What Moto X4 has to offer for users?
Motorola brings the X4 in India mid-November this year and we have been using it since then. The company Motorola has done an incredible job in last few years bringing the technology before other brands like – Shatterproof phones, Dust and Waterproof phones, Pure Android Experience, actions to switch modes etc. Now coming to X4 let’s see how this product combines Design, OS and Performance.
Design
At the first look of Moto X4, it feels like a premium quality Moto G5s Plus. The screen size is 5.2-inch which means it can be easily used with one hand. It has been sandwiched between Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and back panel with metal rim across, which sums up to 163g in weight. Due to the glass back you need to keep a microfibre cloth always handy, as fingerprint smudges are pretty common.
The volume and power buttons are found on the right side. It comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom with USB Type C port next to it. It has hybrid SIM slot, which supports micro SD card up to 2TB. The fingerprint sensor is aligned at the bottom of the bezel, which can also act as One Button Navigation if activated. We found it useful feature because it not only gives you more screen space but also allows to add a swipe gesture on fingerprint sensor. The dual rear camera comes with a bump at the back but Moto came with watch dial design, which makes it elegant and stylish. The Moto X4 is IP68 waterproof, which means it can be submerged in six feet of water up to 30 minutes.
Hardware and Software
The Moto X4 runs on Octa-core Snapdragon 630 Mobile Platform processor, clocked at 2.2GHz paired along with 4GB RAM (We got the 4GB RAM and 64 internal storage variant). It has 5.2-inch Full HD LTPS display with 1920×1080 pixels resolution, 424 pixels per inch. Colors are vibrant, bright, visible in sunlight display and viewing angles are good too. It comes with all Motorola features like Active Display, which displays time, date, notifications, and media control when you pick the phone up. The twisting phone to start the camera and shaking switch on/off the flashlight is present on X4 as well. But all these features can be found in other Moto smartphones too but what is new in this one – the Moto Key and Wireless Sound System. The Wireless Sound System lets you connect up to 4 Bluetooth devices individually or align them with a stereo setup. It overrides your phone’s Bluetooth, so non-audio BT devices might interfere.
The smartphone comes with a stock version of Android 7.1.1 Nougat having Moto apps integrated. According to the company, it will roll out the Android 8.0 Oreo by early next quarter.
Moto Key lets you sign in to apps and website and it can be unlocked by fingerprint on your smartphone, currently, it is available on Windows Platform and works completely smooth.
Camera
Moto X4 comes with the dual rear camera featuring 12MP primary with Dual Autofocus Pixel sensor, PDAF, f/2.0 aperture, 1.4um pixel size and 8MP ultra-wide angle secondary sensor with a 120-degree field of view, f/2.2 aperture, 1.12um pixel size supported by a dual-tone LED flash and 4K video recording. There is a 16MP front-facing camera with LED flash, f/2.0 aperture, 1um pixel size.
Now jumping to the software in the initial use we found a lag probably because we were testing a review unit. Moto rolls out the update within a day to fix the issues which are great for the customer as the brand is not considering of only selling devices but also looking to enhance the experience.
It comes with a bunch of modes like Pro, Depth Mode, Panorama, Spot Color and Normal mode. Two small but noticeable features have been recently updated in the app. The first one can recognize the object which is basically Google Lens and secondly, in wide angle, it has location detection feature. As far as the features are concerned Moto X4 is preloaded with all things on paper and delivers up to the hype. The image what we got was crisp, natural with perfect colour reproduced and low light condition was also satisfactory. The depth-mode has already been seen in Moto G5s Plus but testing it on this gave a perfect cut out on the edges. The front camera also has a Professional mode which is rarely seen on any other smartphones. It picks the real colour and makes the tones realistic, doesn’t smooth much like other brands.
Performance and Battery
Although it has Octa core Snapdragon 630 processor, which is powerful it shows some lags or stutter while doing multi-task or playing games. This might get fixed with Oreo update but it is not a big deal breaker. As I am heavy user may be a normal user might never find this issue. Talking about handling intense graphics games it can handle them well including Asphalt 8, Mortal Komat X, Modern Combat 4, etc. The benchmarks for the handset are as follows – Antutu is 70233, Quadrant is 26057 and Geek Benchmark for Single core 866, Multi-core is 4143. One more noticeable thing is smartphone doesn’t have any kind of heating issues even while on intense gaming.
The smartphone is packed with 3000mAh battery and supports Turbo Charging. It manages to run for a single day easily after a full charge which is good enough for a heavy user like me. And it takes 40 minutes to charge 85 percent.
Gizmo Verdict
Moto X4 is definitely the successor of X-series and it enhances the overall experience to a next-generation covering all aspects of Hardware and Software in the mid-price range. In the range of 20-25K, it packs with features like Dual camera, Smart fingerprint, with an attractive design. One more advantage of Moto in this range is less competition so people are left with limited choices.
