New Ideas For New Generation: Motorola unveils ‘Moto X’: Always on microphone and 2000+ customizations

Google bought Motorola over a year and half ago. Today, Motorola has unveiled the new Moto X phone. The phone as Motorola's premier phone will probably compete with Samsung Galaxy S IV, HTC One and Apple iPhone 5. Moto X as a phone is not exactly great on hardware specs and that is not it's focus. It main focus is on customization options and also some very unique features.

Moto X Basic Specs

Display: 4.7 inch 720p AMOLED display.
Processor: Qualcomm's Snapdragon s4P processor. 1.7 GHz Dual-Core CPU and Quad-Core GPU.
Battery Time: Full 24 hours battery time.
Memory: 2GB RAM
Storage: Two versions being 16GB and 32 GB
Camera: Front Camera 2 MP and 10 MP camera.
Connectivity: Phone supports Bluetooh 4.0, USB 2.0, WIFI, NFC.

Always on Microphone

While the hardware is not exactly the best of the best, it will probably help not eat too much of the battery. This is because the microphone of the phone will be always on. It will be able to recognize the voice of the user and not allow others to command the phone.

So the phone would be listening to you all the time. To activate the phone one simply has to say "Okay Google Now". I use Google Now on my Nexus 4 and its voice activations to reply to an email, set alarms or even search on Google is extremely useful. It it requires me to first activate the microphone. With Moto X, the phone's interface truly becomes hands free.

The phone will also show displays that allow users to skim through notifications but extending them while the phone is idle. That basically means people can look who the notification is from before opening it.

Motorola's Allows over 2000 Customization options

Moto X will be sold at $199 with AT&T. This is a sort of subsidized price with a phone contract so the phone without any contracts (like the ones sold in India) will be much costlier. AT&T customers will be able to customize the way their phone looks. Basically on Motorola's Motomaker website, it allows users to choose from over 18 different colours for the back, different colours for side-mounted buttons and rings around the camera also has mutliple choices.

You can see the customization options in a demo video

Where is Android 4.3?

Google has bought Motorola, so we could say Moto X is a Google phone. But apparently Google is not so keen on appearing to favour Motorola as a OEM. This means the phone will ship with Android 4.2.2. Though there is not as much bloatware on the phone so Motorola should be able to ship Android 4.3 very soon.

Though some might find it odd that Google cannot ship its own phone with latest Android OS, but that honour seems to be reserved for the Nexus phones.

The phone currently will be sold only in the US and should make it out to other markets. The customization options will in all probability be a US-only feature (rather AT&T only).

(via Motorola Blog)

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