Moto X review (2nd Gen 2014) – Android 5.0 update due

It has only been eight months since Motorola launched the first Moto X in the UK, but its successor (also called the Moto X) is anything but an incremental upgrade. Whereas the old Moto X was an excellent mid-range phone, sitting just below the Google Nexus 5 in terms of price and specification, the new Moto X is a fully-fledged flagship handset with the sort of hardware and innovative features to give the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z3 and even the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus a real run for their money – especially since it’s guaranteed an upgrade to Android Lollipop soon after it launches.

Read about all the latest details and features in Android 5.0 Lollipop

While its predecessor was merely decent-looking, the new Moto X is a beautifully-made handset. The phone’s metal frame makes up its slender, tapered edges; while the soft-touch rear curves outwards so it fits perfectly in your palm. At 9.9mm at its thickest point it’s not slim on paper, but the overall effect is remarkable yet understated. We’re big fans of the phone’s smaller details as well, such as the ribbed power button and the circular flash that loops round the main camera.

You can customise the appearance of the new Moto X too (a feature only available in the US previously), as Motorola’s Moto Maker service is finally available in the UK. This makes the phone a little more expensive, but the sheer range of options available, including genunine wood or leather back panels, makes a very refreshing change from the usual swathe of plain blacks and whites available on other handsets. Moto Maker also lets you increase the phone’s storage from the standard 16GB to 32GB as there’s no microSD card support.

MOTO X DISPLAY

The screen is one of the best we’ve seen from a flagship handset. It’s kept the original Moto X’s beautiful AMOLED display, but the screen has now swelled to a sizeable 5.2in and has a wonderfully crisp Full HD 1,920×1,080 resolution. This gives the new Moto X a pixel density of 423ppi (pixels-per-inch), putting it comfortably in front of both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in terms of overall picture clarity and just behind the Galaxy S5.

As we’d expect from an AMOLED display, the Moto X’s colour accuracy was superb. It covered the full 100 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut and its blacks were a perfect 0.00cd/m2, meaning you won’t get any light leakage even when the phone’s set to its maximum brightness setting. Admittedly, its peak white level of 292.18cd/m2 isn’t hugely bright, at least not compared to the Xperia Z3’s massive brightness of 592.19cd/m2, but we found the screen was still perfectly legible both inside and out. Its superb contrast levels, which were so high our colour calibrator couldn’t give us an accurate reading, also means the screen can be clearly seen at all times regardless of viewing angle.

MOTO X BATTERY LIFE

AMOLED consumes less power than LCD, allowing you to make the most of the Moto X’s battery life. In our continuous video playback test, the Moto X’s 2,300mAh battery lasted 12 hours and 47 minutes with the screen set to half brightness, so you should definitely be able to get through a whole working day on a single charge even under heavy use.

Admittedly, it can’t compete with the 20 hours we saw on the Xperia Z3 Compact, but Motorola’s included several features to help stretch the battery further during everyday use. For instance, the new Attentive Display option makes the Moto X go to sleep faster when you’re not looking at the screen.

An AMOLED panel also goes hand-in-hand with the Moto X’s improved Moto Display. This shows the time and up to three notification buttons such as email and social media alerts when the screen is off or locked, allowing you to see new interactions at a glance without turning your phone on. It only activates when you reach for the phone or pick it up (and will automatically disable itself when it’s in your bag or pocket, face down or when you’re taking a call), and the AMOLED screen means it only consumes a tiny amount of power to illuminate these handful of pixels.

The Moto Display notifications save time, too, as tapping the icon and swiping upwards will take you straight to the respective app once the phone is unlocked. This was something we saw on the original Moto X, but now you can also dismiss those notifications by swiping to the side of the screen. The only problem is that dismissing one dismisses them all, and we think it would have been much more useful if you could choose which notifications you wanted to ignore before tending to the ones you actually wanted to respond to. This is a little disappointing, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of our favourite Moto X features.

MOTO X PERFORMANCE

Like its previous handsets, Motorola has gone with pure Android 4.4.4 for the new Moto X, and an upgrade to Android Lollipop will be available once it’s released. Icons were lovely and large on the app tray, and swiping through menus felt very smooth and responsive thanks to the phone’s quad-core 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor.

Web browsing was quick, too, and its score of 805ms in our SunSpider JavaScript test in Chrome puts it just ahead of the Sony Xperia Z3 and LG G3. It may not be as fast as the Galaxy S5’s score of 391ms in Samsung’s proprietary browser, but in practice we barely noticed the difference. The Moto X took image-heavy pages in its stride, loading up The Guardian’s desktop home page almost instantly without any signs of judder as we scrolled up and down the page.

The Moto X’s graphics performance was even more impressive. Not only did it max out our 3DMark Ice Storm and Ice Storm Extreme tests, but its score of 19,408 (or 79.2fps) in Ice Storm Unlimited is one of the highest we’ve ever seen and is second only to the HTC One (m8). We were also pleased with its score of 56.6fps in Epic Citadel on Ultra High quality settings, so it should be more than capable of playing games at the highest quality settings and the best frame rates.

