It’s time. After over three and a half years, the Moto X is going to the memento box and its SIM will be repurposed in the iPhone SE, which has deftly filled the role the Moto X was originally intended for: compact travel phone and backup device. It’s getting increasingly difficult to turn the Moto off and on, it hasn’t had a security update since April 2016, and it wasn’t the most powerful phone in the world when it debuted four years ago (I remember more than one jibe about it being “pre-aged”). A device that wasn’t rocket-quick in 2013 and hasn’t been updated for a year and a half is no longer a broadly feasible device.
But it’s an existence proof that you could build a 4.7” AMOLED screen into a phone small enough to use one-handed and slap a 2000 mAh battery on it. Nobody has been able to do that since. And you could assemble it in the United States and sell it for under $350, tax tag and title. The camera wasn’t fabulous, and the battery life improvements that Android 5 was supposed to bring never quite came to pass, but it was proof of concept that you could make a phone with Android that put the user experience ahead of the stat sheet. It’s also the proof for me that Google will never succeed as a phone manufacturer, because if they couldn’t sell this, they won’t be able to sell anything.
I was last using the Moto X as a species of cosplay – a device that would do Swarm checkins and let me look at Instagram, read books on Kindle and stream RTE Radio in Irish or minor league baseball games. Something that I could use to get out of the world for a while. I suppose the iPhone SE could be that now, in a pinch, but it was nice to have a completely different UI to further the illusion. At this point, if I go down the pub and want to punch out, I’m actually a lot more likely to take the new little Nokia and an actual Kindle and maybe a Field Notes notebook and a pen for jotting down ideas. We crossed the finish line for phones in 2013, and I’m not convinced we didn’t cross the finish line for social media in about 2007 or so. Original Vox and early Twitter were just about sufficient (although I like Instagram – I think it’s a healthier environment for a 45 year old following friends than a 16 year old following celebrities, but that’s neither here nor there).
The iPhone SE is likely to be good for at least two more years, possibly three. If I just use it for the same purposes as the X, it should hold up to about 2021. I’m a little sad to be putting the X out to pasture, but not every good idea gets the reward it deserved.