Is The Moto X4 Camera Better Than The G5

Verdict

Pros

• Abrupt glass-backed design
• Crisp display
• Smooth operation

Cons

• Heavy
• Unreliable and gimmicky camera
• No AMOLED display

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £349
• five.two-inch FHD screen
• 12-megapixel standard lens with an 8-megapixel 120 degree wide angle sensor rear camera
• 16-megapixel front camera
• Snapdragon 630 CP
• 4GB RAM, 64GB storage (microSD)
• 3000mAh battery

What is the Moto X4?

Motorola continues to turn out solid piece of work with its affordable Moto East and G ranges, occasionally cut loose with the weird and wonderful premium Z range – and in that location's enough more to come up this year with MWC 2018 and (in all likelihood) the Moto G6 simply around the corner.

But fans will remember a fourth dimension not so long agone when the Moto X was an eye-communicable highlight of the Android scene, providing style and poise at a mid-market toll.

For those still pining for that seemingly bygone Moto era, the decidedly center-course Moto X4 arrived in 2017. But is a crisp design and solid performance even so enough for your £349/€399?

Moto X4 – Blueprint

The Moto X4 is a handsome, well put-together phone. At that place's a sure density to information technology that makes it feel similar a premium product.

On beginning seeing it in the box, it appears quite minor. At 148.4 ten 73.4mm, it's similar in size to the original Moto G5 – although at 8mm, the X4 is thinner.

Pick up the phone, notwithstanding, and you'll exist in for a surprise. At 163g, information technology'due south almost 20g heavier than the Moto G5, and the similarly priced Moto Z2 Play.

That density comes down to the phone's construction. Alongside its metal frame, the rear of the Moto X4 is made of glass, which is very on-point in 2017. Although this adds weight to the phone – and you'll exist forever reaching for that microfibre cloth to wipe off your paw prints – the effect is undeniably highly-seasoned.

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Coupled with its gently curved edges, the Moto X4 feels peachy in the hand. Just lookout man where yous set it downwardly, though: it has a habit of sliding off fifty-fifty seemingly flat surfaces.

Of course, i of the key reasons that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and iPhone X have glass rears is to support wireless charging. Disappointingly, this capability is absent here, meaning the X4's glass rear is purely an aesthetic choice.

There'south a small antenna on top of the phone, joining the front and rear glass surfaces, but the rear is a pure sleeky surface – aside from the trademark circular Motorola camera assortment.

With an IP68 rating, the Moto X4 is both water- and dust-resistant, and information technology retain its three.5mm headphone jack – unlike the Moto Z.

While nosotros're on the subject of audio, in that location's but one speaker hither, just its position alongside the X4'due south earpiece means that it's at least front end-facing. You won't find yourself covering it up when watching videos or playing games in mural view.

All three of the X4's concrete buttons are located along its right edge. The volume keys are small and sit in a slight recess, rather similar an iPhone, while the ability push is slightly longer and heavily textured. They're nice and clicky, although made of plastic.

A responsive capacitive fingerprint sensor sits underneath the display, and does its job admirably. Information technology isn't a true home button by default, simply yous can make it so through the included Moto app.

Annotation that the principal thing that separates the Moto X4 from the Z range is a lack of Moto Mod support. Unless you're one of the tiny percentage of mobile users already invested in Motorola's modular ecosystem, this won't be an event.

Moto X4 – Screen

Motorola has gone back to the spirit of the earlier Moto X models when it comes to brandish size. Yous might question whether v.two-inches should be classed equally a small display, but relative to the wider Android field information technology undoubtedly is.

In general employ the X4's panel feels only right. Even those with large hands volition struggle to stretch their thumb from the fingerprint sensor at the bottom to the the opposite top corner of the display, just it is possible to employ the Moto X4 single-handed for typing out a bulletin or scrolling through the app tray.

Overall, the X4's screen is well-baked and pleasant-looking. However, Motorola has opted for an LCD panel rather than AMOLED, which is disappointing given the X family's heritage. It'due south even more of a shame when you consider the visitor'southward excellent Moto Display lockscreen notification system, which makes good use of AMOLED technology.

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In use, however, the Moto X4 display is hard to error. At 1080p it's plenty sharp enough for a screen of this size, while brightness is on point and colours are rich and balanced. I compared information technology to the screen of a Moto G5S that I had to hand; the Moto X4 screen felt noticeably richer and closer to the surface glass.

In addition, at that place's no ugly black border around the Moto X4 display, as there is on Motorola'south latest 'premium-affordable' smartphone. Of course, with a £130 deviation in price, you'd look some kind of advantage.

Moto X4 – Performance

When it comes to performance, don't look the Moto X4 to punch in a higher place its weight in the way of the OnePlus five. You tin, however, await information technology to run very well thanks to Qualcomm's latest mid-range processor.

