Motorola has finally lifted the lid on its “designed by you” smartphone, the Moto X, at a media event in New York City. However, sadly for Brits, there are no current plans to launch the device in Europe.
The heavily-leaked handset, which will hit the US in late September or early October, was presented to the world packing many of the hardware and software features teased in recent weeks.
The device boasts a 4.7-inch 720p AMOLED display, and has Motorola’s X8 mobile computing system, comprising of a dual-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and a quad-core Adreno 320 GPU. The phone does come with a 2200mAh battery, promising 24 hours of usage,
a 10-megapixel rear camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing snapper.
Interestingly both of those are capable of shooting 1080p video.
Hardware wise, it’s not exactly up there with the HTC One, Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 in terms of power and display prowess, that’s for sure, but it seems that keeping up with that crowd is is not Moto’s aim with this device.
As for software? Well the device won’t come with Android 4.3 out of the box and will instead have Android 4.2.2 initially. That is somewhat surprising considering Moto’s status as a Google owned company.
However, it will get the brand new camera interface that arrived on the new Droid family of devices last week. The Quick Capture feature allowing users to open the camera app with couple of flicks of the wrist, while users will be able to command the camera’s settings within a neat scroll-wheel UI.
There’s also the touch-free, always listening voice commands thanks to Google Now, which is activated by saying “Okay Google Now,” while a new feature called Active Notifications will show you when you’ve received a message or a missed call, even when the screen is locked.
In terms of the much touted user customisations, there are 18 coloured backplates that buyers can choose with real wood backs coming later in the year. There’s also the choice of black or white front plates, while the ring around the camera lens and the side-mounted button colours can also be customised. Users can also have their phones custom engraved.
Overall, Motorola claims there are over 2,000 possibilities to customise the device, when the choice of 16GB and 32GB handsets are taken into account. US buyers will be able to create their device using the Motomaker tool on the company’s website and, as its assembled in the US, will receive the device in just 4-5 days.
While, after all that hype, European smartphone fans will be disappointed that Moto’s new flagship won’t be winging its way to Europe any time soon, the company promised big things in the future.
Moto said: “We are firmly committed to building a portfolio of products in Europe that show the best of Motorola as a Google company, but at this time don’t have any immediate plans for Moto X to come to the region.
“Europe remains an important market for us and we have exciting plans in the works. Although we can’t reveal specifics right now, this is just the start.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
