Moto X Owners Community

Moto X or HTC One?

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htc-one-vs-moto-xWhen I was asked about the “alternatives”  for Moto X, the firs one popping out  is HTC One. Not just because of the similar screen size.

But yes, Moto X and HTC One both have small display (compared with other flagship Android phones from Samsung,  Sony and LG). It is 4.7″. Actually the display is not small. Both of them use very thin bezel and therefore, they looks even smaller than their actual size. Just for your information, Moto X has similar front surface area with iPhone 5, but with 20% more display space.

Unlike Asian users, most American users still prefer one-handed smartphone, i.e, the phone can be easily operated with one hand. Moto X apparently caters such demand. It is not a coincidence that both Moto X and HTC One are in the same size range of iPhone 5.  Of course, Android users are spoiled  with large display, so 4.7″ screen is a reasonable compromise.

Design and build quality

Among today’s Android manufactures, HTC is still a  leader in hardware design. I’m not talking about market share, for which HTC is plummeting. Maybe HTC will have to leave US market just in 2 to 3 years if the trend cannot be reversed.

The design of HTC One seems better than Moto X. The metal body will strengthen your impression when you compare Moto X and HTC One side by side.

Moto X actually deviates from Motorola’s old design,  especially the robotic Droid design. The exterior design of Moto X is very similar to HTC One: simple and elegant. What drags Moto X down is the plastic feeling.  Because Moto X wants to offer customization on the back plate, metal or tempered glass is out of the options.

So, from the view point of design and build quality, HTC One is surely better.

BTW, “designed, engineered and assembled in the USA” does not help much on design and build quality for Moto X.

Software

Both Moto X and HTC One run Android Jelly Bean 4.2. Both will be upgraded to 4.3 in a couple of months.

Moto X … Continue to read....

What is Motorola X8 Mobile Computing System?

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x8-mobile-computing-system-300On July 23, Motorola Mobility (a subsidy of Google) unveiled  the new generation of Verizon Droid phones (Droid Ultra, Droid Mini and Droid Maxx). The most interesting info from the event is that all these 3 phones are powered by custom-made system-on-a-chip (SoC) (based on Snapdragon S4 Pro), not the stock Snapdragon chip.

Motorola named it as the X8 mobile  computing system.  The coming Moto X phone will surely be powered by this mobile computing system.

What makes this X8 mobile computing system unique?  Will it be  a game changer for mobile phones? Why it it named as a “computing system”?

The uniqueness of X8 is its two additional cores. There are totally 8 cores in X8 (this probably explains why it is named as X8). Among them,  two CPU cores, four GPU cores, one natural language processor/core, and one contextual  computing processor/core.

If you own a Samsung Galaxy S4, you probably already have a Exynos Octa 5, which has 8 cores. But all of them are CPU cores.   The 4 A15 cores at 1.8GHz  are for CPU intensive jobs, and another 4 A7 cores at 1.2GHz are for less intensive jobs to save power.

So,  8-core (actually 4 CPU cores) itself has nothing to boost. Most 2012/2013 flagship smartphones already have quad-core inside: Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S4, HTC One, HTC Butterfly, Sony Xperia Z…

We are excited about Motorola’s X8 because of their two non-conventional cores.

With the Motorola X8’s natural language processor,  Moto X is  ready to respond any voice commands without touching your phone.  It should work even when  the display is off. If Motorola can (why not?) combine this capability with Google Now, the Moto X will definitely give owner an exceptional experience. You can instantly get the  traffic info, reminders, news, calling and texting information. This is clearly demoed in the Rogers’s video.

The  contextual computing processor is even more useful.  It simply makes Moto X  smarter. The phone  always knows whether your Moto X is in your pocket, in your hand or in  your … Continue to read....