This introduction for Moto X is really, really trying way too hard to be cool in both the copy and design. It comes off almost as badly as the Samsung ad mocking the uncool parents and nerds in line for iPhones.
Particularly cringeworthy:
* "Your socks, your watch, your bike say so much about you"
* "Play Goldilocks and choose the right size for you: 16 or 32 MB" Was Goldilocks really the best pick here--isn't this the male pitch, badger hair shaving brush, tortoise shell glasses and all? Didn't Goldilocks have three choices?
* "you'll never miss those OMG-that-was-sick-did-you-see-that moments" Sick copy brah.
* "Moto X responds to your voice, no touching necessary. (That's what she said.)" This doesn't even make sense as a joke.
That Samsung ad has been wildly successful and has been running for a very long time. It only comes across "badly" to existing iOS nuts.
I won't speak to the marketing copy here. I agree it certainly doesn't move me, but then I'm (and no doubt you're) hardly in the target demographic either.
Also, "feminine mystique" and "wear it well, kemosabe" are both guaranteed to ruffle all the wrong feathers for many people, including me. I'm really surprised some of this copy made it out of a mock-up.
wow that is actually their marketing copy... An actual "that's what she said joke", holy shit.
I once wrote about Apple was losing their way in terms of their marketing writing, but it seems their competition is not even close to catching up.
As a lowly marketer it strikes me as unfair/frustrating that there are people out there getting paid triple what I get paid writing unconvincing drivel that treats the customer as a dumb internet meme.
I think if you're buying phones based on # of cores or Ghz, you're basing purchases on the wrong thing.
If you want to buy a smartphone based on the fact that it has 4 ARM cores, you are buying on specs, not on actual delivered capability, and those extra cores may very well be eating up more power and more die space for no reason.
(I'm not talking about Moto X's low-power DSP cores, I'm talking about having 4 Krait or ARM 15 cores)
GPU cores are different because GPU workloads are automatically parallelizable, but then again, you only need as many GPU cores as it takes to drive average workloads at the given pixel density. It makes no sense to include enough GPU to render a game at 250 frames per second. Developers are most likely not going to spend time optimizing a game for a high end GPU like it was some kind of console in a fragmented market like Android.
Point is, one should look at these phones from a practical standpoint and ignore the spec sheets. Does it take good pictures? Does it feel fast? Does the screen look good? Does the battery last long? Does it feel good to hold and lightweight? Does it do cool stuff that makes you more productive, etc.
If you buy phones on spec alone you may end up with a POS that looks good on paper but is irritating to use.
Take the Galaxy S4, sure, on paper and benchmarks (some of which are cheats), it looks great. But how often are those peak rates hit? How much Android software really takes advantage of the full power of the device? How much battery life is sacrificed, or size?
You could say that the screen or memory capacity might be objectively better, but again, how much of a price in battery life are you paying for those displays?
Also, on customization, consider that Motorola is going to build and ship, to you, a phone in 4 days. Maybe you don't care about any of the color options, but you have to admit, being able to assemble and ship a phone to you with a 4-day turnaround is impressive and is a manufacturing capability that is sure to useful for other things in the future.
Who is complaining about the specs? I seriously doubt many people, even in these parts, buy phones based on the number of cores in the cpu or gpu alone.
The big problem I see with the Moto X is the price. A mid-range phone should not be 550 off-contract. I was seriously expecting a $299-349 price for this kind of device. Maybe we will see that with the Play edition? I doubt it though.
So that's that. I was waiting for this reveal before deciding on a new phone purchase, but that's not remotely acceptable for me. Looks like a GS4 Google Edition is in my future instead.
How bizarre that Google would push for and sell in their store unlocked versions of the Samsung and HTC phones, but not release the Moto phone unlocked to begin with. Like, why does their own phone need a Google Edition? Hilarious.
Maybe the companies aren't integrated enough for that, yet? You'd think Google would be more of a mind with its own company than with the competition, though!
I had low expectations based on the leaks and this thing is still incredibly underwhelming even relative to my drastically reduced expectations.
Surprisingly meh across the board, even if the price were in Nexus 4 territory. At $200 on contract it is a sad and unfunny joke.
