Smartphones

Saturday I received my Moto X. I'll be doing a full review when I finally get my laptop (my car was broken into and I lost everything). My initial impressions of the T-Mobile variant is that it's pretty great, but it absolutely has its faults.

The display is incredible once you get past the saturated colours in amoled screens. Size-wise, I think they hit a great mark. Even though the screen is technically 4.7", you really get about 4.3" of actual space. This is about perfect for someone with smaller hands like myself.

The processors (8 in total) really shine. Even though it's not the most powerful device, android has been very well optimised, and the phone feels as snappy as my HTC One. I've yet to run a standard day, but the battery seems to be holding up well. I took it off the charge around noon after unlocking the bootloader, and downloaded about 500mb of data on LTE, rebooted a dozen times, and have about 2 hours of screen-on time and was still at 48%.

I think the largest fault of the device is audio quality. Audio out is terrible, through either ear buds, full size cans, or aux input on my car. Bass was distorted, and highs were ease piercing. I don't know who tuned the factory audio settings, but I was able to get it to a tolerable level after playing with the eq controls for half an hour or so.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend the phone, but I just couldn't in good conscience suggest that someone pays full price for it.

The real joy of the MotoX is the convenience software. It knows when you are driving and dictates your texts, verbally opens apps, has built in notifications on the standby screen... knows when you are sleeping and puts your phone on silent etc etc etc

These little things make it a real pleasure to own

Just got a Sony Xperia ultra and loving it so far.

Just looked it up, that's the biggest smart phone I have ever seen lol

Are they not signing a contract? Seems many phones can be had for $300 or less on 2 year contract? Which is what they want to do anyway?

Ugh. I am in desperate need for a new phone. I might just bite the bullet and get another HTC Incredible because I do like how small it is and the volume on it is just nuts.

Kuriin_sl said:

Ugh. I am in desperate need for a new phone. I might just bite the bullet and get another HTC Incredible because I do like how small it is and the volume on it is just nuts.

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Why so desperate, and are you talking about the Incredible that's 3 years old at this point?

Yeah, the old Incredible. Because I am not liking my Samsung Galaxy Nexus and my contract is over.

Just seems odd with so many other phones out there. Even going back 1 year, and looking at them all, there has to be something that is way better than the Incredible, and fits your needs, and likely super cheap because of how old it is.

Hell, my Droid Bionic that's 2 years old is better than the Incredible?

joeboo_sl said:

Which I still don't understand, why are developers still releasing some games first(and some exclusively) on iOS, when Android has 80% of the phone market? It would be like Mac getting all the game releases first over Windows. Makes no sense to me at all.

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The cynic in me thinks it might be that executives have iphones and tell the peons what to write, the fair minded thinks that it might be because of the addition of ipad+ipod numbers (though the often spouted numbers sold to date isn't interesting as most are no doubt broken or EOL for OS updates), and the rest of me just thinks there are lot of Mac hipsters working in Silicon Valley.

Its actually even more puzzling for applications targeted at users outside the US, as in every other country Apple's market share is much smaller.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/18/cya...-7m-benchmark/

CyanogenMod is trying to make a Google App installer to install Cyanogen instead of having to root it and such.

Kuriin_sl said:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/18/cya...-7m-benchmark/

CyanogenMod is trying to make a Google App installer to install Cyanogen instead of having to root it and such.

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This news reminded me of the mods I used to do all the time on my original Droid.

Seeing as I might be stuck with my Droid Bionic for another little while I might look into the mods to try and boost performance and battery life.

iOS 7 became available to me today. Way fucking awesome.

I think iOS7 wins the Underwhelming Software of the Year award. The interface/color scheme looks like a blatant rip off of MS Office 2013 (white background with flat buttons) and most of the "new" features have been available via Jailbreak since the 3GS era. "Real" multitasking is about the only feature that carries this release.. Some decent stuff is in there for enterprise device management, but for your average semi-tech savvy user that has his iOS 6 jailbroken there isn't much new in iOS 7. Was really hoping for some Exchange Activesync improvements and more home screen customizations, but alas no..

There is if you don't jailbreak. Not all of us think its a good idea to run your phone as root all the time.

W4RH34D_sl said:

There is if you don't jailbreak. Not all of us think its a good idea to run your phone as root all the time.

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Doesn't change the fact that they've released a feature set that has been available via 3rd party sources for at least 4 years. Also, are you seriously that worried that your jailbroken Iphone will get hacked? Just don't install SSH (or at a minimum change the port) and change the root password and you're golden..

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

Doesn't change the fact that they've released a feature set that has been available via 3rd party sources for at least 4 years. Also, are you seriously that worried that your jailbroken Iphone will get hacked? Just don't install SSH (or at a minimum change the port) and change the root password and you're golden..

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Just not good practice. Not really worried about it. Third party sources compared to apple are probably laughable. They added iTunes radio, whereas Pandora will straight up cut you off after a certain time even if you're paying. I'd say its a fresh move, and compared to android offerings, is exactly the right step to take.
As far as GUI is concerned, this isn't a graphic design computer. ITs a phone. I need things to be easy to see and easy to get to. They nailed the phone.

W4RH34D_sl said:

Just not good practice. Not really worried about it. Third party sources compared to apple are probably laughable. They added iTunes radio, whereas Pandora will straight up cut you off after a certain time even if you're paying. I'd say its a fresh move, and compared to android offerings, is exactly the right step to take.
As far as GUI is concerned, this isn't a graphic design computer. ITs a phone. I need things to be easy to see and easy to get to. They nailed the phone.

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I never said the GUI was bad, just that it was a blatant rip off of Office 2013/Server 2012, which is ironic considering it's always been MS being accused of copying apple, not vice versa.

Not saying that iOS 7 is "bad", just that from an innovation standpoint I expected to see something new and unique, but instead they simply implemented long overdue features. It feels like a "catch up" rather than something that could re-establish them as a market leader.

P.S: Also wtf is with the change for quick deleting email from a left-->right swipe to a right-->left swipe. I've spent 5 years deleting thousands of emails the same way and then they reverse the swipe direction? By no means a game killer but seriously irritating to try and retrain years of habit.