The Moto X 2014 edition is a beautifully made smartphone with a design that fits snugly in the hand and Android Lollipop in it’s pristine form that is an equal delight to use. The smart phone is marred by it’s poor camera and nothing else on this smart phone deserves criticism. The Moto X 2nd gen is the successor to the popular Moto X by Motorola which was famous for it’s touchless controls as well as amazing Google now integration. The Moto X 2014 builds on the reputation built by it’s predecessor and delivers an equal, if not better touch less voice controlled experience. The phone has an awesome back design and the black variant has a leather back and the white comes with bamboo back which exudes a premium aura. So let’s just now head into a full detailed overview of the phone and we will let you decide for yourself whether you liked it or not.
Table of Contents
Moto X 2014 Edition: Specifications overview.
| Display | 5.2 inch, full HD 1920×1080 pixels resolution, 424 ppi and 73.1% body to screen ratio with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Chipset |
| CPU | 2.5 GHz Krait 400, Quad-core processor |
| RAM | 2 GB |
| GPU | Adreno 330 |
| Storage | 16/32 or 64 GB variants |
| Camera | 13 MP back camera with dual LED flash, auto focus and HDR etc. |
| Battery | 2300 mAh (non removable battery) |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth V4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS, NFC |
| Colours | Black, White |
While the phone has every bit the specifications of a flagship device on paper we will soon take you through a short overview to determine whether that’s actually the case or not!
Moto X 2nd gen: The design.
Motorola hasn’t played much with the initially successful design of it’s phones and only slight variations exist from the main design already seen on many of the Motorola phones.
The back has a finger rest in the form of a depression in the Moto logo and the sides have a metallic finish. There are stereo speakers on the front which are really clear as well as loud and there’s no chance of muffled sound. The display is good and not much space has been wasted in the bezel area. The back has a leather finish for the black coloured model and the white one has a bamboo finish both of which are extremely good to use and feel premium. All in all the device delivers well on the design front and doesn’t sway too far from the tried and tested Motorola build quality.
Moto X 2014 review : The performance.
The device leaves no stone unturned in terms of raw performance and was easily able to score superb scores on all the benchmarks we tested on it. It scored around 45942 in the Antutu Benchmark. It scored 13376 on the Quadrant benchmark and overall gaming performance was also good. It had a score of 60 fps on the Nenamark benchmark, a notch better than the Asus Zenfone 2.
The 2.5 Ghz Quad core processor performs great and is amongst the fastest out there. Along with the bundled 2 GB of RAM things feel quite snappy and after the Lollipop update there are no interface lags whatsoever.
Moto X 2014 review: The display
The AMOLED display is gorgeous and anyone who says that IPS LCD displays look better than AMOLED ones is simply being a fan boy. The kind of clarity and colour saturation present on an AMOLED display is a treat in itself. The display is a 5.2 inch full HD display. Although we had occasional glitches after the Android Lollipop update where in the fonts rendered had jagged edges but it looked more like a software glitch than a display error. Not much space has been wasted on bezel on this phone and the display has a slightly tapered profile on the edges so our fingers seem to glide on it, and that’s a premium experience.
Moto X 2014: The disappointment, i.e. the Camera.
The primary camera on this phone is a 13 MP shooter and comes with a dual tone LED Flash. While daylight pictures came out good, it was the picture quality with flash turned on that ruined the show for us. The secondary camera i.e. the front selfie camera is average for what it does and has an image quality of 2 Megapixels. Here are some of the samples we took with the camera.
Day light image taken without HDR from the primary camera of Moto X 2nd gen.
View full resolution photo here.
Daylight image taken from the Moto X 2nd gen with HDR on.
View full resolution picture here.
Picture of a cricket bat, taken with Flash turned on. Notice the aberration in the central area.
View full resolution picture here.
So as you can see the camera fails in a humongous manner when the flash is on. Apart from this major con the phone shines in every other department.
Note: This issue can be specific to the review unit we received.
Moto X 2nd gen: The software.
The initial Moto X had been famous for it’s touch less controls and it’s successor builds upon its reputation. The touch less controls need to be taught to recognize your specific voice once and then they would be activated whenever you use your activation phrase.
In our review video we used the phrase, “Hello there Moto X“. You can do a wide range of activities with this, and the list of Google now commands can be found here. The Moto Assist as well as the Moto Migrate are welcome software additions. The phone runs on Android Lollipop and is bound to get the latest updates in the near future too, so there’s no issue on this front.
Moto X 2014: Other notable points.
The battery life is average for a phone with a screen this big. The 2300 mAh battery will last you for a day if you don’t constantly keep checking your screen and have a good network reception. Heavy users and gamers might need to charge this phone by 6 pm in the evening if their day started with 100% at 6 am. The call clarity and reception is excellent and currently this phone is available for around 22-24k INR on Flipkart.com so that’s one of the great deals.
Moto X 2nd gen review: Conclusion
While the phone has an excellent display, combination of hardware and software and performance it fails terribly in the imaging department. If you are willing to ignore that then this is a gem of a phone for the price it retails for currently.
We also did a full video review for those people who might want to see live gaming performance as well as the sound quality and everything of the phone. Do check it out, and if you liked our post then don’t forget to subscribe to us.
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Here’s the review video for those who wish to know everything about the device in detail.
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