Moto X (Is Out) [8.01.2013]

[kaerflog]

Looks a lot like the nexus 4 but with smaller bezels although it looked very plasticky in the demo.
If this is priced under $300 its a good buy.
The nexus 4 is a great phone in every way except for the camera and average battery life

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

leaked tech demo
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...s-on-voice-commands-camera-gestures-and-more/

direct youtube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCucvQ1VuOk&feature=player_embedded

- Yay, Google is axing notification LEDs because powering on the screen is a better idea.
- Yay, stupid camera gesture. The 4.1 unlock screen with the camera unlock was so easy. Instead we move to a bigger swipe in 4.2 that in many ways is actually more awkward to use, and now lets go with a stupid gesture! Prepare for Moto X phones flying across the parking lot...
- Yay, no more touch AF? It just straight up takes a photo. So tell me why every professional DSLR shooter has a dedicated AF and AE button and previews the shot before taking it? Shoot first aim later?

 

[WelshBloke]

- Yay, Google is axing notification LEDs because powering on the screen is a better idea.

What type of screen is it? An AMOLED with a mostly black screen and small notification shouldn't use much power.

- Yay, stupid camera gesture. The 4.1 unlock screen with the camera unlock was so easy. Instead we move to a bigger swipe in 4.2 that in many ways is actually more awkward to use, and now lets go with a stupid gesture! Prepare for Moto X phones flying across the parking lot...

Another option is cool, I'm presuming that that wont be the only way to open the camera.

- Yay, no more touch AF? It just straight up takes a photo. So tell me why every professional DSLR shooter has a dedicated AF and AE button and previews the shot before taking it? Shoot first aim later?

Phone cameras will never and aren't supposed to be compared to DSLRs.

 

[zerocool84]

HTC First seems to have a pretty flat back from this image I see on the Verge. I like the shape of the Moto X. I just hope the storage is not limited to 16GB like it sounds like it may be.

I'm sure it will be low storage just like the Nexus 4 so they can sell it for cheap since that's what the rumors are.

 

[cliftonite]

- Yay, Google is axing notification LEDs because powering on the screen is a better idea.
- Yay, stupid camera gesture. The 4.1 unlock screen with the camera unlock was so easy. Instead we move to a bigger swipe in 4.2 that in many ways is actually more awkward to use, and now lets go with a stupid gesture! Prepare for Moto X phones flying across the parking lot...
- Yay, no more touch AF? It just straight up takes a photo. So tell me why every professional DSLR shooter has a dedicated AF and AE button and previews the shot before taking it? Shoot first aim later?

Why are you even bringing up dSLRs into a phone camera discussion? Just because the gesture is there doesn't mean you have to use it. You can always use the voice command. And apparently the notifications will be displayed without turning on the entire screen, far superior to an LED. With an LED you know something is there but you don't know if it is important enough to check it. Now you do.

 

[bradly1101]

- Yay, Google is axing notification LEDs because powering on the screen is a better idea.

Oh man, I need my notification light. Are they going to make the screen blink? The continuous blinking is what makes it useful.

 

[podspi]

Oh man, I need my notification light. Are they going to make the screen blink? The continuous blinking is what makes it useful.

Yeah, hopefully it uses an AMOLED screen with dedicated notification mode. That is the only way not having a notification LED could be considered a good thing.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

What type of screen is it? An AMOLED with a mostly black screen and small notification shouldn't use much power.

Okay, but still? A notification LED uses less power. And it can continue flashing without using much. You want my screen to keep powering on? Did you watch the video? The whole screen turns on.

Another option is cool, I'm presuming that that wont be the only way to open the camera.

Wouldn't it be better if the option was actually useful?

Phone cameras will never and aren't supposed to be compared to DSLRs.

I pointed out DSLRs because those are functions that make sense because its valuable. I don't see how tap to focus is something that SHOULD be removed. Is it completely unreasonable people have been asking for manual shooting controls, and a dedicated shutter button? Is your response to that, that DSLR capabilities do not belong in a phone camera?

 

[Ravynmagi]

Okay, but still? A notification LED uses less power. And it can continue flashing without using much. You want my screen to keep powering on? Did you watch the video? The whole screen turns on.

