Moto X4 (4 GB)

After a long wait, Motorola has launched its highly anticipated phone in the popular ‘Moto X’ series – the Moto X4. Currently, Motorola has its Moto Z series as flagship and the Moto G series as budget offering and the company has introduced the Moto X series to sit between the two. The Moto X4 is meant to be a premium offering than the Moto G5s Plus and it very successfully achieves that with its premium glass and metal design, with Corning Gorilla Glass on the front and back and a metal frame in-between. The glasses blend perfectly into the frame and the phone looks very beautiful and gets full marks in the design.

The fingerprint scanner unlocks really quickly and sits in the home button below the display. The Moto X4 comes with a 5.2 inches Full HD regular display and there is no bezel-less or edge to edge display with 18:9 aspect ratio, despite many companies adapting to it, Motorola has not switched to it with the Moto X4. The display quality and the colors are good. It runs on the 2.2 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor along with Adreno 508 GPU and comes in 3 GB & 4 GB RAM variants. The performance is very smooth and optimized for day to usage and it also handles heavy games well.

One of the highlights of the Moto X4 is its 12 MP + 8 MP dual rear camera setup, where the 12 MP sensor is the primary shooter with Dual Autofocus Pixel technology and 1.4um pixels while the 8 MP camera is the wide-angle shooter with 120° field of view. The picture quality is very good in day as well as low light conditions. A great thing about the 8 MP wide-angle camera is, it really works well and captures a much wider frame so you get a lot more in your photos by standing closer, which is not possible with normal sensors. The portrait shots also come out good with nice bokeh effects and you can always edit the depth enabled photos to keep the subject in colors while the background in black and white or cut out the subject and change the background, and a lot more.

The Moto X4 features a 16 MP front camera with LED flash and is an excellent selfie shooter. It runs on Android 7.1 Nougat and will get the Android Oreo update soon. As always with a Moto phone, it comes with stock Android, which gives a great experience, thankfully Motorola has not altered Stock Android but has introduced its Moto Experiences which perfectly compliments the stock Android and enhances its usability. It includes gestures like Chop twice to turn on flashlight, Twist for quick capture, Swipe to shrink screen etc. One of my favourites is the One Button Navigation using the fingerprint scanner, which can be used to replace the onscreen navigation buttons, and you can swipe left to right, right to left or tap on the fingerprint scanner for Recent apps, Back and Home actions. It takes a little time to get used to it but is a nice addition as it frees up a lot of screen space.

Another great thing about the phone is that, it is IP68 certified dust & water proof, a feature which is mostly missing in budget and mid-budget phones. So, you can bath, swim or enjoy the rains with your Moto X4 without fear. Thankfully, Motorola has not compromised this time and added USB Type-C to the Moto X4. It is a dual sim phone with 4G and VoLTE. Sadly, this time it only gets a hybrid sim slot. It gets 32 GB and 64 GB internal storage variants, which can be expanded up to 2 TB via microSD. The Moto X4 is backed by non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery which delivers good battery backup. It comes with Motorola’s Turbo Charging with a 15W fast charger. It also includes Bluetooth v5.0 and allows you to connect 4 audio devices at the same time.

Moto X4 (Super Black):

Moto X4 (Sterling Blue):