Motorola Moto X Quick Review

It has been a long time since Motorola made a presence in the Philippines so it is a bit of a surprise that they made another attempt this year. This time, it brought three of its most popular handsets from last year; among them is the 2nd-generation Moto X.

For many years, Moto fans only had access to the brand’s latest handset thru gray market channels or importing them directly from Hong Kong or the US.

This month marks the first time in more than half a decade that Motorola handsets will be officially offered with customer support and warranty.

The flagship handset will have to be the Moto X — a 5.2-inch handset with full HD AMOLED display and Gorilla Glass 3. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor which was last year’s top CPU. Completing the configuration is 2GB of RAM, a non-expandable 16GB internal storage with LTE and NFC connectivity.

The 13-megapixel rear camera 4K videos while the front camera can also record full HD 1080p clips. The built-in battery has a capacity of only 2,300mAh which could be enough for all-day use unless you are a heavy user.

The Moto X competes with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and LG G3 when it was launched in 2014 and sports the latest Snapdragon 801 processor which was among the best one back then.

The handset is among the nicest looking device and with the availability of the Moto Maker in the US, customers can actually select the colors and materials for a custom order. This made it possible to have that iconic bamboo wood back cover with white trimming to be made available to US customers.

The front panel is completely covered with Gorilla Glass 3 from edge to edge with the corners slightly curved towards the sides. The top and bottom ends are almost symmetrical with a textured metal strip that cuts around the middle.

However, the model that will be released here in the Philippines will only be the black polycarbonate version. This variant comes with a non-removable soft matte back cover with chrome metallic trimmings. The handset is shaped in a slightly curved way to give it a better and more comfortable grip on the hand, much like the way LG did it with the G3 and G4.

One concern with the Moto X is the rather low battery capacity. At 2,300mAh, the device barely lasts the whole day. Using our standard battery bench, we only managed to get around 7 hours of continuous video playback at 50% brightness and 0% volume. PCMark Battery Test gave it a score of 6 hours, 2 minutes. That’s exactly the same results we got from the OPPO N3 but that one has a 3,000mAh battery so the Moto X is still more efficient.

For the purpose of this article, we made a video review instead of the usual content. Check out the video below for a rundown of the features, benchmarks and sample photos of the Moto X:

Camera performance is good as long as there is ample light. However, it degrades pretty fast under low-light conditions and becomes very grainy when there’s very little ambient light.

See sample photos below:

[fancygallery id=”228″ album=”277″]

Performance of the Moto X is still at par with last year’s flagship devices and even with most of this year’s top phones. This is due to the smaller footprint of the OS and the Vanilla UI that is devoid of any skinning and customizations.

As such, benchmark results are quite high even at current standards. Performance is pretty good as the handset runs on a Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor with each core clocking in at 2.5GHz. The handset scored 4,844 on PCMark and 46,096 on Antutu benchmark which are both pretty high even in the current charts.

With a suggested retail price of Php16,999, the Moto X is still within the price range of last year’s contemporaries — Nexus 5 at Php17k, Galaxy S5 Duos at Php18k, Xperia Z2 at Php16.3k and the HTC One M8 at Php18k (all gray market prices, btw). Even the 1st-gen Moto X is sold at Php18k in online stores so that makes the price of the official 2nd-gen Moto X very competitive.

The acquisition of Motorola by Lenovo from Google has made possible the return of Motorola in the Philippines. Lenovo is a strong brand in Asia and ranks between the top 2 to top 5 brands in the country (depends if you measure it by volume or value of sales).

We were told that Motorola Philippines will operate independently of Lenovo despite the acquisition but Motorola will greatly benefit from Lenovo’s strong process manufacturing and logistics in the region. Motorola has also been known to roll out Android updates fairly early, thanks to its previous connection with Google and being a partner in the Nexus program.

It’s still too early to see how the local market will respond to the return of Motorola in the Philippines. We already know that the local market is already very saturated and competition between global and local brands are very fierce so it will be interesting to see how the Moto brand will fare.

Motorola Moto X (2nd-gen) specs:
5.2-inch AMOLED display @ 1920 x 1080, 423ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor
Adreno 330 GPU
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
13MP rear camera with f/2.25 lens and ring flash
4K video recording
2MP front camera
Full HD video recording
4G LTE, 3G HSPA+
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, hotspot
Bluetooth 4.0
NFC
GPS, GLONASS
2,300mAh battery
Android Lollipop
140.8 x 72.4 x 10 mm (dimensions)
144 grams (weight)

The Moto X will be available in black with a suggested retail price of Php16,999. Watch out for our full review of the Moto X in a week or two.

What we liked about it:
* Impressive build and design
* Very good performance
* Great display quality
* Affordably priced
* NFC, LTE support
* Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box

What we did not like:
* Low, non-expandable storage
* Short battery life

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

17 Comments

Lazardo D. Lucido says:

9 years ago

gud am sir where & when will the new 2nd gen 4g lte black moto e be available tnx
- Reply
Hello Moto says:

9 years ago

Hi,

Any info on the LTE bands the local Moto X will be in?
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

The Snapdragon 801 chip supports both bands of Smart and Globe.

cheeze says:

9 years ago

Thanks abe. btw ano anong unit ang nerelease nila dito satin? ty
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

Only the 16GB black version.

cheeze says:

9 years ago

San stores nila? gustong gusto ko kasi mga device nila. pure android and fast OS updates.
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

MemoExpress and many other stores found in Cyberzone.

cheeze says:

9 years ago

anyare? bat ngaun lang kau gagawa ng review neto eh last year pa to narelease. haha
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

If you read the article, you will understand the Motorola PH is coming back to the country this year and will release the Moto X end of July, thus the review.
archie says:

9 years ago

Ngayon lang bumalik ang motorola sa Pinas. Misleading pag nagreview sila ng unit na di dadatin sa Philippine market. Baka isipin ng mga tao na available to sa local stores.

awts says:

9 years ago

kunting presyo lang cguro ang binayad ng motorola, pag full payment na, saka na full review ha?
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

We don’t receive any compensation to do these reviews. In fact, we buy a lot of the review units ourselves and we spend our own time and resources (in the form of salary) in order to publish all these stories in time so you can read them for free. :)

lol says:

9 years ago

“here’s another quick review of a device that we are not very interested in where we will state obvious facts that contribute nothing to what people already know”

what happened to in-depth reviews yugatech? considering this article came from abe pa.
- Reply

lol says:

9 years ago

i see. though without the context of your guidelines the articles come off as uninspired. you guys are pretty much the leading tech site in the philippines so guys like me check out your reviews first, and its kind of disappointing to see the gadget we’ve been eyeing for so long to only get a quick review.

but as you said, you get lots of devices to review and this is all free so that’s understandable. looking forward to your moto x review.
Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

We have an editorial guide on how to title articles based on content, length and details. As such, we have a 400-500 word hands on, a 600-700 first impressions, a 900-1000 word quick review and a 1,500 word full review.

We also receive between 12 to 25 units per month and it is a bit of a challenge to be able to cover all of them in a reasonable amount of time so we sort of pick and choose which ones to focus more on.
lol says:

9 years ago

Yes. The article is pretty much a writeup of the video. And i am aware you’ve just received the unit, perhaps initial impressions on the title would be better.

Glad you’re doing a full review kasi yung quick reviews niyo like yung for the cherry mobile alpha-something was really subpar. And there aren’t follow-up full reviews either.
Abe Olandres says:

9 years ago

We received the unit just 4 days ago. Did you see the video where we included other observations not stated in the text?

Nevertheless, be on the look-out out for our full review of the Moto X next week.