The Motorola Moto X (2014) comes with Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat, the latest offering from Android, assisted with the same launcher that the Nexus 5 employs, a classic purist high-end smartphone.
The lock screen widgets are the same as yesteryear, standing at full-screen and resizeable, displayed as tiles, accessible to the right of the lock screen, with one widget residing on the lock screen itself – some generic widgets include Messages, Digital Clock, Calendar, Gmail, among others. Widgets touch and drag makes them resizeable, and dragging to the top of the screen removes the widgets. Swiping to the left of the lock screen takes users to the camera. The home screen has only two tabs originally (though this number increases with the number of shortcuts on display, be it widgets, app shortcuts or folders), the main home screen and the Google Now, which is always the left most pane on the homescreen, and can be disabled the same way the BlinkFeed is removed from HTC One. The bottom of the screen has the three navigation controls, above which is the configurable dock, with two shortcuts on each side of the App Drawer link – all the shortcuts can turn into folders once another shortcut is dragged onto an existing one. The widgets can be accessed only by a long tap on any empty area on the home screen. Similar to the widgets on the lock screen, the widgets on the home screen are resizeable, though for these widgets, tap and hold enables the resize mode, where the four corners can be used to resize the widget – this of course, impacts the icons, folders and widgets around the widget being resized.
The Google Daydream is an addition to users, and can be configured to display the clock, latest news, photo albums, any animation, among other options.
The generic notification area and Quick toggles are present, accessible and configurable in the same standard manner. For some toggles, a tap takes users to the relevant settings too. Toggles can also be accessed by a double finger swipe down from the top of the screen. The top most notification is always in expanded mode.
The App Drawer is displayed in the standard manner, with links of apps displayed in 5 rows of 4 icons per row. The apps are sorted by default alphabetically, and no sorting options are present. The Recent Apps view is standard Android, and still sans a Kill All option.
The phonebook is the very powerful one that is default in Android, with options to display names sorted by first or last names, and displaying the images as well as complete contact information on the details, along with options to list Groups and Favorites. The Dialer is a nicely redesigned, but similar app to the generic Android, and has the same functionalities. Search in the dialer looks into the nearest locations in addition to contacts, so that in case you want the number to the nearest outlet for anything, it automatically gets fetched – this option can be disabled for users who might not find it useful.
Motorola has come out with Google Chrome the default browser, and the upgraded UI is way better than the one we had. The sync with computers is still there, of course. The reduced data is the same classy use. The tab switch, open and close are all additionally gesture controlled, while the Incognito mode is available too.
The Quick Office is available to create, view or edit office files, controlling only the documents, excel sheets and presentations, like its other counterparts, though for PDF’s only a reader is on-board. The Moto app is another addition, which can control the additional features in the Moto X (2014), like the IR gesture controls, voice commands, Motorola Assist and the glance notifications among others. Voice control has improved in leaps and bounds, and the standard “Google Now†line is no longer required. The voice control has had support from the quad-mike setup built in the Moto X (2014), and the different environments didn’t seem to bother it too much, despite our stringent testing. Motion controls are also in place, like snoozing alarms by hovering your hand on the screen, etc. Moto Assist customizes the settings to the environment, while the environment related options can be manually tweaked too. Moto Migrate allows for data migration from an iPhone or Android device to your Moto X (2014).
The bundle is completed with the calendar, clock, calculator and weather apps are all standard. The Google Maps and Google Navigation are valuable usages in any Android device, and allows for easy sight-seeing and commuting guidance, with additional assistance provided through the Street view and compass options.