All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

AFAIK Hangouts takes pics from the People app which is sync'd with Facebook, if you did. All my contacts have their FB photos and it appears on Hangouts as any other Messaging app.

 

The Moto G is a smokin' good deal for midrange specs. Similar ergonomics to the Moto X but all the performance specs are just one step down (but it still has a good-quality 4.5" 720p screen). And it's very affordable: $179 for the 8 gb model and $199 for the 16 gb model. It's Motorola's new bid to be relevant for the world market, and it's a darned effective sales pitch. Even with inflated prices in your market, it's still going to be midrange hardware for low-end prices, combined with probably the smoothest-running OEM skin on the market.

EDIT: and my wife loves her Moto X to death. I think it's pretty darned awesome too; I miss some of the TouchWiz customizations (quick-toggle settings in the notification shade, and split-screen multitasking), but otherwise, her phone is way nicer than my Galaxy S3. If the Moto X is priced reasonably in your market, go for it.

 

My contacts app is synced with both Facebook and G+ (I don't have a "people" app on my GS3), but while my messaging app pulls info from both FB and G+, Hangouts is only pulling photos from the latter. Bizarrely, Hangouts doesn't even have my own photo, and I've got a G+ profile. Maybe my copy of Hangouts is just broken. Ah well, no big deal.

 

its supposed to be around U$700 unlocked, I do find it for U$500, the moto G is supposed to be half that, but I only find it for 360

given all the amazing reviews of the moto G, none, Im leaning towards the X anyway now to find it for 400 would be amazing, at least its what I'm hoping for black friday, to which is basically to not repeat the fraud from last year, we coined the motto from last year as everything for the double of the half of the price

 

Off-contract Moto X will get a $150 price cut on Cyber Monday - GSMArena.com news

$150 discount on all off-contract Moto X devices from the Motorola website on Monday at 8 AM CST. I'm going to try to grab a Developers Edition.

 

349 is kinda pricey for a mid tier phone, especially when a better spec'd Nexus 5 is the same price (though bulkier and bigger).

 

After owning both, at $349, I'd definitely buy the Moto X over the Nexus 5.

 

Reason? Almost everything about the Nexus 5 is better.

 

Battery life is a little better and I like how the Moto X feels. It just fits in my hand much better.


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Hear, hear! The Moto X may get better battery life, but that's because the Nexus 5 has a better rated Snapdragon.

 

Anyone know any good ROM's for HTC one V?

 

I installed Ditto Note 3 ROM on my Note 2, and the fresh breath of 4.3 feels good. Very good, fast and stable!

 

Having handled a friend's Nexus 5 and my wife's Moto X, I'd say the Moto X has the advantage in:

(1) Ergonomics. The Nexus 5 is unapologetically a big slab of a phone, whereas the Moto X feels barely bigger than an iPhone in your hand. The Moto X's screen is only a little smaller than the Nexus 5's, but the device is a lot smaller. The curvature of the back makes it nicer to hold, too.

(2) Screen quality. Yes, the Moto X is lower resolution, but it's colors are very vibrant and lifelike, whereas the Nexus 5 looked a little washed out to me. I thought it was maybe some sort of screen protector or odd settings that my friend had his on phone, but when I watched Marques Brownlee do a side-by-side comparison, the same difference was visible. The Moto X's colors were more vibrant and the blacks were blacker, whereas the Nexus 5 looks washed out to me. Jump to 3:42:



(3) Active display. This may be a parlor trick, but it's pretty darned suave as far as parlor tricks go, at least compared to the normal fare from Samsung and LG.



On the other hand, these are all very subjective things, and if you prefer the objective stuff (faster processor, larger screen, more pixels), yeah, the Nexus 5 wins for sure. Different strokes for different folks.

 

Active Screen? Who on God's green earth would use that? I can only imagine the amount of battery wasted by such a gimmick.

I have always used pattern lock for my lockscreen anyway. Don't anyone want others to peek at my emails or texts just by waking the device.

 

I actually find that it improves productivity and so far its one of the best features in this phone.

battery life is around 1 day, so yeah the usual now

 

The Moto X was specifically designed so that it doesn't. Most of the screen doesn't illuminate (that's why the active screen notifications are monochrome), and I think it's using a special low-power core for handling the processing side.

 

KitKat screenshot.

Spoiler

 

I think "flat" objects casting shadows is confusing conceptually, and just plain unattractive aesthetically. Just my personal opinion.

 

Christ! That's even worse than iOS7.

 

Between the Quick Glance gesture, Smart Alert and especially Smart Relay with the Gear, I'd say Samsung users are fairly well covered.

 

Quick Glance is a pain in my butt.. It works like half the time and then crashes. It's a cool idea but I turned it off. Same thing with Smart Stay and Smart Rotation, both only work when they want to..

 

Crashes? Never heard of that before.
I take it you're on the most up-to-date firmware?

Yeah, Smart Stay and Smart Rotation were never great.
They're reaching a little too far for now.

 

Define worse? The icons are weird but otherwise it looks fine.

 

I'd take a free parlor trick over one that required a $300 accessory for my phone

Quick Glance gesture is a similar idea, but I think the execution is much worse. First, it's gotta be done with the phone sitting on a desk (or at minimum held very still in the other hand); you can't do it one-handed on a train.



Smart Alert will make the phone buzz periodically if you've got a notification you've checked, but it can't tell you what the notification is without you waking up the phone to see.

I'm not saying that the Moto X's Android customizations are the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I do think they're better than average for OEM customizations.

 

I was able to squeeze in an order for a Moto X Developer Edition after the webpage was having issues for 2 hours and the prices not updating. Let's see how this pans out.

