MOTOROLA MOTO X
The very definition of an oldie but still a goodie, the Moto X is easily one of the bestcrafted phones in our list. The Moto X has a softly curved back that fits comfortably in our hands with gently rounded corners that also make handling the phone a great joy. To match the curvature of the rear, Motorola went the extra mile to design a custom shaped battery for the Moto X. Due to its unibody design, you are unable to remove the rear cover or its battery though.
The front of the Moto X is dominated by a 4.7-inch display and does not sport any physical buttons for a very refined look. The use of an AMOLED display enabled Motorola to develop a useful feature, Active Display where certain pixels are lighted up to show notifications on the lock screen. This not only alerts you to notifications, it helps save on battery consumption.
Given that the Moto X was the first phone under the partnership with Google (back then), it obviously runs on an almost stock Android interface save for some Motorola apps – Motorola Migrate and Assist. Initially preloaded with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the Moto X has since been upgraded to Android 4.4.2 KitKat.
Powering the Moto X is Motorola’s custom CPU architecture, X8 Mobile Computing System consisting of a software optimized Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1.7GHz processor, a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor. Due to the almost stock Android interface and superb optimizations, the user experience felt very lively with quick launching apps. Having 2GB RAM also helps ensure a smooth operation.
Moto X uses an imaging technology for its 10-megapixel rear camera called ClearPixel which uses a different color filter to capture more light. In reality however, photos seem to either be out of focus or lacking in details.
It is noteworthy to mention the Moto X is the only phone in this shootout to lack a memory card slot. You’ll have to make do with its 16GB internal storage. Also, because it’s a relatively older phone, it doesn’t support LTE CAT 4 speeds, only LTE CAT 3 for up to 100Mbps downloads.