Motorola Unveils Moto X Smartphone - Sci-Tech Today

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Motorola's new flagship Moto X smartphone is noteworthy for a number of reasons. It can detect whether it is in your pocket rather than, say, in the cup holder of a car going 60 miles per hour on the highway. You can ask it to do things with your voice, without having to press any physical buttons first. And you need not wake it up to peek at the time or to see if you have any new messages.You can design your own phone, too, choosing a color scheme for the front, back, accents and more, as if you were picking the colors on a new car. Motorola promises to get it to you quickly, because the phone is manufactured in Texas.
The handset is significant for at least one other key reason. It's the first phone produced from scratch by Motorola Mobility since it was acquired last year by Google.
Moto X will be available in the U.S. from all the major carriers toward the end of August or early September starting at $199.99 for a 16-gigabyte version with a two-year contract. For $249.99, you get 32 GB. Google is also throwing in 50 GB of online storage free through Google Drive.
It has 2 GB of RAM and relies on what Motorola refers to as the X8 Mobile Computing System, a series of chips that includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro.
On the software side, the phone runs a near-stock (or pure) version of Android (4.2.2 Jelly Bean for now). It also includes a 4.7-inch AMOLED high-definition display with a resolution of 720 x 1080.
The back of this compact, 4.6-ounce phone has a slight curve to it because, as Google explains, your palm isn't flat. It certainly feels comfortable in my palm.
The internal battery, which cannot be removed, is also not flat, Motorola says. The company claims you'll get more than a full day's charge on normal use.
You can summon the rear 10-megapixel camera on the phone to take pictures by pulling it out of your pocket and twisting your hand in a gesture Motorola compares to turning a screwdriver. You then tap anywhere on the screen to capture an image. Motorola says the whole exercise takes about 2 seconds, but I found it awkward and didn't get the hang of this gesture immediately. Hopefully, I'll have mastered it by the time I do a full review of the phone. (continued...)
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