly offers over 2,000 different optional combinations.
"People are skydiving out of space ships. But you can't design your own phone? Not anymore. Now Moto X lets you choose the front, the back, the accents, the wallpaper, the memory, and even a short message. It's all your call." ( Motorola )
More intriguing is how the Moto X responds to voice even when the phone display is off. Motorola calls this an "Active Display" with "Touchless Controls." Similar to Google Glass, users can control the phone using vocal cues such as "Okay, Google Now…" to performs desired actions. Periodically, the screen will turn on to display the time and and notifications instead of relying on a nondescript blinking LED in the corner of the phone's front. The Moto X gently illuminates the screen and shows exactly what is triggering your notification. This is an especially welcome change and hopefully Android users may push for this to become the status quo for future devices.
Despite the always-on features of the Moto X, Motorola claims the phone to have a 24-hour battery life with moderate usage. Some other specifications include a 4.7" AMOLED (720p HD) display and a 10MP Clear Pixel camera (which can be quickly accessed n under 3-seconds by flicking the wrist twice) and a 2MP in the front, both capable of 1080p HD video. Out of the box, it runs on Android version 4.2.2 "Jelly Bean" and supports either 16GB or 32GB (it's your choice) of memory. There isn't a microSD slow, however, to sweeten the pot Google is also offering 50GB of free Google Drive cloud storage for two years, or in other words, likely the life of your carrier's contract and subsequently the phone. It will have 2GB of RAM a "Motorola Moto X Computing System" comprised of a Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, a quad-core Adreno 320 GPU, a contextual computing processor, and a natural language processor. Consumers may expect the Moto X to hit shelves later this month in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Pricing is based primarily on memory size with the 16GB model costing $199 and the larger 32GB model costing only $249.
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