A few years ago, it was never really about specs. Smartphones, in their relative infancy, were exciting because of the experience, how they suddenly made it possible to access information from anywhere, at any time. Fire up an app and you're connected. But somewhere the industry hit an impasse, and companies soon lost focus on what's important. We lost sight of what's important. On came the growing pains of adolescents, and the boneheaded idea that bigger, faster and more automatically meant better. It's no secret that companies today abide by an unspoken formula, that is: flood the market with devices largely indistinguishable from the last, and see what sticks; it's become a corporate marketshare Rat Race—and, as unfortunate as it sounds, it's all so predictable. That's not to say we aren't being presented with great options. But the focus in recent months has been so narrowly on internal hardware buzzwords, that that's all anyone ever cares about. We're conditioned to always want the next beefy phone because what we have right now is never good enough. And then we got the Moto X, which, on first impression, is more of the same, maybe even less so. Leading up to the device's announcement, the Moto X was hyped by rigid executives as something to be reckoned with, an iPhone-Galaxy-S4-HTC-One killer from the labs of Motorola and Google. What we got, well, people were quite unimpressed by. But those people just don't get it. The Moto X is unquestionably among the best handsets, Android or otherwise, that's ever hit the market. Moto X Video Review

A Different Kind of Flagship

Compared to current market standards, the Moto X is a "mid-tier" smartphone, equipped with a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and 720p display. When you consider most flagship devices have already moved on to quad-core chips and Full HD screens, it's easy to see why Moto X is perceived as inferior. But it's not. At all. Make no mistake, Motorola's new device is impressively fast and smooth—loading apps, playing video, using email, etc.—during day-to-day use. You won't even care about what's inside. That's because the Moto X's specs are secondary to the overall experience. When Motorola unveiled its latest flagship recently, the company made it clear its new device was different—and not in the design-it-your-self way, though you have the option to do so. Through a series of onboard sensors and cloud-based services, the Moto X promises to introduce an experience smartphones have only hinted at over the years. Instead of sitting dormant on your tabletop, waiting for you to take action, to interact with it, Moto X is something that anticipates what you're going to do next, what you need, what you want. In many ways, Moto X is the most intelligent smartphone that's ever hit the market. Rather of relying on weird gestures and software gimmicks, Motorola has created technology that actually improves how you use your device. One of the simplest and best additions is Motorola's Active Display, which is described as a battery-friendly notification system that fades in and out when the screen is off. The company was very excited about the feature at its Moto X announcement, almost embarrassingly so, but the truth is is that it's incredibly useful—for what it's worth, I'm finding it difficult to use devices without the feature. Active Display isn't perfect; you can only see the most recent notification on the display, which you can access by swiping up. But it's the most convenient thing I've seen added to a phone in the last few years. I'm constantly checking the time on whatever phone I'm using, which means I'm always pressing that device's power button to wake up the display. All you need to do with the Moto X is simply pick it up. We'd like to see Motorola further expand on this idea, improve how it handles notifications, but right now it's easily one of the device's best features.

Other additions include Touchless Control, which lets you trigger specific actions by saying, "OK Google Now," whether your device is unlocked or not, and something called Motorola Assist, which controls your phone's behavior depending on what you're doing, such as driving or sleeping. If you're in a meeting, Assist will automatically silence your phone completely, and even auto reply to missed calls from favorites. Likewise with driving: Moto X knows when it's in motion, and will automatically read text messages and quick reply to contacts. This is all done automatically, almost instinctively by the Moto X, and it shows that Motorola is actually thinking about how a smartphone should act, not just creating software features for the sake of it. You can even launch the camera—a 10-megapixel ClearPixel camera—without much effort, though the feature is easily Moto X's weakest; simply twist your wrist like you're using a screwdriver and Moto X will (in theory) open the app. Touch the screen and it'll take a picture. We found the gesture didn't always execute what it's supposed to, but it did much of the time, and it was very convenient in many instances. On that note, the Moto X's camera software is nice, intuitive, easy to use. But the overall quality of the 10-megapixel ClearPixel sensor isn't up to snuff, especially with devices like the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5. Outside, pictures are adequate, nothing special; however, metering often struggled to properly expose a picture, and relying on tapping the screen to snap a picture limits the hardware and flexibility of shots. But it's easy, we'll give it that—just don't expect incredible results, particularly in lowlight, where the Moto X struggled in comparison to Lumias and HTC's One.