Motorola (or Moto by Lenovo) had given birth to a winner in the form of the Moto X three years ago. Since then, the Moto X has been its calling card. But last year, instead of just releasing one high end variant of the Moto X third generation, Moto released the Moto X Play and the Moto X Style. The former at the higher end and the latter as a mid range offering.
Clearly Moto wasn’t done with just two variants. And today saw the release of the third variant – the Moto X Force – which comes with a shatter proof glass, a technology which Motorola claims to have been working on since the last three years.
The Moto X Force will go on sale on Amazon and Flipkart as well as offline players such as Croma Retail from 8 February at a price of Rs 49,999 for the 32GB variant and Rs 53,999 for the 64GB variant. Here’s our first impressions of the device.
The marquee feature on the Moto X Force is the Moto Shattershield technology sporting display. There’s a 5.4inch QuadHD display which has a five layer glass construction.
At the base you have an aluminum core which also holds onto the other layers to ensure stability. Then you have the flexible AMOLED display, followed by two touch screen layers thereby providing backup if one layer fails. The fifth layer is like an externally fitted layer which is meant more for scratch resistant protection. This is a replaceable layer.
We dropped the phone from multiple heights going from 2 feet to 7 feet, on the garden floor, on a wooden table as well as on a stony staircase. And though the glass did not scratch or show any signs of shatter, the metal frame surrounding the Moto X Force did get scratched easily. And you have to be careful if that happens, as the metallic scratches can be sharp.
The metal frame is neatly complemented by a black ballistic nylon cover on the rear side which is scratch resistant. On the right hand side you have the power standby and volume rocker buttons. We noticed that the power button is a bit too flush with the right hand side and is located at the edge of the frame. The microUSB charging and data transfer port is located on the base and at the top you have the 3.5mm audio jack. The phone has the earpiece speaker in the front at the top and dual speaker grills at the bottom.
The phone measures around 9.2mm thick and is 169 grams. The in hand feel of the phone is good and the curves on both sides help with gripping the phone with ease.
The Moto X Force comes with a 5.4inch QuadHD Super AMOLED display giving it a pixel density of 540ppi. The colours are vibrant and the text appeared sharp, but we noticed that the bright was levels weren’t that great. We will need to use it for longer periods outdoors to give a better idea of the display quality.
The Moto X Force houses the tried and tested Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC which houses an octa-core processor which is paired with 3GB RAM. On the storage front you get 32GB as well as 64GB variants with the chance to expand it using a micro SD card. The high end configuration ensured that the device ran smooth. Apps opened without any delay and there wasnt any delay switching between apps as well. But since this houses the Snapdragon 810, we need to use the phone in real world scenario to see how the good the heat management is.
The phone comes with a single nano SIM card slot, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, Infrared port and more.
Just like its predecessors, the Moto X Force also comes with an almost stock version of Android 5.1.1 along with some proprietary Moto features such as Moto Assist, Moto Voice and so on. Gesture based features have been carried forward from other Moto X devices. There’s also a feature called Attentive Display, which ensures that the display doesn’t go to sleep as long as you are looking at it. Considering the Moto X Style has already got a Android 6.0 update, it should ideally not take the Moto X Force much time to get it, but nothing was confirmed regarding the same at the launch event.
The Moto X Force uses the same camera configuration that has been seen in the Moto X Style as well as Moto X Play namely 21MP rear camera and 5MP front camera. The rear camera comes with f/2.0 aperture and supports phase detect auto focus. It is capable of shooting 4K video as well as all motion videos as well. There’s a front facing flash unit as well. But just like its predecessors, the Moto X Force also has the plane jane camera app which does not have any pro modes.
Moto X Play came with a 3630mAh battery and that performed quite well. The Moto X Force betters that with a 3760mAh capacity one. In the third generation Moto X series, the Force has the largest battery capacity. And it supports wireless charging as well as turbo charging. Motorola claims that you can extract two days of battery life, but we need to test it out as a daily driver to see how it fares. Mind you, unlike the Moto X Play, the Moto X Force comes with a QuadHD display which is known to hit battery life.
The Moto X Force has been priced at Rs 49,999 for 32GB variant and Rs 53,999 for the 64GB variant. Motorola will be selling these phones with EMI options as well. The pricing is certainly on the higher end of the spectrum considering it is almost Rs 10k more than the Nexus 6P. This is the most expensive Moto phone ever launched and Motorola is confident enough about the display, that it’s offering a 4 year warranty on the glass.
While on paper the Moto X Force ticks off all the boxes as far as a flagship phone is concerned, we still need to see how it performs in the real world scenario. How well the battery life is? How good the camera is? Has the Moto X Force figured out a way of better heat management when it comes to the Snapdragon 810 SoC? We will be able to answer these queries only after spending sufficient time testing the device. So please check back for a detailed review of the Moto X Force soon.
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