Moto X Where ‘X’ Stands for Excellent and Exemplary

Tech By on Sep 5, 2014

One of the best phones of last year keeps improving with its latest release. The new Moto X hits stores later this month with plenty of cool features. On the outside the Moto X shows off a sleek metal frame and a large 5.2-inch display with HD resolution. For video and photography lovers, it has a 13 megapixel rear camera and 4K video capture(!). The phone also includes four mics for improved sound capture. If you have 15 minutes to spare, you can use the turbo charging featuring to lock in a full 8 hour charge. Ah-maz-ing!

Of course, the Moto Maker customization continues with the old standard and wood backs, and now includes a premium leather back. Onboard Moto Voice lets you voice operate even more operation such as Facebook and YouTube apps. An unlocked phone sells for $499.99 at Motorola.com, while a contract phone retails for $99.99. You can also pair this with the just-release Moto Hint to take yourself further into the future.

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Motorola CEO Apologizes for Moto X Cyber Monday Site Outage

Tech By on Dec 3, 2013

Those of you hoping to get the $349 Moto X on Cyber Monday instead received a full day of site outages and fail. It’s like Motorola’s site saw the upcoming onslaught of customers, curled up into a ball and whimpered ‘no mas’. The well-received phone was set for a huge Cyber Monday discount of $150, bringing the contract-free versions of the 16gb and 32gb phones down to a respective $349 and $399. Great deal considering the specs.

Unfortunately, much like many of your hopes and dreams, it was not meant to be. However, props to Motorla for realizing their situation and correcting it. Their CEO, Dennis Woodside, came out today and issued an explanation and apology for the Cyber Monday snafu.

“I want you to understand what happened, and what we are doing to rectify the situation.”

“First, we misjudged the overwhelming consumer demand for Moto X, which was far greater than we expected.”

“Second, our pre-sale site testing was not sufficiently extensive. Testing failed to reveal weaknesses caused by large volumes of concurrent orders flowing through the MotoMaker customization engine.”

“Thus, when we opened the promotion this morning, an extraordinary spike in concurrent orders caused our website to go down. We couldn’t fulfill orders. The site became unstable. While some orders were filled, many customers tried all day to place their orders, unsuccessfully. Customers were left frustrated.”

They’ve decided to reschedule their promotion and add an additional day to buy, doubling the number of devices for sale (although how many is uncertain) and extending their 30% accessories sale.

So for all you Moto X fans out there, you’ll have twice the number of chances to score a great phone at a great price.

We reached out to Motorola for a technical explanation on the site outages, but didn’t receive any response at this time.

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Moto X: Specs Shmecs

Tech By on Aug 18, 2013

The smartphone battlefield is filled with combatants engaged in a war of the specs. But is the winner of the ‘my processor/screen/battery is bigger than yours’ contest really the best device? Motorola says no. The Moto X ($200) consciously stays out of the specs fray and instead focuses on customization and other perks. You can design your own phone, choosing everything from the color to the texture, with some 504 combinations possible. Touchless Control lets you control the phone with voice commands.  There’s a 4.7-inch AMOLED screen, Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.7 GHz processor, and 10 MP Clear Pixel camera, and while none of those numbers are class-leading, it’s somewhat refreshing to see a phone that doesn’t pretend it’s carrying a bazooka when it’s armed with a trusty rifle.

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