AMOLED displays do not turn on black pixels, that is why people are hoping it's an AMOLED display. The whole screen doesn't really power on if the notification screen is mostly black. So it can display more detailed notifications than a pulsing light. I like the idea.

Wouldn't it be better if the option was actually useful?

I'm not a fan of the trying to swipe up the camera from the lock screen. So I anything any effort to find a better way is good news. The gesture looks pretty simple, so I could see myself possibly using it.

I pointed out DSLRs because those are functions that make sense because its valuable. I don't see how tap to focus is something that SHOULD be removed. Is it completely unreasonable people have been asking for manual shooting controls, and a dedicated shutter button? Is your response to that, that DSLR capabilities do not belong in a phone camera?

Doesn't it auto focus for you? She just taps anywhere on the screen and the camera presumably will just focus on what is in the center of it. Sounds fine to me. This phone is for the masses, it's not a Nokia 1020.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

AMOLED displays do not turn on black pixels, that is why people are hoping it's an AMOLED display. The whole screen doesn't really power on if the notification screen is mostly black. So it can display more detailed notifications than a pulsing light. I like the idea.

Perhaps? It's an interesting concept, but once again, people do like the Notification LED. That's fine if they want to introduce a new concept, but its still nice to have a Notification LED that every major OEM phone including the Nexus phones embrace now.

I'm not a fan of the trying to swipe up the camera from the lock screen. So I anything any effort to find a better way is good news. The gesture looks pretty simple, so I could see myself possibly using it.

From the slide unlock, it was a simple slide to the left instead of right to unlock. On 4.2 you have to slide from the edge of the screen which makes it difficult for those with screen protectors. I prefer the 4.1 implementation. The gesture might be ok for some, but its honestly clunky. There's far better ways of getting to the camera from the lockscreen and even the iPhone 5 does that better.

Just imagine doing this when you're drunk... or hell you don't even have to be drunk I bet phones would be falling out of hands more often.

Doesn't it auto focus for you? She just taps anywhere on the screen and the camera presumably will just focus on what is in the center of it. Sounds fine to me. This phone is for the masses, it's not a Nokia 1020.

So the funny thing is if you take a 0.5 sec autofocus time, and 0.1 second shutter lag time the Moto X will be at best just as fast, but most of the time slower. Assuming you allow the camera to do a full focus + shutter lag thats 0.6 seconds. Everytime you tap on the Moto X, it will take a full 0.6 seconds to take the photo.

If you are allowed a separate tap to focus, you can cut the 0.5 seconds off and just have shutter lag only.

Now if you are to believe Motorola's marketing hype and their super fast AF, perhaps it won't matter. But honestly, do you think that Motorola's going to reinvent the camera here? Are they some sort of leaders in camera technology? Given how contrast AF works, I can't see this revolutionizing any kind of AF technology. And to think that P&S cameras already do a great job in identifying faces, subjects for AF, and what not, how is the AOSP camera suddenly going to catch up? You could argue the TouchWiz or Sense cameras already do a decent job in AF. The AOSP camera has such a long ways to come.

The best solution was really to just go with a hardware shutter key which it seems like no phone except for the Windows Phones are embracing.

 

[slippysoup]

I'm was pumped for this phone to replace my gnex but no notification light is almost a deal breaker. With light flow, I know exactly what the notification is by the color and I can see it from the corner of my eye while driving which is very convenient.

 

[Anubis]

- Yay, Google is axing notification LEDs because powering on the screen is a better idea.

are you serious or being sarcastic? because the LED is a must have for many people

i was considering this phone, but without a notification LED its never going to be considered again

 

[lothar]

Perhaps? It's an interesting concept, but once again, people do like the Notification LED. That's fine if they want to introduce a new concept, but its still nice to have a Notification LED that every major OEM phone including the Nexus phones embrace now.



From the slide unlock, it was a simple slide to the left instead of right to unlock. On 4.2 you have to slide from the edge of the screen which makes it difficult for those with screen protectors. I prefer the 4.1 implementation. The gesture might be ok for some, but its honestly clunky. There's far better ways of getting to the camera from the lockscreen and even the iPhone 5 does that better.

