At the end of last year's Moto X review, we concluded that it wasn't a perfect phone. Still, we wanted to see where Motorola would be in a year, and, about 13 months later, it's safe to say it's been a busy year for the company.

For starters, Motorola has made an aggressive play for the midrange, low-end, and emerging smartphone markets in the form of the Moto G and the Moto E. Both phones make compromises to hit their sub-$200-unlocked prices, but they largely identify the most important smartphone stuff and give you enough to get by. The original Moto X launched at a $579 unlocked ($199 on-contract) price point that was frankly too much to pay for what it offered, but it dropped to a more suitable $399 by the beginning of the year. The phone has spent most of its time since hovering between $300 and $400, give or take a sale.

Things have been no less lively on the business side. The US-based phone factory that factored so prominently into early Moto X advertising is being shuttered. The division has continued to lose money for Google, but its sales are finally on an uptick, and reviews of each Moto phone have typically been positive. Most importantly, Google is selling Motorola to Lenovo, a company that isn't doing so badly in the smartphone market itself (the deal isn't actually scheduled to close until some time next year, but Motorola has already quietly stripped "a Google company" from its branding on everything from its homepage to its phones' boot screens).

The upshot of all of this is that Motorola is a company you should be paying attention to again, something that hasn't been the case since the turn of the decade or so. Though it's making the biggest waves at the low end of the market, it's still making and selling flagships, too, which leads us to the subject of this review: the new Moto X.

The original Moto X was an opportunity for Motorola to reinvent itself. The new Moto X just needs to take everything the old one did well and do it better.

Body and screen

Specs at a glance: Google/Motorola Moto X (2nd generation) Screen 1920×1080 5.2-inch AMOLED (424 PPI) OS Android 4.4.4 CPU 2.46GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 (quad-core Krait 400) RAM 2GB GPU Qualcomm Adreno 330 Storage 16 or 32 GB NAND flash Networking 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, supported bands vary by model Ports Micro-USB, headphones Camera 13MP rear camera, 2MP front camera Size 5.54" × 2.85" × 0.13-0.39" (140.8 × 72.4 × 3.8-9.9 mm) Weight 5.08 oz. (144 g) Battery 2300mAh Starting price $99 with two-year contract, $499 unlocked

Motorola calls the new Moto X just "Moto X," with no extra numbers or letters attached, and it's the same way for the new Moto G. The box, the phone's About panel, and Motorola's website distinguish between last year's model and this year's with a "2nd generation" label, but otherwise the name is the same. On the one hand, this might create the potential for some confusion. On the other, it saves us from having to call it something silly like "the Moto X M8." Throughout this review, assume "Moto X" refers to the new one unless we make a clear distinction.

Last year's Moto X was consciously restrained compared to other Android flagships at the time. It used a 720p screen where many of its contemporaries had moved to 1080p. It had a dual-core CPU when most flagships offered four cores. Its screen spanned a "mere" 4.7 inches when many others moved up to (and past) 5.0 inches. We actually appreciated Motorola's approach—between the size and the nicely curved back and edges, it felt better in the hand than any other Android flagship.

The new Moto X throws that approach out the window, to both good and ill effect. It's got a big, sharp 5.2-inch 1080p AMOLED display, which is great for reading. Like all AMOLED displays, it has a tendency to oversaturate colors, and whites are often vaguely greenish, but as a tradeoff you get great contrast along with nice, deep blacks. The screen is bright enough to be usable in sunlight, though IPS panels like the one in the HTC One M8 are still a bit easier to see in these cases.

The tradeoff for this bigger screen is that the Moto X no longer fits our hands like a glove, and its size is much more comparable to other Android flagships. It's a little wider and a little shorter than the HTC One M8 and right around the same height and width as the Nexus 5. It's not what we'd call unmanageable, but if you thought the Moto X's smaller size made it special, the new phone is a bit of a letdown.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

That said, the physical construction of the phone is head-and-shoulders above last year's Moto X. The old version of the phone used an all-plastic construction that, while sturdy, didn't have the fit-and-finish we'd associate with premium handsets like the HTC One M8 and the iPhone 5S. The volume and power buttons jiggled a bit in their cutouts, and the SIM slot didn't sit perfectly flush with the side of the phone. You could see and feel the plastic seam where the front and the back halves of the phone joined together. It was a bunch of small deficiencies that didn't ruin the phone, but they were further emphasized when the first Moto G came out a few months later and looked and felt basically the same. Surely the phone that cost three times as much should have the better build quality?

