My first phone was a Motorola. I still remember that Motorola C333. We’ve come a long way since then, but my love for Motorola hasn’t wavered. If anything….with the addition of Android, it’s grown! I was very happy to get my hands on a Moto X 2014 to take with me on my trip to Japan earlier this month. I’m already a happy owner of a Moto X first generation.
One of the things that I loved about the Motorola X in the USA was that you could customize the back with wood, leather, or whatever colour you wanted. I was a little disappointed that in Canada, the first gen Moto X only came in black and white. When I was sent a Moto X with a bamboo back, I was thrilled! (Get one here!)
Here it is fresh out of the box. What comes in the box? A pair of ear buds, a power adapter with two USB ports and a micro USB cable. Pretty standard stuff.
Stats:
5.2″ AMOLED HD display featuring Gorilla Glass
2300 mAh battery
Storage: 16GB, no external SD card slot
2.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon
13MP Camera in the read, 2MP in front
Height: 5.54 inches
Width: 2.85 inches
The Moto X is pretty thin, and features a curved aluminum frame. The bamboo back is durable and the bamboo is FSC-certified. Bamboo not your thing? Choose from teak, walnut, or ebony or genuine leather in natural, cognac, black, or navy.
The first thing I did was transfer my old contacts, files and music over using Moto Migrate.
This handy app transfers your files to your new phone using WiFi. It was super easy and fast.
Features
Moto Voice:
You can program your phone to respond to a command, such as, “Hi Moto X,” and it will listen and help you out. Some fun commands are, “Take a selfie” or, “How tall is the Eiffel tower?”
It can, of course, be used in more practical ways. You can use it to text a friend or to find out the weather. In the above photo, I asked it when my next flight was. It pairs nicely with Google Now, an Android feature I can’t live without.
Google Now
Google Now will learn what you like to see and build a customized dashboard for you. This dashboard will include the weather, any news topics you’ve shown interest in, sports or Google plus updates. It’s important to note that Google Now uses your Gmail with your permission. That’s how it gets flight and hotel information.
When you’re traveling, Google Now becomes a lifesaver. Above, you can see that it has my itinerary for Tokyo all lined up. It has links to the hotel I’m staying at, and tells me flight info. It also lets me know if my flight is delayed. Once I’m in the city, it shows me the currency with the exchange rate for my home currency, the time in the current city and the time at home, and it has Google Translate at my fingertips for easy translations. In short, perfection.
Moto Assist
Moto Assist tries to be as helpful as possible. When enabled, it will automatically read text messages and tell you who’s calling when you are driving. When you are sleeping, you can program it to only let phone calls from Favourites though, or if a number calls more than once. It will also automatically put your phone on silent mode at a set time each day. I use this mode to make sure that notifications and texts don’t disturb my sleep.
Camera
Using the 13MP camera was a breeze. Photos came out sharp and clear, and you can launch the camera with a flick of the wrist. The Moto camera does all the guesswork for you, and automatically decides if you’re taking a macro, action or nighttime shot. You can choose touch to focus, shoot in HDR mode, make a panorama or set a timer. See more photos here!
HDR Mode
The Moto X is capable of shooting 1080p HD video, slow motion video at 120fps and Ultra HD video at 30fps. For the most part, the videos I shot were pretty simple.
Highlight Reels
Motorola has this pretty neat feature called Highlight Reels. The Highlight Reel takes your best videos and photos, and turns it into a short video to share with friends and family. It’s handy if you’ve been on vacation. Although photos and videos are automatically chosen, you are able to edit and add content.
Battery Life
You can get a full day of solid use with the 2300 mAh battery. If you slide down from the status bar, you can click on the battery and it will tell you how much longer you have left in hours/minutes on your current charge. When plugged in and charging, a notification lets you know how much longer it will be until your phone is fully charged. Really useful! As shown above, when your battery is getting low, Battery Saver mode is activated. It turns the status bar red, and limits your data use to conserve battery.
The Bad
There simply isn’t enough space on this phone. I was taking tons of photos, and quickly found myself running out of space with the provided 16 GB (Really 10GB once you take away operating space and application space). This phone is available in 32GB, but the problem could have easily been solved with am external SD card slot.
Overall impressions:
The Moto X is a powerful phone in a beautiful package. With long lasting battery life, fun features and a sharp camera, this phone is a winner! Pick up a Moto X from Telus for $450, or $50 on a 2 year contract.
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