The Snapdragon 630 is the more than efficient successor to the Snapdragon 626 that powers the Moto Z2 Play. Coupled with 3GB of RAM, it leads to solid performance beyond the board.

I didn't notice any stuttering during general navigation, and even advanced 3D games such as Gear.Order and Unkilled ran without a hitch. Of course, such apps don't run quite as smoothly, and they practise take longer to load than on a device packing a Snapdragon 835 – but that'due south as expected.

An average Geekbench 4 multi-core score of 4115 is roughly the same equally the Moto G5S Plus managed with its older Snapdragon 626 SoC, and isn't far off double the score of the Moto G5S with its Snapdragon 430.

On the storage front in that location's a decent 32GB, although this is half that on offer with the Moto Z2 Play. Yous as well get a microSD slot for expansion purposes.

Moto X4 – Software

Motorola's software has always been excellent, and information technology feels and handles well on the Moto X4. Nonetheless, a few rough edges seem to have creeped in.

This is a near-stock version of Android vii.ane.1 that doesn't feel too different to the experience yous'll get with ane of Google'southward Pixel phones. You get the same swipe-up system for accessing the app tray, a prominent Google search bar positioned in the center of the homescreen by default, and Google Banana under the virtual dwelling button.

Swiping left provides quick access to Google At present, and the familiar carte-based multitasking card also features a swipe-based split-screen system for running two apps adjacent.

Motorola has long been that rare manufacturer that doesn't experience compelled to duplicate Google's perfectly fine – and frequently outstanding – default apps. There's no half-broiled music app alongside Google Play Music, for instance, and Google Photos is the default photo app.

That said, Motorola has been tempted to include a few extras in the Moto X4, with mixed results.

Outlook is the principal email app hither, which clashes somewhat with the regular Gmail app. We'll let that slide, however, since Outlook is a useful tool to have these days. The style it links your e-mail with your calendar and all of your cloud services, in particular, is excellent for productivity.

Less welcome is the inclusion and prominent positioning of the LinkedIn app. It's an oddly specific choice for a certain sub-department of users, revealing that Motorola sees this as a potential business phone. I doubtable most people volition want to remove it pretty sharpish.

Likewise rather strange is Motorola's adoption of Amazon Alexa. That'due south not to say that Amazon's personal assistant isn't a fine and useful tool for many people – it is – only its inclusion seems to bump up against the front-and-middle positioning of Google Assistant.

Rather curiously, Alexa is tucked away backside a Motorola-made Moto Alexa app. I didn't fifty-fifty spot that this was hither until a proficient few days into using the phone.

What'southward more than, when I did come to gear up Alexa, I was stopped in my tracks. The app instructed me to "say the phrase that we show y'all," but at that place was no such phrase offered and no means to continue on the screen. Weird.

Alexa was nevertheless usable despite this grooming phase meltdown, but information technology meant that activating the assistant vocally was a no-no – thus rather limiting its usefulness.

The presence of Motorola'due south own Moto Vocalism provides a third vocalisation-activated assistant, disruptive things further, although this one is limited to providing information about the Moto X4 itself.

Elsewhere, Motorola's customisation efforts are more successful. As already mentioned, Moto Display discretely pushes notification icons to the sleep screen, which yous can and then printing and hold to preview. Information technology would be better and more efficient with an AMOLED brandish, where pixels can exist lit up individually, but it'due south still a handy feature that you're likely to apply ofttimes.

Moto Actions lets you bind gestures to diverse shortcuts: a double karate chop motion for the torch; or a double twist for the camera. Moto Key grants secure motorcar-logins on oft visited websites, while also allowing you to log in to Windows machines – simply as a Mac user, I wasn't able to test this.

Moto X4 – Photographic camera

Motorola refers to the Moto X4's photographic camera setup prominently in all of its blurb, and it certainly has some attention-grabbing attributes. In practice, even so, I plant it to be a mixed bag.

This is the kind of dual-lens system that many manufacturers are adopting for their flagship phones, from Apple to Samsung to OnePlus and beyond. Withal, while most of those manufacturers tend to pair a 'normal' lens with a telephoto lens for that physical zoom event, Motorola does something different.

The main 12-megapixel f/2.0 lens is paired with an 8-megapixel, 120-degree broad-angle sensor. This ways you'll be able to take hold of those sprawling landscape shots without having to wave your phone around in panorama manner.

In practise, I found the wider, darker shots captured to be of relatively express employ. A telephoto lens would have been much handier in day to day situations.

Motorola besides uses the 2 cameras to achieve an enhanced bokeh event, labelled Depth-enabled in the camera UI. While you tin can suit the forcefulness of the result with a manual slider, I institute the results overly aggressive in blurring parts of the subject along with the background. The bokeh result itself displayed some unnatural artefacts, which made information technology expect similar the X4'south photographic camera glass needed a clean.

Beyond that, the general quality of the shots accomplished from the main photographic camera were okay. In evenly lit situations, the X4 is capable of taking detailed and well-counterbalanced pictures, if somewhat tending towards over-exposure. Just in less than ideal conditions it proved a little unreliable.

