Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased the Moto X as an upgrade from my Galaxy S3. I shopped it against the Galaxy S4, Note 3, iPhone 5S, HTC One X, and 2013 Droid Maxx. My smart phone history is iPhone->iPhone 3GS->HTC Thunderbolt 4G->Samsung GS3->Moto X. I've also used my wife's HTC 8X extensively. I'm a fairly advanced user, working largely in the IT field. I've rooted phones in the past, but haven't bothered since the later releases of Verizon's S3 ROMs caught up with most of what I was wanting. I don't expect to root the Moto X. I'm also fairly hard on phones, doing warranty or extended warranty replacements about once a year, usually for a cracked screen or water damage. I run and bike with them in an armband or bike mount, and they often get sweat on, and occasionally get dropped. When looking for a new phone, I wanted something with good battery life, was VERY responsive, and that felt good to hold and use. I went through three S3's in various states of ROM's, mostly from Verizon, and was never fully satisfied with how responsive or reliable the phone was. After years of using these things, I've finally figured out that I'm just not going to play games on my phone, and that 90% of what I'm going to do is news, audio, e-mail, calendar, notes, text, diet/exercise tracking, camera/video, and social media. Less frequently, I do techie things like RDP, run network tools, use office apps, check IP cameras. Occasionally, I'll watch Netflix or read Kindle. I say all of this so you understand my use model and how it relates to my review. There are a lot of different ways to use phones and reasons to choose them, so the way I use mine heavily informs my opinion. My app list: MyNetDiary, Endomondo, Evernote, Maps, Email, Gmail, USA Today, Audible, Spotify, DoggCatcher, Engadget, reddit is fun, Facebook, Better Terminal Emulator, PocketCloud, Skype, Ping&DNS, WeatherBug, IMDB, Amazon, Kindle, Netflix, Pandora, NFL Mobile. My principle complaint with the S3 was battery life, followed by lagginess and reboots. It is a relative complaint, because both were far better than the Thunderbolt that came before it. My top two choices for new phones were the Note 3 and Moto X - two very different phones. The S4, to me, didn't differentiate itself enough from the S3 to get me excited about it. I've used it and have friends that purchased it, and it seems to be a good phone - more responsive than the S3, with better battery life. Despite that, it was an incremental improvement, and I wasn't very interested in any of its new gee-whiz tricks, such as motion navigation or eye tracking, and they didn't seem to work very well in practice. The Note 3 was attractive to me due to it's high spec sheet, long battery life, and better ability to do 'real work' via its pen and larger, higher res screen. Ultimately, however, I decided real world performance for my apps (noted above) was more important than specs, and I also decided that my remote real work set (primarily e-mail composition, spreadsheet edits, network tests, and remote RDP sessions) was too small a part of my use case to merit the extra size of the Note 3. The size was particularly a concern when wearing on an arm band for running and gym work and for one handed operation. I also have a 7" tablet, and a 13" convertible ultrabook, which further minimized the need for a larger screen phone. So that leads, finally, to the Moto X. Here are some things I really like about it, in order of importance to me, after about a week of use. Some of these points may also apply to other phones - I'm not saying they are exclusive to the Moto X, but they are what is most noticeable/important to me after a week's use. Long battery life - I like to go on long, 7+ hour bike rides while tracking with Endomondo and streaming music. The GS3 died after about 5 hours, and this one makes it with power to spare. If I take it off the charger at 6:30 AM, and plug it in for bed at 11 PM, it has about 20% left after a day of normal use for me (mostly reading Reddit at lunch doing email and text throughout the day, and maybe an hour or so of other misc use of the apps above). I also play audio (Audible, DoggCatcher, or Spotify) from it for about 90 minutes a day during my drive. Feel in hand - I got used to the GS3, and sometimes appreciated the larger size (such as if watching the rare Netflix item or using RDP), but didn't ever like the long thumb reach for one handed use. The Moto X feels PERFECT to me. I like the weight, the grip, and the reach. This one is pretty subjective, so I suggest holding one in a store if you can. Rock solid up time and no operation lag - This may be partly due to my relatively limited app set, to the faster processor in this phone, or to the new Android build on this phone, but whatever it is, I like it. Everything happens instantly, without stutter, and that is what I want. Low power background alert system - I didn't realize I would like this as much as I do, but I really like the way the phone puts alerts (e-mail, text, message, alarm) on the screen with swipe up to view, left to clear, and down to unlock actions. It is efficient. App for texting on laptop - I'm sure there are other 3rd party apps that do this, but it was built in to the Moto X, and is the first time I've done it. With the Chrome plugin installed, all of my texts and calls pop up on my laptop while at work. This works well with my work flow so that I can quickly copy and paste information form there into Outlook or other documents that I am working on. Made a few miles from my house - As someone who works in domestic manufacturing, I appreciate the challenge that Google/Flextronics/Motorola undertook when scaling the old Nokia plant up in such short order to build 100,000 of these a week. The phone didn't cost me more than an S4 would have, and I like it that it was made in Ft. Worth, TX, USA. Continuous voice recognition - This is by far the best voice recognition I've used on any product. That said, it still hasn't made it into my daily work flow. I have to think too much about how to phrase my commands when I want it to do things and usually still have to look at the screen to OK or approve whatever it wants to know. I still put it on the list, because I am impressed with what it CAN do and because it is useful for dictating texts and e-mails, but it COULD be a game changing feature, and it still isn't quite there yet for me. The continuous listening aspect is dead on for me, with zero false positives or need to initiate recognition manually. Cool. If I didn't mention a feature in this list, it doesn't mean it was bad, it just means it didn't stand out or wasn't important to me. The camera, for example, was adequate but didn't strike me as significantly better or different from the S3 or other phones I've used - then again, I've only used it for a few test photos. Most of my camera use is work related, and I tend to use a DSLR for family stuff. The flick action for launching the camera isn't 100% reliable and has both failed to go off when I've tried to use it and gone off intentionally in my pocket when not, so I do it manually. I like the screen, but would have preferred 1080p. Overall though, it has good brightness and viewing angles, and I think it was a good compromise if it helped get the battery life where it is. I haven't really noticed a difference in call quality across my entire phone history mentioned above. IMO, they all suck, and Verizon can't roll out HD voice soon enough. Music quality is good, but I can't tell a difference from the others. I'll try to answer questions if you have them. I like this phone and would like to see it do well. The mobile industry needs more than two strong players - competition is good for all of us.