NotOpodcast: Episode 5

Welcome to the fifth episode of NotOpodcast, where Michael and Ron join me to discuss a variety of topics such as upcoming games from ComicCon, Nintendo's rumored NX console, Motorola as a division of Lenovo, red dots and optics, and the recent occurrences of violence abroad.

The timecodes are:

Gaming - 0:47 - Gears of War 4, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1
Technology - 34:05 - Nintendo NX Hardware, Motorola/Lenovo
Firearms - 50:27 - Red Dot sights, recent occurrences of violence abroad



MotoMain - CopyAs someone who had been anticipating the Moto X since I first heard about it, I’ve been extremely disappointed by the details released at launch. It went from a great value with unique differentiators, to an expensive Motorola catastrophe. I’d like to create a timeline from my perspective of the development of rumors to the release of the Moto X phone.

Initial reports referred to the Moto X as the “X Phone”. Motorola Mobility had been purchased by Google in 2012, and had yet to produce any significant products under Google’s wing. This “X Phone” was to be the first Google + Motorola phone, and was rumored to be a superphone that would blow us all away.







As time went on, more about the phone became clear. We were quite sure it would be running the dual core Snapdragon S4 mentioned before, and it would have 2 GB of RAM, a 4.7” 720p screen, it would be offered in 16 GB and 32 GB variants, it would have NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11ac WiFi. At this point, I was somewhat annoyed, as the idea of having a phone without a microSD card slot seems like nothing more than a ploy by the phone manufacturer to squeeze more money out of the consumer while providing less value: “Oh, you want to store music on your phone? Give us another $50-$100 and we’ll add another 16 GB. Too bad you can’t change your mind later; we don’t give you the choice.” I was not surprised by this though, as Google has been idiotically eschewing microSD card slots on their devices for a while now, on the laughable premise that microSD cards “confuse” consumers, and so the solution is to not even give them the option. Thanks Google, I really enjoy being told I’m too stupid to understand the concept of having my data stored in one of two places, especially while you’re trying to sell me on this idea of “cloud storage”, which is a much more confusing/complex concept for a layperson to understand than a physical storage device like a microSD card.


By now the rumors had already leaked about the extra features Google and Motorola had been teasing us with: an always-on microphone that would allow users to speak commands anytime, an “Active Display” that would allow users to check notifications by activating only the necessary pixels without having to turn on the entire screen, Motorola Connect which would allow users to sync texts and phone calls with their computers and would also provide lost phone tracking, Motorola Migrate which users would install on their previous phone, and it would transfer all the phone’s data to their new Moto X, and finally, Motorola Assist that would detect certain states of the phone and act accordingly (e.g. when moving above a certain speed, it would assume you’re driving and would put the phone in “Driving Mode”). These features seemed like cool extras, though it would be hard to justify them as selling points. I saw it as Google trying to differentiate this phone from the Nexus devices that had come before it, providing not just a stock Android experience, but stock Android along with some unique features that users would appreciate rather than see as bloatware.

Soon we saw Motorola release a new line of products, the Droid Mini, Ultra, and Maxx. The general opinion of these phones is that they’re irrelevant, just as the majority of Motorola products have been since the original Droid launched in 2009. What was significant about this launch though, was that Motorola was touting their “new X8 chip”, which would clearly be the chip in the Moto X as well. They said these new Droids would be packing octa-core processors. This assertion left many experts confused and annoyed, wondering what chip this could possibly be.



This sums up Motorola’s approach to core counting quite well.



MotoX - Copy

We knew the specifications were a dual core Snapdragon S4 at 1.7 GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU, a 4.7” AMOLED 720p screen using “Magic Glass” (which is Gorilla Glass that wraps around the side of the phone without any gap), 2 GB of RAM, a 10MP rear camera, a 2MP front camera, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, 802.11a/g/b/n/ac dual band WiFi, 4G LTE, and would be available in a 16GB and 32GB variants.