The camera app seemed slow to focus, resulting in blurry snaps on occasions when I needed to take a swift (but past no means rushed) shot. Ane example of this was when taking a movie of a blackboard carte in a well-lit cafe, the results of which were actually quite poor.

Too concerning is the Moto X4'due south somewhat hitting-and-miss HDR organization. In the default auto setting it'due south capable of capturing well-balanced shots that are well beyond what an entry-level phone tin manage. However, often I'd feel the need to plough on the mode fully and manually adjust the focus area to force the effect.

Even more puzzlingly, when viewing the photos after on my estimator, it became credible that HDR had seemingly been employed on a greter number of occasions than I'd realised – about equally if the HDR process was chugging away in the background after the fact (though I'g sure it wasn't).

Motorola has also packaged the Moto X4 with a bunch of seemingly smart features, but they're one-half-broiled at best. Particularly poor is the landmark-recognition feature, which is supposed to permit you lot proceeds information on whatever landmark y'all're aiming the camera at.

In practise, this characteristic failed every time I used it. Pointing the X4 at Bristol's distinctive skyline – complete with hills and colourful terraced housing – yielded a screen telling me that I was looking at a prehistoric monument in Canton Meath, Ireland. Another time, I pointed the X4's photographic camera at local landmark Cabot Tower, only to be told all about Rajabai Clock Belfry in Mumbai. A uncomplicated cross-reference with the telephone'southward GPS would surely take saved information technology considerable embarrassment on both occasions.

The phone'south object-recognition system works in a similar way, with only slightly more helpful results. It recognised that I was pointing it at a brown and white ceramic mug, and provided links to similar mugs on Etsy and eBay, equally well as (rather less relevantly) a Wikipedia definition of a flat white.

It doesn't handle specifics well. When I pointed the camera at a Nintendo Switch Pro controller, I was offered links to Xbox I, Xbox 360, and generic wireless controllers.

This is all in the correct ballpark, but without specifics the whole image recognition system is functionally useless.

It's likewise worth noting that in that location's a sharper-than-usual 16-megapixel selfie photographic camera on the front of X4. It's capable of capturing a decent amount of detail; you'll want to feed it enough of low-cal, though, or things tin get noisy very quickly.

Vibrant colours on this close-up

Accurate colours and practiced item, despite poor lighting

The X4 photographic camera tends to overexpose

It'southward possible to get some good depression-low-cal shots, if you're careful

Moto X4 – Bombardment Life

The Moto X4 comes with a 3000 mAh battery. This isn't unusually huge for a mid-range Android phone, merely nor is it modest. Indeed, it's exactly the same size as the bombardment found in the Moto Z2 Play, which has a bigger display and a less-efficient processor.

Given that fact, it comes as no surprise to learn that the X4 tin last a day of solid utilise with plenty to spare. I could frequently get through a xv-hour day of moderate to heavy usage with 60% or more power left in the tank. This is improve than virtually flagship phones, let alone fellow mid-rangers.

When it is time to charge, you get the benefit of Motorola's quick-charging part: Turbo Charging. This tin get you 6 hours of ability in just 15 minutes, which is great for when you lot're short on time and demand a decent acme-upwardly.

Why purchase the Moto X4?

The Moto X4 is a fashionable and, capable mid-range smartphone. For £350, it offers much of what you'd desire from a flagship phone; business organization users stung by rising iPhone prices might want to take a closer look.

However, the X4's camera is far too unreliable, and while the near-stock version of Android remains a delight to employ, many of Motorola's software embellishments seem a little one-half-baked here.

The X4 is a classy phone, nonetheless; one that's very like shooting fish in a barrel to live with – camera quibbles aside.

Just the Moto X finds itself somewhat stuck between ii stools in the Moto range. If you'd rather non spend £350, the Moto G5S Plus offers a largely similar feel for around £100 cheaper. At the opposite terminate of the spectrum, you lot can become the Moto Z2 Play with its AMOLED display and Moto Mods feature for just £xx more.

Neither telephone is equally evidently handsome as the X4, only both throw upwards serious questions of it on the substance and value fronts.

Verdict

The Moto X4 is a compact, stylish handset at a price that's temptingly short of the current flagship crop. Notwithstanding, there are several rough edges that have the states questioning its position in Motorola's increasingly crowded range.

How we test phones

We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. Nosotros use industry standard tests to compare features properly and nosotros use the phone as our main device over the review period. We'll e'er tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we exam in our ideals policy.

Used as our main phone for the review catamenia

Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with telephone calls, games and pop apps

Trusted Score

Score in detail

• Performance 7

• Camera 6

• Design eight

• Battery Life 8

• Value vi

• Software 8

• Calls & Sound vii

• Screen Quality vii

Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/moto-x4

Posted by: desmondbaccough.blogspot.com

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