Motorola Moto X hands-on: First look

Motorola Moto X hands-on

The first thing that hit us when we walked on the showroom floor was color - so much color, everywhere! This is the thing about the Motorola Moto X - it's highly customizable, to a degree we haven't seen in phones ever before (not counting overly expensive third-party services).

Motorola is promising to deliver your fully customized phone in under four days, the company is leveraging on its US-based manufacturing to do that. You've probably guess there's a "but" coming - the Moto X will be available in the US only for now.

Sigh. If you're in the US you can read on and see what the phone is like, if not - read on to see what you're missing.

The Moto X in hand

Motorola has chosen a 4.7" AMOLED display with a 720p resolution. It's not only gorgeous to look at with the deep blacks and punchy colors, but it's also great to touch. That's thanks to the Magic Glass layer on top that's been designed in cooperation with Corning for extra protection, as well as the tapered edges of the display.

The 4.7" AMOLED display is a sight to behold

As a result of the choice of display size and the minimal bezels, the Motorola Moto X is very pocket-friendly and a dream to handle. Unlike the RAZR HD display, this has an RGB matrix, so the 316ppi pixel density makes the display quite sharp. True, it's only as sharp as last year's flagships, but while this year's competition does slightly better, the difference isn't too easy to spot.

The AMOLED not only has beautiful colors and contrast, but it also enables the Active Display feature, which shows you notifications on the Moto X screen even when it's off. Active display uses a fraction of the screen's surface to display the clock and and any pending notifications. You can slide a notification icon to go directly to the app that produced it.

Also, Active Display does not operate while the phone is in your pocket or purse (or face down), but it senses your motion of picking it up and displays the clock automatically.

The Active Display feature takes full advantage of the AMOLED

Motorola has spent quite a lot of effort to make the back cover fit perfectly in your palm, studying the human hand quite extensively during the design process. As a result the smartphone packs quite a curve, but really does the job it's meant to.

The back covers are made of plastic and appear to feature a pattern. That's not an actual texture of the plastic, though - it's simply cleverly applied paint. A cool design trait is the embossed circle around the Motorola logo right below the camera LED.

The Motorola Moto X in black and white from different angles

The comparison with the HTC One is imminent as both share a 4.7" display and are quite similarly sized. The Motorola Moto X footprint compares quite favorably to the aluminum-clad HTC One, although we have to note this one doesn't have front-mounted stereo speakers. A drawback of the comfortable to hold curvy body design is the added thickness. It's more than what we expected at 10.4mm and while the curve does play it down, it's still thicker than, say, the HTC One (9.3mm).