what exactly is a better user experience? having worse battery life? taking worse pictures? looking at a worse screen? or paying double the price of a Nexus 4? the GS3 is $350-400 on prepaid.
<rant>
I guess I'm just talking about the general marketability of the phone and what's really been produced by motorola, and the rest of you are talking about how the phone meets (or doesn't meet) your (very) specific needs (almost all of which has to do with hardware). The two generally produce different value judgements.
I'm still of the mind that the moto x will outperform the competition as it relates to 99% of purchasers who don't care about fast chips and pixel density (we're already talking retina-level ppi on the x here, come on...) and do care about a good user experience which means awesome features out of the box (active display, always listening, car mode, great industrial design).
This wasn't the jesus phone we were waiting for, and it's not paradigm shifting as we'd all hoped, but this focus on hardware, when hardware is simply a vehicle to run the software we actually USE seems a bit myopic to me, personally.
Here's what a person who's job it is to actually sell a phone like this might actually think about each of the hardware components:
Camera - 99% of people expect camera performance on phones to be shit. Unless we're putting a leica lens and a 42mp sensor in this thing we just have to be within 5% of the performance of the competition to deal with customer expectations.
Processor - As it relates to speed, people who take this into consideration make their buying decision by going to the store and messing around with the display units. We have to be within 5% of the competition so as to not seem 'slower', eliminating the selling point of 'faster' for the competition.
Processor - As it relates to battery life, people will read reviews online about battery life (so moto x build 8 different procs to handle low power activities better) and they'll look at the battery life rating as promised by us, the manufacturer. We need to be as good as the competition.
Screen - We've achieved PPIs beyond which the human eye can't really discern pixelation without holding the thing 3 inches from your nose. The gold standard for the 99% was set by the iphone's retina display, and we just have to be as good so that the display unit looks good next to the other display units at the store.
Software - now that I've made this phone a competitor on the shelf when it comes to hardware by being good enough, I'm going to differentiate myself with software. This allows me to a) innovate and b) not get caught up in the spec wars that everyone else is caught up in. I'm now going to spend $500 million to convince the 99% that beyond being comparable in meeting their hardware needs for a phone we have awesome features that no one else has.
The only thing this marketing guy has done wrong so far is poorly managing expectations prior to launch. the 1% worked themselves into a frenzy about the moto x having better specs and jesus-resurrecting features for half the price, on top of being made in America. We were completely delusional! That's all. I've just come to terms with the fact that I expect shit pictures on a phone camera, good enough display tech, long enough battery life, and a phone that won't lag, and now the moto x looks better than ever. It's a shame it's not cheaper, however I feel a little better forking over the extra cash for something made in my home country. Go America. And go Broncos.
</rant>
