A challenger appears
Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility started off a lot of different rumours. Most commentators decided that Motorola was a defensive buy — an investment to protect the search giant from patent attacks by Apple and Oracle. Most commenters also started thinking that Google was going to enter the mobile phone hardware market in a big way.
At 12.5 billion dollars, Motorola was Google’s biggest purchase till date- nearly doubling the company’s headcount. The Moto X, announced last week, is the brainchild of the software giant’s union with the cutting edge hardware maker.
The Moto X has already been dubbed the Anti-iPhone. While the iPhone is all about giving the user a predictable and smooth user interface- the Moto X is all about customisation, personalisation and individualisation of the phone. Motorola has confirmed that users would be able to customise the back, edge of and cover of their phones. The device is available in a variety of colours, and rumours say that the phone will also be available with wood and bamboo back covers. Moto X is also going to deliver some features that have never been seen in the market before.
Touchless control, an omniscient personal assistant that goes beyond the knowledge engine abilities of Apple’s Siri to deliver data from Google’s vast stores of information.
Quick capture photos — if you shake the phone quickly, it automatically goes into photography mode — and the entire touchscreen becomes the click button.
Hands-free authentication, instead of entering a password to unlock your device every single time, Motorola will provide people with small plastic tags. If the tags are within a few feet of the phone (such as stuck onto the user’s clothing) the phone will not need a password to open. Similarly, the plastic tags allow you to set up password free ‘safe zones’ such as your office or car.
On the whole Moto X is an exciting phone. Everything about it is novel — from the manufacturing model to the many different UI enhancements.
While competitors like Samsung and HTC have tried, and succeeded, to defeat Apple in the hardware specs arena, they were unable to win over the biggest chunk of the market.
The Moto X is the mobile industry’s first attempt to defeat Apple at what it does best: user experience and usability.
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