One of my favourite cell phones back in the day wasn’t the Nokia 5110 which could be used as a blunt weapon in case I was attacked, but rather a Motorola device. Specifically the Motorola Razr, an elegant device from a more civilised age that wasn’t as clumsy as other cell phones on the market. Some bastard stole it from my desk one day and I hope said person dies of explosive gonorrhoea eventually, but the charm behind the Motorola brand had managed to sink its teeth into me.
Charm can only go so far though. Motorola phones of the last couple of years have been alright, devices which have been competent but haven’t done much to wedge itself into a space currently dominated by Samsung and Apple. A new leak courtesy of VentureBeat has shown off the latest handheld from the company, and I quite like what I’m seeing.
Apparently called the Moto X4, this model is looking to carve a position in the mid-budget phone market. It’s packing some high-end features, however, such as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chip with eight cores that clock in a 2.2GHZ speed, a proper full HD screen, 64GB of internal storage and 4GB of RAM to glue everything together. Maybe the biggest gun in the arsenal of the Moto X4 is the selection of cameras. The rear of the X4 is following the trend of dual cameras, one being an 8-megapixel and the other boasting 12 pixels of the mega variety.
Weirdly, it’s the front camera that has the heaviest hardware with a 16-megapixel setup. We could be looking at one hell of a selfie device if Motorola targets the narcissism market. Thing is, I think Motorola may be onto something here. The flagship market is massively saturated right now, with everyone from Sony to OnePlus wanting a piece of the pie that Samsung and Apple enjoy. There’s also a fingerprint sensor and it’s IP68 certified so you can get shoved into a pool that’s 1.5 meters deep with no worries.
Happy X4th of July pic.twitter.com/a03dq1XvIc
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 4, 2017
By ignoring that market and focusing on cheaper phones with first-class software, Motorola is going to find its own niche in a competitive environment. They’re already seeing positive results from previous X series phones, so here’s hoping the X-4 doesn’t drop the ball. You don’t need to drop the equivalent of a small car’s worth of cash on a phone these days, as the gap between mid-budget and flagship technology is beginning to narrow.
Last Updated: July 5, 2017
miaau
July 6, 2017 at 08:24
I like budget phones, that do not sacrifice the important things: Make a phone call, send or receive a text / whatsapp and can run a few small apps (books, news, one or two utilities) at good speed. If, like the Pocket Ace, it needs to be rebooted every two days to be usable JUST to make phone calls AND have ALL apps removed or disabled from running in background, then it is out.
I see no point in paying lots of money for a phone and since I sometimes, for various reasons, buy cash, this counts for a lot. Now, end of this month I am renewing my cellphone contract and I have a choice to make:
1. Do I do my standard and get the best / most expensive phone on my contract WITHOUT increasing my monthly payment beyond the sim card cost? (and you can do that, ask the service provider).
2. iPhone? Galaxy S8? Been playing with both recently and both impress a lot. BUT, will people remember all my sheep jokes? Hmm.
3. The days of getting like a R4500 game / makro voucher seem to be long gone, which the wife and I both used to do. Get a cheap phone, but get goods for the house. Yes, yes, still pay it for contract BUT never, ever did we get a voucher contract thingy that cost more than the simcard contract price per month, i.e. you could get same contract with NO benefits. We looked into that. That said, I used to be on a high-end business type contract a few years back, so maybe that is why I would get good deals.
my current phone, a Galaxy J7 (3Gb Ram) is going to a parental unit for use, so that is out.