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Moto X review
One year ago, Motorola, fat and fed by its Google acquisition, inched quietly into a silicon-spun cocoon to gestate. The subsequent passage of time allowed it to transmogrify and re-emerge a thing of red, yellow, blue and sometimes green beauty; a Google thing made by a Google company. The Moto X, its newborn monarch, arrives in an array of different colors, made possible by the NikeID-like Moto Maker site. It also comes with a homespun narrative: it's assembled here in the USA. Time to empty your wallets, patriots. This is America's smartphone and it costs $199 on a two-year contract. If I'm right in reading between the lines of Google's marketing speak, the Moto X was made in the image of the everyman. It's the product of a democratic process -- you can take that future design poll on Facebook as proof of this point. The 4.7-inch screen size, the curvature of its back, the composite materials, its weight and front-face look were focus-tested for maximum inoffensiveness. The Moto X exudes no tech halo like the Galaxy S 4 or the HTC One because it is the sum of averages. Here's how I see it: You know those people who own iPhones, but don't know which model number they own and also refer to all Android phones as Droids? This phone is for them. %Gallery-195299%
OmniVision details 10.5-megapixel Clear Pixel sensor inside Moto X
Motorola has been hyping up the 10.5-megapixel Clear Pixel camera inside the Moto X, but it's been shy on the sensor's technical details and origins. We now have both: it's the OmniVision OV10820, a 1/2.6-inch sensor with a video-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio and large 1.4-micron pixels. Its strong low-light performance comes through a two-chip approach. The sensor captures RAW images using a sensitive RGBC (red / green / blue / clear) color filter, and a companion chip automatically converts the resulting shots into the Bayer format that most imaging processors expect. The result is a high-performance camera that slots inside the Moto X without requiring any special effort. Whether or not we see the OV10820 used outside of Motorola is another matter. OmniVision can't comment on the sensor's exclusivity, but it does note that RGBC is an "extremely viable option" for the future. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Moto X preview: A Google phone assembled with you, the user, in mind
Motorola. A Google company. It's time to commit that to memory. With the Moto X, a 4.7-inch phone going on sale later this summer for $199 on contract, the company has officially started the shot clock for the "new Motorola"; this is the first Moto product designed from scratch with Google's direct oversight. And it shows, from the packaging to the messaging to the features aimed at mainstream users. Most importantly of all, there's Moto X's standout feature: personalization. We've been hearing for years from various OEMs that smartphones are a personal statement, a reflection of the individual, but aside from the occasional color option, the wallpaper and case have been the only real opportunities for personal expression. Well, you can kiss those days goodbye. Motorola's keyed in to a core part of the user experience -- self-styling -- and we expect its rivals to follow suit. But all of that backstory can wait. We need to talk about the Moto X. The company never explicitly said so when it showed us the phone behind closed doors today, but this is clearly a mainstream phone (it's geared towards the "majority of users" several execs told us). To that point, its spec sheet and feature list (Touchless Control, Active Display, Quick Capture) won't dazzle the technorati. And, from what we can tell, it's not supposed to. To hear the company tell it, the Moto X's journey began one year ago with a whiteboard listing all of the most common user problems, ways to address those issues and a plan to get the device into as many hands as possible. You won't be able to assess that for yourself until the phone launches on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular later this summer. For now, though, if our initial hands-on time is any indication, it appears Motorola's succeeded.
