PHONDLESLAB-ULOUS: Motorola Moto X Android phablet So, you want a Nexus 6. And why not? It’s a cracking bit of kit. But to my mind it’s a bit big and a bit expensive. And as for personalisation, forget it. Perhaps then Motorola can tempt you with the 6’s smaller, cheaper and altogether more modifiable little brother, the new Moto X? Motorola Moto X Android smartphone Not …
I may well succumb.
Can't see the problem with lack of stereo speakers. The point of stereo is to feed a separate sound stream to each ear, e.g. from two loudspeakers on opposite sides of the room. To get a stereo speaker effect from two speakers a few inches apart requires a very, very small and oddly-shaped head. Or a set of headphones perhaps?
Speaker placement is as much an art as a science, but one thing you *don't* want to do is face them towards each other from either side of a room.
As a rule they should go against the same wall (a short distance out from the wall), a variable distance apart with an amount of "toe-in". The optimum place to sit is where the "cone of sound" from each speaker creates a Venn Diagram-like sound space. Speaker height is also a factor, and all of this depends on the speakers and the room they're in. It's complicated. A good initial placement is an equilateral triangle with the listener at the apex. For floorstanding speakers, try placing them so that they are initially approximately 9 feet from the listener (and 9 feet from each other as well), then adjust from there.
see http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/speakerplacement.html
also http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Set_Up_Your_Speakers?
The engineers who crafted the final mix had their speakers set up similar to this, and that is how you reproduce their efforts. Firing them at each other from opposite sides of the room will set up an interference pattern you don't want. What you DO want is for the two outputs to mix rather than clash.
The absence of a microSD card slot will be a deal breaker for some
Not half as much as the inability to change the battery when its capacity dwindles away over a couple of years. Not all of us want to ditch an otherwise perfectly usable mobile every year or so, much as the manufacturers must love the idea.
Totally agree. My current phone might be creaking somewhat, it does have the ability to have a new battery and a memory card as well as doing much of what I want it to do. Every time I see a possible phone that I could change to, the spec lets it down by pandering to current fads rather than providing a good, solid phone for a reasonable price. £420 for a phone with a limited lifespan? Puh-leeze!!!
One question is how difficult the battery actually is to replace. On Samsung tablets with "non-replaceable" batteries it seems to be a ten quid on Ebay and five minutes of fiddling job for anybody a bit competent with simple tools. I believe some Sony phones are also not too difficult.
If this Moto/Lenovo is the same it isn't necessarily a problem. If it is a glued in wrapped in cables job like some makes, forget it.
With a very few tools and a spare hour, a "fixed battery" isn't that big of a deal these days. More worrisome to me is the aforementioned lack of an SD card slot, which is pretty close to being a deal breaker. When I finally managed to kill my Droid Razr HD, I stood in the store and kept going back and forth between the Moto and Samsung displays. Eventually it was the faster (at the time) processor, nicer screen, and SD card slot that seduced me away from Motorola's (IMHO) prettier, tougher, and more ergonomic phones. Oh, the 16MP camera helped too, as the Motos on display still were using 8s.
For me, part of the reason (besides hating Apple devices) for getting an Android phone is the ability to drop the SD card in the new phone and have my music, pics, etc. all right there with no fuss with cables or "cloud" services.
Though even without an SD slot, at least Android users aren't forced to suffer iTunes...
how difficult the battery actually is to replace
That is key. If it's something anyone can do if they are handy with jewellers screwdrivers and aren't bothered about voiding any warranty on the device, I wouldn't be too bothered. If, on the other hand, the battery is glued in so that its replacement is completely impossible, I wouldn't buy it. Likewise if getting inside it requires special tools, or if reassembly requires one to have four thumbs.
I can understand manufacturers being worried about bad publicity and lawsuits caused by third-party substandard batteries. Requiring anyone replacing the battery to employ a screwdriver and to break a warranty seal isn't unreasonable. (If they're really smart the phone would sense this and transmit "warranty seal broken" back to base, just like printers lock "3rd-party ink cartridge used" into their firmware to void the warranty, if you use third-party cartridges).
Yep.
Yet another utter deal breaker this year with no removable battery and lack of uSD slot- would have had one otherwise. Their loss.
Also, I do mean removable, not just replacable with enough intent. I frequently switch my battery once it's out of charge and I'm not returning to a plug socket for 20 more hours, which happens a lot travelling on business.
