Team-BHP - Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3615558)

I have to say for the Lumia: best, clearest, most natural voice in the ear I have ever heard! Being a little deaf, this matters to me, and I wonder which Android phone wins on this?

For me, it's MotoX 2nd gen which holds best ratings for call quality through earpiece speaker as well as through loudspeaker.

Loudspeaker audio quality is a big surprise for me because its the first phone I came through where loudspeaker is also producing consistent crystal clear voice output otherwise loudspeaker is almost unusable in most of phones. Its fun to use Moto Voice because of the crystal clear loudspeaker response. Now I don't even pair up my Moto X with my car's headunit and prefer to use phone's loudspeaker when I have to. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by tbppjpr (Post 3615725)

That's one great phone that I have always lusted for. Have got a one plus one to give me company for the time being. How's your experience with the battery life? I have two mail accounts which sync continuously. As a benchmark even my one plus one with a mammoth battery of 3100 mah, barely lasts a day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by abhjain (Post 3615746)

I would rather believe on what Motorola claims about the battery, not on the specs written on the paper. So far haven't got disappointed with the phone, Just go for it.

You know what, I wrote a page full of long essay in reply of your post to justify the MotoX. But then realized that replying in simpler way with fewer words is more apt for this simple, elegant and innovative smartphone. :D

I think there are few other MotoX users as well on the forum who can also share their thoughts and views about this phone. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by abhjain (Post 3615746)

Even though I use the first gen Moto X, which has a merger 2200 MAH, one thing I am always sure of is that my phone is going to last the whole day, and a bit more.

I actually have 3 Email accounts that sync. This shows that Moto knows its batteries.

The optimisation are excellent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tbppjpr (Post 3615725)

Thank you for that, and to other votes for this phone --- but whenever I put camera on the scales for consideration, people seem to withdraw the Moto recommendations. :eek:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3615852)

whenever I put camera on the scales for consideration, people seem to withdraw the Moto recommendations. :eek:

Camera has never been forte of Motorola. Camera will not disappoint you as far as you keep your expectations alright. I agree its not great but not 'poor' either once you get hold of it.

Attaching one random unedited shot captured when my MotoX was hanged up in my car's windshield dock and I asked it to take a picture which it captured without need of touching the phone.

Due to upload size limitation, attaching two versions, here is picture resized to 50% :

Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods-img_20141231_163654897_half.jpg

And here is crop from the 100% picture size to see the actual pixel level result, width of this crop is 100%:

Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods-img_20141231_163654897_bak.jpg

Not bad IMO.

Am using the Moto X 2nd Gen for the past couple of weeks. Absolutely love the phone so far but it's not perfect in every way.

Positives:
- Very snappy to use.
- Size is perfect for a 5.2" screen phone. Infact it's very similar to my S3.
- Sound clarity is brilliant both speaker and handset.
- The stock android experience with minimal addons unlike Samsung and others. I just love this.
- Moto Display is brilliant!!

Negatives:
- Camera is not worthy of a flagship phone. Low light picture quality is absolutely dismal. This is the single biggest negative in the phone. To make matters worse the Motorola camera app is useless. There's no scene modes, no exposure control absolutely no settings to play with. The Galaxy S3 which the Moto X replaces has better image quality even after 3 years than the Moto X. I am now using the Google Camera app since it has little more control. But even with that PQ is poor. Noise levels are too high and focus is all over the place.
- Battery life is average. Heavy use will get you through a day but daily charging is a must. No ways you can spill onto day 2. I have a battery pack for this so am not complaining too much.

The One Plus One was the other option I was looking at but the Moto X feels way more premium and is definitely more stable.

If your budget is around 32-35K, My vote would go to the HTC One M8 unless you're like me and wanted AOSP experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3615906)

Pretty good. How does a photo taken indoors, under modest electric light, come out. Family snaps, pics of the pet, that kind of thing, because that is what I would mostly use a phone's camera for.

Flash helps in that situation but am one of those few people who don't like to use flash while clicking photos and am doing the same with MotoX as well. Will have to agree that it does struggle in low light situation but pictures are not unusable.

If picture quality is your top priority then don't buy the MotoX, look at some top end Sony or Samsung. Buy the MotoX for it's exclusive features and if you use the camera in addition to those features then it does the job very well. For example twist-to-launch is one useful and handy feature when you instantly want to capture a shot. Moto Voice commands work perfectly and you don't have to touch the phone at all to capture the pictures.

Haven't clicked so many pictures in low light so far but here is crop from one which I clicked recently in the night:

Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods-img_20141231_183002284_crop.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vid6639 (Post 3615882)

I am now using the Google Camera app since it has little more control. But even with that PQ is poor. Noise levels are too high and focus is all over the place.

I prefer to use stock camera app and like that for it's snappier response. But these days there are lot of third party camera apps available which offer lot of controls over picture like Camera FV5, Better Camera, Camera Zoom FX, Snap Camera, Open Camera etc.

Have used these apps in the past and liked them for the wide customization they provide but right now preferring the stock camera app because it has few of the features which I like to have. For example touch-anywhere-to-snap is very good feature. Then there is also a option to control the focus and exposure, a sign with finger touching a square. This is very useful, turn it on and you can move the focus/exposure ring onto your preferred subject which you want to focus and expose properly. Camera is set to 9.7MP, 16:9 ratio by default, users need to set it to 13MP, 4:3 ratio. Then there is HDR mode as well but I have turned it off.

Problem seems to be in the back end software of the camera which is too much optimistic during post processing and ends up eating up some detail while cleaning the noise. Higher ISO is also an issue. MotoX camera ends up clicking pictures at too higher ISO while trying to retain faster shutter speed. I think situation can be improved if ISO and shutter speed can be controlled. Some of the camera apps provide that facility but I couldn't test them so far.

My previous phone camera used to perform similarly till i kept using the stock ROM. But when I flashed open source Kitkat ROM in it, the camera also improved a lot. Actually the camera of open source ROM wasn't removing the low light grain and I liked those picture over the images of stock camera. But MotoX is not a phone where one would be looking at open source ROM so will have to see if Motorola throws some update for the camera to improve it.