We knew the software. It would be running Android 4.2 (which seemed a little strange considering that Google had just released Android 4.3, you would expect that a “Google Phone” would be running the latest version of Android. This should have been another red flag.) It would have Google Now (voice activation), Active Display, Motorola Connect, Motorola Migrate, and Motorola Assist, as well as some extra camera features not present on stock Android.


We were fairly sure that based on Google’s pricing on Nexus phones as well as from the middling specifications of the Moto X that it would probably be priced around $300 off-contract. The majority of news outlets and analysts appeared to share that view as well.

At this point, I was looking forward to the official launch day of August 1st. I said to myself “I’m going to replace this miserable Droid 3 (I had to downgrade after accidentally smashing my Droid 4) with a new phone that may not be the most highly spec’ed, but will be modern, have almost stock Android, will have a few interesting software features, will be reasonably priced, available on Verizon, and will tide me over until I can do a full upgrade in August 2014.”

August 1st finally arrived. As a result, on August 2nd - I bought myself a replacement Droid 4.

You might be asking yourselves why I would spend $190 on a phone that is a year and a half old. The reason is simple – the Moto X is a complete disaster.


It was bad enough that Google and Motorola thought they could sell this mid-range device at a high-end price, as well as snubbing anyone not on AT&T, but what was bad soon became worse. We found out that the Moto X would come with carrier bloatware and a locked bootloader. Motorola has been releasing phones with locked bootloaders for a long time, but we expected that Google’s influence would prevent them from doing something so blatantly restrictive. We have since discovered that the Moto X sold for Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Rogers networks would come with the bootloader locked, but would have an unlocker tool provided by Motorola for the customer to use. Obviously missing from that list are Verizon, and Google + Motorola’s preferred carrier: AT&T. This is because Verizon and AT&T will only sell Moto X phones with locked bootloaders that cannot be unlocked until they release the “Developer Edition” of the phone. As we know, “Developer Editions” are never available at an on-contract price, so expect to pay $575+ for a Moto X with an unlocked bootloader.



For those of you that chose not to read the rest of this article, this nugget of advice should be all you need: If you’re considering buying a Moto X, don’t. If you want to spend $200 on an on-contract device and can’t wait for something new to come out, buy a Galaxy S4 or an HTC One. If you want to spend $600 on an off-contract device and can’t wait for something new to come out, buy a Google Play Edition Galaxy S4 or HTC One. If you want to spend $200 on an on-contract device or $600 on an off-contract one, and you don’t mind waiting a bit, within the next couple months, you’ll see the release of various phones running Snapdragon 800 processors that will thoroughly embarrass the Moto X even more than the current crop of (months old) Snapdragon 600 based devices.

Google and Motorola should be ashamed of themselves. When I began this article saying that I expected a Google product launch made by Motorola, but instead got a disastrous Motorola launch, it’s because I meant this: Motorola has long released products with mediocre specifications at stupidly high price points that come riddled with MotoBlur garbage, carrier bloatware, and locked bootloaders. They’ve tried to sell these devices by using misleading marketing for years; this “X8 eight-core chip” nonsense is something right out of their standard playbook. This type of product release is exactly what I would have expected from Motorola, but not what I would have expected from Google. I thought that by acquiring Motorola Mobility, Google would turn it into a subsidiary that would churn out products that Google would be proud of. Instead we’ve been presented with more of the same Motorola crap that now comes with the Google stamp of approval. Proof of this approval is that Google will supposedly be spending $500mil on advertising this abomination. I hope that sales are nonexistent, and that Google burns through that $500mil with no result. I want the market to brutally punish Google and Motorola for trying to peddle garbage at luxury pricing. They’ve clearly taken a page out of Apple’s book, and it disgusts me. I would call for a boycott of the Moto X, but it shouldn’t be necessary; after all, people should only buy decent phones to begin with, so the Moto X shouldn’t even be on the list of possible options.