MOTO CONNECT

One of the Moto X’s biggest new features is Motorola Connect. Taking inspiration from Apple’s Continuity feature in iOS 8, Motorola Connect lets you send and receive text messages from your PC using the Motorola Connect Chrome extension. This is something you can’t do in Continuity just yet (text support is still in beta at time of writing), and it’s the first time we’ve seen this kind of feature on an Android phone, giving the Moto X a big advantage not just over the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but also every other major Android handset.

It worked extremely well when we tried it out for ourselves. As well as a list of your most recent message threads, the extension’s pop-out window also shows your most recent incoming and outgoing calls, the Moto X’s remaining battery life and how strong the connection is between the phone and PC.

It’s a shame you can’t answer calls on your PC, as you can in Apple’s Continuity, but you can opt to either ignore the call or reply with a text message when the notification box appears and your PC starts ringing. It’s very clever, and it’s something we hope to see more phone manufacturers taking up in the future.

MOTO X APPS

This isn’t the Moto X’s only party trick, though, as you can also silence calls and snooze alarms by simply waving your hand over the screen. It will only register your hand up to 15cm away, but it’s very handy if you’re in a meeting and want to quickly dismiss a call. Of course, if you really want to remain undisturbed, you can always enable the Moto X’s Assist options so it goes into silent mode automatically when you’re at home in the evening or in a meeting.

These Assist settings are another feature that’s been carried over from the original Moto X, but now they’ve been integrated into Motorola’s new Moto voice launcher app, putting all the Moto X’s smart features in one place. In addition to going into silent mode, the Moto X can be set to send auto-reply text messages to any of your starred (favourited) contacts trying to get hold of you, or to any contact who calls twice within five minutes. A similar feature is also available in the Moto’s Sleep settings where the phone can be set to ring if a starred contact calls, such as a family member, while remaining silent for other calls.

The Assist settings give you plenty of hands-free options as well, both in the car and at home. By using the phone’s location, microphone, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, it will recognise where you are and adapt accordingly. At home, for instance, it will read text messages aloud, while in the car it will also announce who’s calling and play music over Bluetooth via Google Now’s voice control. You can even use voice commands to make calls and check your voicemail when the phone is locked, so you don’t have to worry about fiddling with the phone’s display or turning it on while you’re busy.

MOTO X CAMERA

You don’t even have to unlock the phone to use the Moto X’s rear camera, as you can activate it simply by twisting your wrist and the phone twice in quick succession. It’s remarkably fast and works reliably. Like the new Moto G, Motorola’s finally included an option to shoot in 4:3 (as well as a screen-filling 16:9), letting you take full advantage of its 13-megapixel sensor.

In our outdoor test shots, colours were bright and vibrant even in very cloudy, overcast weather. The contrast between light and dark areas was particularly pronounced, giving our photos a much more dramatic appearance that really made the dark rain clouds stand out against lighter objects and buildings in the foreground.

^ The amount of detail present on the Moto X is excellent, showing each individual brick rather than a mass of muddy pixels

^ Even in overcast weather conditions, dark clouds really stood out against the foreground

Admittedly, some of the photos we took on the Moto X didn’t look quite as natural as those we took on the Galaxy S5. Colours had a tendency to look a little too rich in places, and looked oversaturated as a result. However, Samsung’s somewhat excessive noise-reduction made everything look a little too smooth for our liking and photos looked less detailed when viewed at their native resolution. The Moto X, on the other hand, produced much sharper, crisper pictures despite the increase in noise.

The new Moto X also has a HDR mode. This brightened up our moody, overcast scenes quite considerably, but it also made them look that much more artificial. Colours still looked natural, though, and we could really pick out the detail in the brickwork and paving stones of our test shots.

^ HDR mode could make photos look a little artificial, but on the whole colours still looked reasonably accurate

^ We lost a lot of contrast in HDR mode, but we’re still pleased with how it coped with the challenging lighting conditions

MOTO X CONCLUSION

With its large range of innovative apps, excellent AMOLED screen and top of the range performance, the new Moto X is the flagship Motorola handset we’ve been waiting for. It doesn’t rewrite the rulebook for high-end smartphones in quite the same way as the new Moto G did for budget phones, but there’s still plenty to like here.

Not only is it by far one of the smartest and most user-friendly phones we’ve tested this year, but it’s also one of the most beautifully designed and desirable handsets we’ve ever seen. It may not be able to last quite as long as either the Galaxy S5 or the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact, but we think its clever, useful apps more than make up for any deficiency in battery life. Moreover, at £420 SIM-free or around £26.50-per-month on contract, it’s also roughly the same price as many of the older flagship smartphones released earlier this year. This makes it fantastic value, so it wins a Best Buy award.