Review: Motorola Moto X Bamboo (Second Generation)
A flagship smartphone with a bamboo back? Motorola has one in the form of the second generation Moto X that was supplied to me by Telus.
Rather than just be the fastest, coolest phone out there, Moto has tried to make this phone more upscale. Everyone I showed the phone to was impressed by it, so they succeeded on that front. Though I have to admit that I am not entirely confident that it can withstand scratches and scrapes. It would be a shame to cover it up with a plastic or rubber shell because the back is quite lovely. But having said that, bamboo is used in floors so maybe it will stand up to the rigors of daily use. The front panel glass seems to float right to the device’s edges and is protected only by a thin strip of plastic on the sides and corners. The metal that the phone uses feels classy. A MicroUSB port is on the bottom. A rocker switch for volume is on the right along with the power button. The top has the headphone jack and the slot for the SIM card. The screen is bright, clear, and readable in any lighting condition.
Here’s what you get under the hood:
- 5.2″ AMOLED screen at 1080 x 1920 resolution
- Quad-core 2.5 GHz processor
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB Storage
- 13MP rear camera
- 2MP front camera
- Android 4.4 KitKat (Android Lollipop 5.0.1 is available)
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- LTE
- Bluetooth 4.0 LE
- NFC
Like other Moto phones, it comes with stock Android without any customizations or fancy skins. I for one love that. I tested it with the latest and greatest which is Android Lollipop and found the OS to be the most interactive versions of Android I have ever seen. It also has a ton of useful additions that normally you’d need to download third party apps to have the functionality that Lollipop offers. As far as I am concerned, this is a must download. If you want to see the differences, click here for a detailed list. One thing I really liked was the Moto Display which uses the infrared sensors to detect when your hand is hovering over the phone, and triggers a display of notifications and actions. This worked really well for me. Other additions from Moto include:
- Motorola Protect which acts like Apple’s Find My iPhone. You can remotely locate the phone, lock the screen, change passwords and more.
- Motorola Assist which is like Apple’s Do Not Disturb feature. It silences your phone either when you’re sleeping (after you set that up of course) or when you’re in a meeting. The latter it figures out by itself if you use Google Calendar. There’s also a handy auto-reply feature.
The phone felt really quick and is easily right up there with the top smartphones out there. In terms of LTE speed, I averaged 17.15 Mbps downstream and 12.95 Mbps upstream on the Telus network. The phone only comes with 16GB of storage and it isn’t expandable. That’s a shame as it I suspect that you’ll find yourself challenged for storage space rather quickly. My advice to Motorola is to include a MicroSD card slot like they did with The IT Nerd award winning Moto G LTE, or have multiple memory sizes available like Apple does.
The camera is a 13MP camera that does 1080p video and it does a great job of taking photos and videos. Before we see what this camera can do, let me talk about the user interface. Swipe from the right of the screen and you can browse the pictures you’ve taken. Zooming in and out is a one finger operation. Place you finger in the middle of the screen and swipe up and you zoom in. Swipe down and you zoom out. It has the ability to automatically turn on HDR automatically which may be handy for those who want to make sure that they get the perfect shot. Now, let’s look that the still photo that I took at Pearson Airport in Toronto. Click the photo to see it in full size:
The picture is very good given the lighting conditions that were present on the day I took it. Now the video which is done at 1080p. Set it to full screen and 1080p:
The video is very good and so is the sound quality. You’re not going to have any complaints about using it.
Battery life is a strength of this phone. You’ll easily get a day and a half out of the phone without a problem. Telus offers up the second generation Moto X Bamboo for $100 on a two year plan as well as for $600 outright. One plus is that it is no more expensive than the non-bamboo version, that’s a great deal. Other than the lack of storage space, the Moto X Bamboo is everything that you want in a top end smartphone including a very classy look. And the fact that you can get Android Lollipop for it right now is a great selling point. Check it out if you are in the market for a flagship smartphone.
Leave a Reply