The Moto X Style is, judging by your comments on Ausdroid, one of the most hotly anticipated and widely discussed handsets of 2015. Certainly in our offices, it’s generated a lot of discussion too, and we’ve finally got our hands on the X Style to take for a spin. While Scott will be writing the full review, I want to give you a quick introduction to the X Style today.
Known in the US as the Moto X Pure, it’s easy to see why it’s picked up both of these names. This is one glorious looking phone. As you can see above, it takes more of its design cues from the Moto G than it does the Moto X Play, which is clearly designed for a slightly different audience. However, that’s where most of the similarities with the Moto G (and even the Moto X Play) stop.
We’ve got our hands on the retail version of the Moto X Style, so let’s take a look.
Hardware
Motorola’s Moto X Style (model number XT1572) is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8982 Snapdragon 808 chipset — a powerful chipset shared by LG’s G4, and sharing a number of similarities with the more powerful Snapdragon 810 used in HTC’s One M9. Motorola’s chipset is a hexa-core processor with 2 x 1.8GHz Cortex-A57 cores and 4 x 1.44 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, following the trend of a couple of high-powered processors for more intensive processing, and four lesser-powered cores for handling run of the mill activity. LG’s G4 used this to devastating effect, with high performance and long battery life. There’s little reason – given the Moto X Play’s performance – to doubt the Moto X Style will be able to do the same.
Besides the processing power, the Snapdragon 808 includes X10 LTE, allowing Cat 9 speeds up to 450 mbps, and 3 x 20 MHz carrier aggregation for faster downloads on supported networks. VoLTE support is included, as well as HD Voice, meaning that the next generation of 4G networks will work with this phone.
Wireless connectivity is rounded out with 802.11n/ac wireless with MU-MIMO, NFC, Turbo Charging and Bluetooth 4.1.
As this is a Vodafone exclusive for the time being, this is a single-SIM handset only.
Memory-wise, there’s 3GB of RAM on board, as well as 32GB of storage for the model sold here. This is expandable up to 128GB by use of a micro-SD card, which is really useful.
Unlike the Moto X Play and Moto G, the back cover on the X Style is not removable, so the options for customisation are even more limited here. However, there is a nice clear plastic bumper included in the box to give you a bit of around-the-edge protection until cases become more widely available.
What’s in the box?
We don’t usually do unboxing on Ausdroid; it’s really a bit indulgent. However, given there’s a huge amount of interest in this handset, and what it comes with, it’s prudent to take a little look through the contents. Besides, it’s a beautiful retail packaging.
One of the most frequent questions has been about the Turbo Charger included with the Moto X Style, which doesn’t come with any other devices in the range. This model can put out 12V at 1.2A, meaning it charges your phone damned quick. Alongside the Turbo Charger is a standard black USB to micro-USB cable, Mobile Muster return satchel for old phones, a clear plastic bumper/protector, a little box full of the standard instructions and manuals which no one ever reads, a Motorola-branded SIM tool which is really neat, and a pair of stereo headphones which look cool, but probably aren’t much good (like all other included headphones).
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A quick look at performance
As with the Moto X Play, we’ve run the Moto X Style through Geekbench 3 and SunSpider, and the results are startling. Geekbench 3 pegs the Moto X Style somewhere near the middle of the 2015 flagships; while it easily bests the Moto X Play and last year’s OnePlus One, it still falls behind the more powerful Snapdragon 810-powered HTC One M9, and well behind the Exynos beasts inside the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
However, on SunSpider, the performance is much better; in fact, the Moto X Style bests Samsung and HTC’s efforts, and is only trumped by Apple’s iPhone 6 in pure Javascript performance. This thing is lickety-split quick.
Benchmarks can only tell you so much, though, and I’m not going to pre-empt Scott’s thoughts on the Moto X Style, except to say this: it feels damned quick, and certainly (in my limited hands-on) doesn’t seem to suffer from any obvious stutter or lag while installing apps or switching between processes.
First Impressions
The Moto X Style is even more of one hell of a phone than the Moto X Play, and that’s saying something, because I am in love with the Play. Probably the only disappointment, if I had to identify one, would be the price; at $792 outright, it’s just a little too expensive, but you DO get a lot of phone for that price.
- Battery life has not been fully explored yet, but at 3,000 mAh with Motorola’s energy efficiency, it’s going to be good.
- Performance is tight, and energy efficient.
- The in-hand feel is as good as the Moto G, despite the bigger size. It feels fantastic.
- Camera is leaps and bounds ahead of the Moto X Play, which is already pretty good. Low light performance is great.
Scott’s going to take a deeper look into the camera, battery life, real-world performance and more when he does an in-depth review in two weeks, which is why I’ve not talked too much about those aspects here. At this stage, the Moto X Style appears to deserve the praise (and craze) surrounding it, and even a week or two out from the launch of 2015’s Nexus devices, I have a feeling the Moto X Style just might hold its own.
Motorola’s Moto X Style is available nation-wide from Vodafone stores for $3 per month on the $100 Red plan. Other pricing options are available for new and existing Vodafone customers, and outright sale is available until 29 September.