Between this and the fact that Google destroyed Navigation with Android Maps 7.0.2, I'm starting to doubt my next phone will be an Android device at all, which is an idea that would have been unfathomable to me a few months ago.
Why "OK Google Now" instead of just "OK Google"? That seems like too much sub branding, which is something I usually associate with Microsoft (every Microsoft product is called Microsoft+SomethingElse).
They certainly want the prefix to all voice commands to be a low incidence sequence of phonemes for any language so that you don't get spurious activations and drain battery and/or accidentally execute a command, but I would think "OK Google" is a rare enough phrase that it would suffice.
A five syllable "wake up" command just seems excessive.
What's even stranger is that "OK Google" is the hotword for the Chrome Voice search thing they recently launched at IO.
Retconning "Google Now" into a voice assistant is weird because at IO they were saying how they wanted Google itself be the assistant, by modelling it after the Star Trek computer.
Also what happens when the actual, predictive Google Now comes out for Chrome?
Same here. A whole lot of blank white space. Had to do a Ctrl-A to find out there was white text on a white background. Same on Chrome, Firefox and IE. I thought perhaps our work network was blocking a stylesheet or something.
Can it swap batteries? I plan to continue sticking with Samsung Galaxy (3/4) for this reason alone. The UX benefit of never having to plug the phone into charge and just quickly swapping batteries when it dies (or on the road) is amazing.
Pretty sad. Guy Kawasaki had everyone super excited about building their own phone and we end up with just color and capacity choices. Plenty of phones with the later, not to mention SD card slots which are far more capable, and nearly everyone can already choose their color just by tossing a case on it. We even have companies selling custom 3D printed color cases with whatever you want on them in far more detail than this allows.
Hey wait a second...I am quite intrigued by that "always on" speech core and that NLP core. Google has some great speech recognition tech(possibly the best). This is one area where they can really leave the rest of the pack behind, looking like cave men.
[+] [-] sk5t|12 years ago|reply
Particularly cringeworthy:
* "Your socks, your watch, your bike say so much about you" * "Play Goldilocks and choose the right size for you: 16 or 32 MB" Was Goldilocks really the best pick here--isn't this the male pitch, badger hair shaving brush, tortoise shell glasses and all? Didn't Goldilocks have three choices? * "you'll never miss those OMG-that-was-sick-did-you-see-that moments" Sick copy brah. * "Moto X responds to your voice, no touching necessary. (That's what she said.)" This doesn't even make sense as a joke.
[+] [-] ajross|12 years ago|reply
I won't speak to the marketing copy here. I agree it certainly doesn't move me, but then I'm (and no doubt you're) hardly in the target demographic either.
[+] [-] gilrain|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mladenkovacevic|12 years ago|reply
I once wrote about Apple was losing their way in terms of their marketing writing, but it seems their competition is not even close to catching up.
As a lowly marketer it strikes me as unfair/frustrating that there are people out there getting paid triple what I get paid writing unconvincing drivel that treats the customer as a dumb internet meme.
[+] [-] yapcguy|12 years ago|reply
Snapping in place a back plate doesn't change the reality that the device is 99% manufactured and assembled in China.
Disappointing from Motorola/Google.
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cromwellian|12 years ago|reply
If you want to buy a smartphone based on the fact that it has 4 ARM cores, you are buying on specs, not on actual delivered capability, and those extra cores may very well be eating up more power and more die space for no reason. (I'm not talking about Moto X's low-power DSP cores, I'm talking about having 4 Krait or ARM 15 cores)
GPU cores are different because GPU workloads are automatically parallelizable, but then again, you only need as many GPU cores as it takes to drive average workloads at the given pixel density. It makes no sense to include enough GPU to render a game at 250 frames per second. Developers are most likely not going to spend time optimizing a game for a high end GPU like it was some kind of console in a fragmented market like Android.
Point is, one should look at these phones from a practical standpoint and ignore the spec sheets. Does it take good pictures? Does it feel fast? Does the screen look good? Does the battery last long? Does it feel good to hold and lightweight? Does it do cool stuff that makes you more productive, etc.