Perhaps that's why Samsung's sales aren't so good?
Sealed phones are done for a few reasons.
1. More solid build quality.
2. Warranty issues.
3. High capacity modern batteries are dangerous and 3rd party ones can explore or set alight.
4. It stops thieves yanking your battery out after stealing the phone and gives you a chance to track it.
Pretty sure the customisation is only to cosmetic bits, not the core phone. Maybe like a customised back or similar, and for £20 they can quite happily refit the original back. In fact my MotoG came with a *spare* back as a deal sweetener. Of course I've never used it, but they must cost a few pennies.
I have had two now. Customised with name. Sent first back for a refund and purchased a second one at a discounted price (it was on sale for one day only). Customer service was superb. No qualms at all.
Don't see much problem with non-removable battery, warranty is 2 years. If it fails it goes back.
It may not have the top specs but is a most excellently usable device.
Moto X, Moto G, Moto G 4G, Moto G 2nd Gen, all shipped with cameras that are surpassed in quality by my 12 year old 2MP fixed focus Fujifilm digital camera.
The quality is seriously shit. Low resolution, needless aggressive noise reduction, inability to focus on the chosen subject... And Motorola knows it: https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc
If the camera feature is of mild use to you, you're better off elsewhere. Of course, if you're never going to use the camera, then Moto phones are great value for money.
Except you didn't read what I'd written, did you? You 'conveniently' missed mention of the original Moto X also shipping with a sub-par camera.
People such as you only embarrass yourselves with your 'selective hearing', or to respond to a comment without resorting to infantile name calling.
And to think, you might make it to adulthood and reproduce. ;-)
YMMV, but 97% of people have never changed out a battery, and probably 75% have never changed an SD card in their phones. It would be just as sensible to complain that you can't upgrade the RAM or swap in a new processor.
Likewise I chuckle whenever someone suggests that two microscopic speakerettes two inches apart could ever offer reasonable sound. Sorry folks, but there are laws of physics involved, and no speakers that will fit into a phone, or even a laptop or tablet, will ever offer high quality audio.
(Then again we're all used to MP3 quality through earbuds or Dre Beats, so maybe the standards have just dropped that far.)
Finally, I know this is a bit much to ask, but How the hell is the damned thing for making phone calls? Especially in fringe areas.
I'm with you on most points, but with SD cards is not necessarily about changing them, but simply about having a reasonable amount of storage in the first place. My "16GB" phone actually shows as under 12GB, which hopefully means the OS is using some rather than it just having gone missing. In total, I've used up about 22GB of the 42GB I have available with a 32GB (which shows as 30) SD card. If I only had the 28GB or so a 32GB phone would give me, that doesn't exactly leave a lot of space to use over the next couple of years before I'm likely to replace it. If I actually want to put all my music on it, I'd already be struggling. If I took any significant amount of photos or video with it, I'd be struggling. If I wanted to install a couple of decent size games, I'd be struggling.
A lot of people reply to that sort of thing by saying that 16 or 32GB is fine, most people don't need more, just use the cloud, and so on. And that's fine for people who use their phones that way. But for those of us who do want a bit more storage, SD cards are basically the only choice since the options for phones with more built in are very limited, and usually quite a bit more expensive than the additional cost of a similarly sized SD card would justify (for example, a 64GB iPhone 6 costs £105 more than a 16GB one. A 64GB microSD card costs about £20.). A phone that can take an SD card caters for both groups. I've never changed an SD card in any of my phones, but I've also never had a phone that had enough storage built in, and a 400% markup on storage is pushing things a bit.
I could get the 32GB Nexus 6 on my carrier (Sprint) for $299, so price is not an issue. I'd very much like the big 6" screen, as I do not have little girlie hands, so screen size and phone size is not an issue. I also don't require "customization" and prefer Vanilla Android to crapware, so customization is not an issue. This is a nice phone and all, but I'm looking for a Phablet and this certainly is not that.
Let me get this right - £420=good value. In 12 months it will be a free handset on contracts like just about everything. A sofa from Lewis's to the same value will still be comfortable after 3 times' that time, a decent push-bike about the same, or a pair (or two at a push) of Oliver Sweeney's.
A Moto attracts sniggers, not swooners.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