Just imagine doing this when you're drunk... or hell you don't even have to be drunk I bet phones would be falling out of hands more often.



So the funny thing is if you take a 0.5 sec autofocus time, and 0.1 second shutter lag time the Moto X will be at best just as fast, but most of the time slower. Assuming you allow the camera to do a full focus + shutter lag thats 0.6 seconds. Everytime you tap on the Moto X, it will take a full 0.6 seconds to take the photo.

If you are allowed a separate tap to focus, you can cut the 0.5 seconds off and just have shutter lag only.

Now if you are to believe Motorola's marketing hype and their super fast AF, perhaps it won't matter. But honestly, do you think that Motorola's going to reinvent the camera here? Are they some sort of leaders in camera technology? Given how contrast AF works, I can't see this revolutionizing any kind of AF technology. And to think that P&S cameras already do a great job in identifying faces, subjects for AF, and what not, how is the AOSP camera suddenly going to catch up? You could argue the TouchWiz or Sense cameras already do a decent job in AF. The AOSP camera has such a long ways to come.

The best solution was really to just go with a hardware shutter key which it seems like no phone except for the Windows Phones are embracing.

The problem with that is that some OEMs embrace the half-arsed approach.
HTC's notification LED is hidden near the speaker grill, and has only 2 colors(only Red and Green...No Blue), therefore your LED notification colors are really limited to whatever color the LED can mishmash between red and green. For example: you won't have blue, cyan, indigo, or any color that is formed by mixing blue with another color.

Thankfully, my Nexus 4's LED is fully functional(Red, Green, and Blue) and not hidden in some obscure place.

I don't care about hardware shutter keys because I don't use the camera on my phone much. Adding a hardware shutter key is just going to add an extra button that I don't need on my phone. I won't be doing stupid gestures like shaking the phone to access the camera or take pictures either. Just swipe to the left from the lock screen to open camera app and click anywhere on the screen to take a picture and you're done.

 

[WelshBloke]

Any of you tried NoLED on an amoled screen?

It's what my wife uses on her SGS2. Theres no notification led on the S2 and NoLed is a fine replacement. In some ways I prefer it to my notification light, it gives out a lot more information and doesn't seem to use much (if any) battery.

 

[lothar]

I'm was pumped for this phone to replace my gnex but no notification light is almost a deal breaker. With light flow, I know exactly what the notification is by the color and I can see it from the corner of my eye while driving which is very convenient.

Yep.
Having no notification LED or a half-arsed approach(such as having only 2 colors and/or hiding the notification light in some obscure place) to a notification LED is a deal breaker for me.

While sleeping. While working. While surfing the intrawebs. While at a meeting. While doing whatever I am doing at the moment...I can't do without my notification light.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yep.
Having no notification LED or a half-arsed approach(such as having only 2 colors and/or hiding the notification light in some obscure place) to a notification LED is a deal breaker for me.

While sleeping. While working. While surfing the intrawebs. While at a meeting. While doing whatever I am doing at the moment...I can't do without my notification light.

Agreed. It's a nonintrusive notification that I like. The whole flashing the screen is going to be annoying and people will probably ask why my phone is doing that.

Given how I saw it on the Rogers video, it doesn't look as small and as unintrusive as the Nexus 4 LED.

BTW I don't think HTC's LED implementation is THAT bad besides the limited colors options. It might be in a more obscure place, but if you know where to look you get used to it. I'd rather it be more hidden than the fat ugly bleeding blob that it is on the Nexus 4. I think how Samsung's done it on the S4 makes it look pretty good too. It's smaller and less intrusive than the S3, especially on the white model where there's less bleeding.

 

[WelshBloke]

Agreed. It's a nonintrusive notification that I like. The whole flashing the screen is going to be annoying and people will probably ask why my phone is doing that...

The whole screen was hardly flashing.

 

[SaurusX]

Has Motorola dropped the whole encrypted bootloader thing? I know that Dan Rosenberg eventually bypassed it, but when I had that DroidX it was biggest PITA that they ever could have done.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Any of you tried NoLED on an amoled screen?

