MOTOROLA MOBILE PHONES are today regarded as classics, so it’s great to see Moto smartphones returning to the Thai market, led by the Moto X Style. True Move H is the sole distributor for Lenovo, which now owns Motorola Mobility.
Powerful, stylish and durable in build, the Moto X Style is housed in an aluminium frame with a beautifully patterned wooden rear cover. The power button, rear camera module and volume keys are all metallic, a nice contrast to the wood. A transparent protective plastic frame covers the edges of the phone.
The power comes from a 64-bit hexa-core Snapdragon 808 system-on-chip processor. It’s made up of two ARM Cortex-A57 cores running at 1.82GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.44GHz. An Adreno 418 GPU 600MHz handles graphics and games. There’s plenty of working memory – 3GB of RAM – and 32GB of internal storage.
You have the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. Unlike other brands, this phone uses the so-called “stock Android OS”, so there’s no modified user-interface.
Up front is a 5.7-inch IPS TFT LCD display of 2,560×1,400-pixel resolution at 520ppi density, all protected behind Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display is bright and clear and that resolution is perfect for viewing high-definition video and hi-res photos.
The 21-megapixel front camera is good quality, as I found while on a recent boat tour around the reservoir at the Ratchaprabha Dam in Surat Thani. The images perfectly captured the lovely green of the water against the blue sky and lush mountains. The camera was quick and responsive, grabbing clearly focused shots even while the boat was speeding.
All you have to do is touch the screen and it focuses and fires the shutter instantly. Hold down to get multiple shots. You can select a focus point and also a separate point for measuring the light, sampling different combinations and previewing the possibilities. And Panorama mode will get you those sweeping landscapes, guided by a progress bar.
There’s a dandy feature called Quick Capture, part of the Moto Actions suite. Simply spinning your wrist twice will activate the camera. Twist your wrist two more times and you switch from main camera to front camera, and then two more times switches back again.
Also useful in Moto Actions is the flashlight mechanism. You just make double “karate chop” with the phone to switch on the flashlight and repeat the process to turn it off.
Another Moto Action called Attentive Display keeps the display turned on while you’re looking at it. And still another, called Approach for Moto Display, kicks in when you reach for the phone when it’s in sleep mode, automatically showing the current alerts.
Get used to barking out voice commands, by which you control the phone hands-free. You can record a phrase for waking up the phone and then issue voice commands such as “What’s new?”, “Post to Facebook”, “Send WhatsApp message” and “Check voicemail”.
The Moto X Style performed very well in my tests. The touch screen and menus were very responsive and applications and games ran fast and smoothly.
To check the LTE 4G connection, I hooked into True Move H’s LTE network and was able to download applications quickly, back up photos to Google Drive and checking mail, with no problems or pauses encountered.
The Ookla Speedtest app measured the download speed via the LTE connection speed on True Move H at 51.98Mbps and the upload speed at 23.10Mbps. These of course can vary depending on location and how many people are using the network.
The native Google Play Music app is no good for high-resolution audio files of FLAC 24bit/192kHz, but I downloaded the VLC app and was able to play hi-res tracks on my Sony MDR-1ABT headphones and they sounded fine.
The Moto X Style has a suggested retail price of Bt19,990. If you sign up for the True service package “4G+ Super Smart 699” or better for 12 months and pay Bt2,000 in advance, you get a Moto 360 smartwatch worth Bt13,999 for free.
Key Specs
– Operating system: Android 6.0 Marshmallow
– Networks: GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz; UMTS/HSPA+: 800, 850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100MHz; 4G LTE: B1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 25, 28, 40, 41
– Processor: 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 with hexa-core CPU (MSM8992), Adreno 418 GPU @ 600Mhz
– Sensors: Accelerometer, Gyro, Magnetometer, Proximity, ALS, IR Gesture
– Memory: 3GB LPDDR3 RAM
– Storage: 32GB, expandable with micro SD card (up to 128GB)
– Display: 5.7-inch IPS TFT LCD with 1,440×2,560-pixel resolution, 520ppi, Corning Gorilla Glass 3
– Rear Camera: 21MP, f/2.0 aperture, Phase Detect Auto-Focus
– Front Camera: 5MP f/2.0 aperture, wide-angle lens
– Connectivity: Micro USB, 3.5mm headset jack, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, Wi-Fi 802.11a/g/b/n/ac + MIMO
– Battery: 3000mAh, TurboPower, 25W (eight hours of life from 15-minute charge)
– Dimensions: 153.9×76.2×6.1-11.06mm
– Weight: 179 grams
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.