The new Moto X uses an all-glass front the curves at the edges to meet the all-metal rim around the phone. This aluminum looks and feels great, and it also doubles as the phone's antenna (there are plenty of cutouts separating the pieces of the antenna—the entire mobile industry has learned its lesson from the iPhone 4 and " antennagate "). Both of these materials retain the curves around the edge that made the original Moto X so comfortable to hold, even if the phone is much larger than it was before. The power button and volume rocker, housed on the right side of the phone, don't exhibit any of the jiggling that they did before, and the power button is textured to make it easier to tell the difference between it and the volume buttons. The metal SIM slot still doesn't sit quite flush with the metal rim, but it's been moved to the top of the phone where you can't feel it all the time as you hold the phone.

Finally, the back of the phone can be either plastic, wood, or leather, depending on what you choose—as before, most Moto Xs can be customized with the Moto Maker feature to personalize the phone. You'll be able to choose between a white and a black front face, a few different accent colors (as far as we can tell, this just changes the color of the ring around the Motorola logo on the back of the phone), and the material and color of the back. Our review unit is one of the leather ones, an option new with this year's Moto X. The look and feel is nice and understated even if it's a little easy to scuff.

The back of the phone is non-removable and broken up only by the Motorola logo, the camera, and a couple of pinholes (presumably for microphones; Motorola says the Moto X has four of them to help with noise canceling for phone calls and the voice control features). The small speaker grill from the back of the old Moto X is gone, and all sound now comes out of the bottom grill on the front of the phone. This is generally an improvement since that speaker is more difficult to cover with your hand and muffle, though, unlike the new Moto G, you only get one speaker on the front instead of two.

Software

Like last year's Moto X, the new one runs a largely unaltered version of Android. Motorola's reviewer guide shouts from the rooftops several of the same things we recommended to OEMs in our most recent Android update article: don't use skins. Add value through apps that can be updated through the Google Play store, not things that are built into (and must be updated alongside) the rest of the operating system.

Motorola has so far been pretty good about updating its handsets. The old Moto X shipped with Android 4.2 but is already running version 4.4.4, same as the new one. The Moto G was updated to KitKat fairly quickly as well. If getting updates is important to you, these phones are a safe bet, and the new Moto X is all but guaranteed to receive a prompt update to Android's L release when it comes out this fall.

The only downside here is that when you buy your phone through a carrier, there's nothing Motorola can do to stop them from loading up your phone with extraneous apps. Our AT&T-branded review unit included a half-dozen extra apps, some of which are duplicative of Google's applications (Mail, Navigator, and mobile payments apps are the biggest offenders). It runs counter to Motorola's stated goal—clean versions of Android with no confusing app overlap—and it's too bad that the Android OEMs are still subject to these carrier-supplied "value-adds."

Motorola's own pre-loaded applications are few in number and usually either useful or harmless. The Motorola Migrate app will let you move contacts, calendar events, and other information over from older Android phones running version 2.2 or later, from an iCloud account, or from a Bluetooth-enabled dumbphone. Motorola Assist (a separate app on the Moto G and the old Moto X but baked into the "Moto" app here) will attempt to sense what you're doing based on the time, location, movement, or calendar events (whether you're driving to work, at home, in a meeting, or sleeping, for instance). It will then offer to read your texts aloud, play music, or silence your phone depending on what's appropriate.

Another feature available on both the newer and older Moto phones (and is, in fact, coming to vanilla Android in the L release) is a "trusted devices" feature that allows your phone to unlock without a passcode or pattern when within proximity of a paired Bluetooth device like a car or a smartwatch. Features like this make us a little nervous—if someone stole your locked, encrypted phone, all they'd need to do to get at everything on it would be to also steal your smartwatch or to quickly unlock it while still within range of one of your devices. It's an optional feature, but the L release will make it much more common.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Finally, an app called Motorola Connect will pass certain notifications to a PC, Mac, or Chromebook running the Motorola Connect Chrome extension. The app is available on most Motorola phones, but the desktop integration is only available on the Moto X phones and certain newer Droid models. It's not as capable as, say, the integration Apple is planning with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, but once you sign into the app on both the phone and your computer, you'll be able to see and respond to SMS messages. You'll be able to see incoming calls, too, though you can't pick up from your computer—you can just see that they're coming in, then either ignore them or send an SMS message in reply.