It's what my wife uses on her SGS2. Theres no notification led on the S2 and NoLed is a fine replacement. In some ways I prefer it to my notification light, it gives out a lot more information and doesn't seem to use much (if any) battery.

I've tried it. There's burn-in concerns and quite honestly it doesn't look as elegant as an LED notification IMO. I see the benefit in that you know exactly what the notification is.

Then there's the fact that I have to run a background app to get it. While Notification LEDs aren't done properly by Google yet, and to get the full features, Lightflow really does the trick, you can at least have your apps trigger notification LEDs without a 3rd party app.

Has Motorola dropped the whole encrypted bootloader thing? I know that Dan Rosenberg eventually bypassed it, but when I had that DroidX it was biggest PITA that they ever could have done.

He beat the bootloader on Qualcomm devices. It was not ever broken for the TI OMAP devices.

The whole screen was hardly flashing.

Okay not the whole screen but its at least a pretty solid 1 inch by 1 inch section of the screen if not more. It looks like the clock flashed as well as an icon for the SMS as large as the circle in the slider unlock. I'm not saying this is a horrible solution. It's a nice interesting feature, and if something like this were introduced as an app on XDA, I'm sure there'd be a good number of followers. However, the solution isn't to introduce this feature and axe the notification LED that millions of devices have to date.

 

[ChronoReverse]

NoLED isn't a good enough replacement. Turning on the OLED in itself drains some power and it's much more than a notification light.

Of course, a notification light like the ones on the HTC One and One X are next to useless as well.

 

[WelshBloke]

I've tried it. There's burn-in concerns and quite honestly it doesn't look as elegant as an LED notification IMO. I see the benefit in that you know exactly what the notification is...

I don't know why you think there are burn in worries. It doesn't use the same bit of the screen every flash.

NoLED isn't a good enough replacement. Turning on the OLED in itself drains some power and it's much more than a notification light...

It probably uses a bit more than the notification LEDs but it seems to have no noticeable effect on the battery life so it can't be much, certainly no where near actually getting the message in the first place for instance.

 

[ChronoReverse]

It probably uses a bit more than the notification LEDs but it seems to have no noticeable effect on the battery life so it can't be much, certainly no where near actually getting the message in the first place for instance.

I suppose it might depend on the phone?

I know on the Nexus One (has a notification light) and Nexus S (doesn't have a notification light) it definitely increased the standby battery drain noticeably. Both of those phones drained less than 1% per hour and the drain became at least 1% per hour when using NoLED.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I suppose it might depend on the phone?

I know on the Nexus One (has a notification light) and Nexus S (doesn't have a notification light) it definitely increased the standby battery drain noticeably. Both of those phones drained less than 1% per hour and the drain became at least 1% per hour when using NoLED.

For certain phones its very difficult to implement properly. The GS2 had issues with BLN especially causing a wakelock. I didn't research NoLED since the Nexus S, so I can't comment, but perhaps noLED might cause wakelocks too which add to extra battery drain.

I'm ok with users who want to use NoLED, but at the same time what about users who don't have AMOLED screens? It'd be nice to have a consistent experience across all phones, and to me that means Notification LED.

 

[podspi]

For certain phones its very difficult to implement properly. The GS2 had issues with BLN especially causing a wakelock. I didn't research NoLED since the Nexus S, so I can't comment, but perhaps noLED might cause wakelocks too which add to extra battery drain.

I'm ok with users who want to use NoLED, but at the same time what about users who don't have AMOLED screens? It'd be nice to have a consistent experience across all phones, and to me that means Notification LED.

That is a great point, hopefully Google is just updating their notification API (maybe built in controls like Lightflow/NoLED), instead of depreciating it.

Personally, I like big notification LEDs. The S3's is awesome. I don't like the small subtle ones. As long as this doesn't take up to much power and we can customize it a bit (I'd prefer it to be in a corner) it should be ok. Heck, theoretically you could make it look like an LED notification if you wanted to.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Bump. More features leaked.
Like the Rogers ad.