Well, here we go…the Moto X is here, or close anyway. It is pretty much as advertised in every leak – mid-range technical specs but engineered for maximum usability – except for one thing. I posited in my last post that there were rumblings that the phone could be had off-contract for $200.
Instead, it’s $200…with a two-year contract. And the Verizon version is already coming with the typical load of Verizon crapware. And the customization features…are currently exclusive to AT&T. And there will be a “Google Play” (read: un-crapped and unlocked) version…sometime.
This might be the most Android thing ever: a legitimately exciting device with a ton of buzz among the technorati, shipping without the latest version of Android and encumbered by its carrier partners. This isn’t Samsung shitting up the phone with TouchWiz and a load of badly-designed gimmicks, this is damn near a pure Android experience, but it’s still going to suffer from the Android problem: you have to buy the device knowing full well that you may never get an Android version update.
That ain’t hay. Motorola (and through them, Google) is taking a risk by selling a phone with last year’s top-of-the-line specs at the price point and contract obligation normally associated with “hero” phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One. This is a bet that “premium user experience” can be made to trump “premium hardware” – but the question is, with a 2-year contract obligation, will you still be happy with the Moto X in January 2015 if it’s still running its 2013 OS on its 2012-grade hardware?
To be brutally honest, it’s a relief. I was afraid the temptation would be too much to resist and that I’d wind up dropping $300 for a second phone before even setting up some sort of prepaid service. (Not for nothing but you can go prepaid with T-Mobile for $30 a month and get 100 minutes talk, unlimited text, and unlimited data with the first 5G at full speed – I honestly don’t know why I’d ever need anything else.) Instead, if this turns out to be the whole story, and the Moto X ends up as just another phone, it will be one of the hugest missed opportunities in mobility. And that’s a shame, at a time when cellular services in this country desperately need shaking up.