If you buy phones on spec alone you may end up with a POS that looks good on paper but is irritating to use.
Take the Galaxy S4, sure, on paper and benchmarks (some of which are cheats), it looks great. But how often are those peak rates hit? How much Android software really takes advantage of the full power of the device? How much battery life is sacrificed, or size?
You could say that the screen or memory capacity might be objectively better, but again, how much of a price in battery life are you paying for those displays?
Also, on customization, consider that Motorola is going to build and ship, to you, a phone in 4 days. Maybe you don't care about any of the color options, but you have to admit, being able to assemble and ship a phone to you with a 4-day turnaround is impressive and is a manufacturing capability that is sure to useful for other things in the future.
[+] [-] uncoder0|12 years ago|reply
The big problem I see with the Moto X is the price. A mid-range phone should not be 550 off-contract. I was seriously expecting a $299-349 price for this kind of device. Maybe we will see that with the Play edition? I doubt it though.
[+] [-] rogerchucker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|12 years ago|reply
http://www.droid-life.com/2013/08/01/moto-x-bootloader-is-lo...
So that's that. I was waiting for this reveal before deciding on a new phone purchase, but that's not remotely acceptable for me. Looks like a GS4 Google Edition is in my future instead.
[+] [-] gilrain|12 years ago|reply
Maybe the companies aren't integrated enough for that, yet? You'd think Google would be more of a mind with its own company than with the competition, though!
[+] [-] MrKurtz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|12 years ago|reply
Surprisingly meh across the board, even if the price were in Nexus 4 territory. At $200 on contract it is a sad and unfunny joke.
Between this and the fact that Google destroyed Navigation with Android Maps 7.0.2, I'm starting to doubt my next phone will be an Android device at all, which is an idea that would have been unfathomable to me a few months ago.
[+] [-] skizm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eob|12 years ago|reply
They certainly want the prefix to all voice commands to be a low incidence sequence of phonemes for any language so that you don't get spurious activations and drain battery and/or accidentally execute a command, but I would think "OK Google" is a rare enough phrase that it would suffice.
A five syllable "wake up" command just seems excessive.
[+] [-] lotso|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4578890/this-is-the-moto-x
[+] [-] Shooti|12 years ago|reply
Retconning "Google Now" into a voice assistant is weird because at IO they were saying how they wanted Google itself be the assistant, by modelling it after the Star Trek computer.
Also what happens when the actual, predictive Google Now comes out for Chrome?
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steele|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midko|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrigor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diakritikal|12 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/npxvDcQ.png
There's a header element further down the page "Feminine mystique", not sure what that has to do with a phone.
And then near the bottom there's some cringeworthy copy:
"Never ever, ever, like never, miss a shot ... And you'll never miss those OMG-that-was-sick-did-you-see-that moments again either."
Like dude, that phone is so sick....what? Is it meant to be a caricature of US youth?
[+] [-] nevster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Fuzzwah|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psbp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcope|12 years ago|reply
Ouch.
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|12 years ago|reply
"TWSS" is still a pretty popular (but pretty over used) thing. So I don't really see the issue there.
[+] [-] borlak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secure|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JTon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sologoub|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philsnow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yread|12 years ago|reply
http://demandware.edgesuite.net/aahb_prd/on/demandware.stati...
to
hero-moto-x-08.jpg
EDIT: looks like they are using this jquery plugin https://github.com/danmillar/jquery-anystretch
[+] [-] hayksaakian|12 years ago|reply
-----
Very similar specs to my current
minor improvements in battery, and camera[+] [-] olig15|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taopao|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revelation|12 years ago|reply
Wow, please no. Google, just relieve them from their pain already.
[+] [-] Sven7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptoz|12 years ago|reply
Edit: "People are skydiving out of space ships." [Citation needed]! What ship has gone to space and also let someone skydive?!
[+] [-] minimaxir|12 years ago|reply
Old news, I know. :P
[+] [-] gschiller|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|12 years ago|reply
Wait, so you get more free cloud storage than what the phone actually supports? Interesting.
[+] [-] mathgorges|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supermesh|12 years ago|reply
http://imgur.com/dKRihDu