 

And that's not even KitKat, he's using some sort of custom icon pack.

 

Yep. KitKat with a flat icon pack.

Personally, I like it... but then that's Android. Make it what you want. I wanted stock KitKat with a MIUI feel. I think it turned out pretty nice.

 

Personally, I think those icons are atrocious. The shadows on the 2D images don't make any sort of sense.

 

Any chance moto/Google sell their phone w/o tax via 3rd party seller ?
Jumping if that never happened.

 

Noted.

Personally, I find the lack of consistency in the stock UI maddening... and I'm an Android software engineer with Google. I don't work with anything UI related, but if I did...

Probably not.

EDIT: Just came in the mail...

Spoiler

 

Does it bother anyone else that the music widget is entirely the wrong color? I suppose I won't use the widget anymore, since you can control it from notifications, but I like the idea of a widget.

Spoiler

 

I'll agree with that 100%. I like the functionality of Android better than WP8 or iOS, but the lack of aesthetic and design consistency annoys me.

 

I find your lack of consistency disturbing!
Truly its a mess... Who ever thought of not integrating both the apps for people and contacts?
Duplicated apps that serve no purpose, ui discontinuity, play store separation is a mess, voice recognition is lacking...
I have some hopes for kitkat but they aren't polishing things enough, nor cutting things that should have been gone in a fast enough pace



petted from a fat cat belly using scratch o'matic

 

What's really sad, is that iOS 7 is even worse in regards to design consistency. Plus, people thought Android had symmetry issues... HAHAHHAHA. iOS 7 makes my OCD senses tingle. *shiver*

But they are combined... have been since Jellybean, if I'm not mistaken.

EDIT: Also, voice recognition is spot on. Not sure what you mean. It's easily 10x better than Siri, and faster to boot.

 

Oh thank God! Had me scared there for a second. I don't want to update to Kitkat if it looks like a special child from the Windows RT/iOS7 family.

 

You're going to be sorely disappointed by UI/UX design in the coming years, then.

 

Time to break out the old smoke rug then. I'm not having nothing of these weird graphics. They look like them's were drawn by a special ed student.

 

Stock Android is pure and simple. If you want to modify the UI, it's Android. Root/modify your phone. But all I want is a simple to use phone, so my Nexus 4 when I had it ran stock Android, there was no need to root/modify it because it worked. Kind of why I went iPhone.

 

Best £300 accessory I've ever used

It's actually quite a bit cleverer than that.
It vibrates the phone when it moves if there's a pending notification - so if you've left your handset somewhere, missed a call/received a text/whatever and you pick it up again, it lets you know there's something you've missed.

 

+1 for you; I'd deactivated it when I got the phone figuring it was just more bloatware, but that sounds kinda handy, so I've just delved into settings and reactivated it.

As for Galaxy Gear, I like the idea, but not the aesthetic (particularly the wristband, which you can't replace), the short battery life, or the price. I'll give it a couple generations to mature and then probably jump on the bandwagon.

 

Does anyone have any experience with the Nexus 7 2nd generation? I hate how the first generation was, either I'm going for a low end Android tablet like the Tab 3 or N7 or I'm going iPad.

 

I'm using a moto x at 4.2.2 and its not combined. they pretend its combined, the UI differences are abysmal, not to mention I don't agree with the procedures for the user.

voice recognition is lacking. no natural commands are actually possible, both in english or portuguese, will try french later. words get jumbled and mixed badly when using it, tried to use it for 2 full days for dictation/opening apps/general search and its awfully terrible.

why there is no multitasking yet?

why so many duplicated apps?

why make a separate app for gmail?

why when I look for updates on my apps at playstore it doesnt detect the updates, nor updates the apps?

now for the cellphone itself, why its activating so damn often, despite no one even saying google in the room?

 

Don't own one, but one of my friends has one. The screen is gorgeous, and the processor is obviously a lot zippier than the N7 2012's. What did you hate about the first generation? If it's the Tegra 3, then the N7 2013 is obviously a lot better.

 

Tegra 3, poor build quality (screen dithering, the screen splitting apart). I'm just iffy as ASUS as the maker, I refuse to buy the products whether they directly make/market it or are the OEM. I don't have high requirements for the tablet, but I would like something that is nice. I just feel 400 for the iPad Mini Retina is a bit pricey, though I would love to get one, but my older Tab 2 7.0" served me well, getting usually 5-7 days battery life with light usage. My old work was selling the iPad Mini for 229, which I was highly considering pick up, but it is a bit old spec and the screen isn't as nice as the newer Retina one, but is is cheap and suits the performance needs.

All the tablet is for is watching movies, light gaming, email, maybe 1-2 hours usage everyday.

 

There is multitasking, do you mean multiwindow like on Samsung devices?

You can set play store to update apps automatically. There, however, are times where you'll have to manually update apps, like when permissions change.

Due to Gmail's unique feature set, I can see why they separated it out from a standard email app. I prefer this separation but I can understand why it isn't good for a lot of people.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

 

Which is why if I get a tablet, I will stay clear of the MS Surface 2's. If Nvidia hasn't gotten the Tegra line up right after 3 generations, they never will. It's Galaxy 10.1 or Nexus 7 for me!

 

I will never buy anything Microsoft hardware they have tinkered with, and Windows 8 -retch-.

 

I stopped reading into the Surface 2's review at Tegra 4.

 

Anyone here try KitKat yet? any major differences? Cant wait to try it on my phone, unfortunately there's no stable ROM yet for it...

 

ART is the only major change that I notice. I'm still on Nova Launcher, etc.