Moto X 2014: 7 Best Features of the 2014 Motorola Flagship

Moto X 2014: 7 Best Features of the 2014 Motorola Flagship

With every new smartphone, there are generally some new features that are announced right alongside it. Even if they aren’t particularly new, each Android smartphone has a list of features that users love and brag about. With the release of Motorola’s latest flagship, we wanted to cover some of the more unique and interesting features for the 2014 Moto X.

Moto X Camera Gesture

With a simple twist of your wrist, you can gesture the 2014 Moto X to activate the camera even without turning it on and unlocking the device. Simply twisting/turning the device from left to right a couple of times will activate the display and launch you right into the camera application. From here, you can quickly take a picture and then lock the display making it very quick and very easy to take a picture.

Moto X Burst Mode

Speaking of cameras, LG advertised their G3 camera to be simple - it allows you to take a picture by just tapping on the display (when the camera application is open). The 2013 Moto X already did this but it also has a Burst Mode. So instead of a single tap on the display, all you have to do is tap and hold the display (while the camera application is open) and it will take multiple pictures back-to-back very quickly. It’s these types of quick features that make the Moto X so simple to use since there’s no need to fumble through any menus.

Moto Voice

You might already know of this feature as Touchless Controls from the 2013 Moto X. Motorola has given it a new name to match the other Moto-named features in the 2014 Moto X. The default activation phrase is ‘OK Moto X’, but you can customize this to just about any phrase you would like. This feature also integrates into other Android applications like WhatsApp, Facebook and even YouTube. You can tell your 2014 Moto X to post a status message to Facebook and it will perform the action without you needing to touch the device at all

Moto Assist

Another one of these new Moto-named features is Moto Assist. You can think of this as a programmable version of Google Now or the LG G3′s Smart Notice feature. Moto Assist will take information like what time it is, where you are and how fast you’re going so that it can give you contextual information based on it. As an example, you can program your 2014 Moto X to go into Silent Mode while you’re sleeping or if you’re in the car and on the way to/from work. You might think this is very similar to what Tasker does, and you’re correct to think that. It does some of the things that Tasker does, but it isn’t quite as powerful. This also means it’s much easier to configure too.

Moto Connect

This is a Motorola application that debuted on the 2013 Moto X. This app will let you pair your smartphone to your computer so that you can control your Moto X from the browser with the Moto Connect extension/plugin. You can do various things like send or receive texts, read the caller ID and other minor things right from the browser while the device is being charged or in your pocket.

Moto Display

Moto Display also debuted on the 2013 Moto X but was called Active Display back then. Since the Moto X uses an AMOLED display, the only battery power used to light up the display is for the individual pixels. So, you could keep the entire display black and only use a few dozen pixels to display some vital information about the time and your active notifications, all without eating up so much battery from lighting up the entire display (like an LCD panel has to). This type of interface is activated when you get a notification, but it also uses the sensors to know if you’ve picked up or turned over your smartphone.

Trusted Devices

We’ll end this list with a feature that is being incorporated into Android L. It’s called Trusted devices and it debuted on the 2013 Moto X as well. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this for the 2014 Moto X, but I assume that it’s still there. You’ll need to go into Settings and then tap on Security. From there, you should see the Trusted Devices option where it will let you pick a paired Bluetooth device. You can do this with any Bluetooth device so that when it’s paired with your Moto X, it will allow you to bypass any security protection you have on your device. This is great for when you have the Moto X paired with your car (or a smartwatch) so you aren’t required to focus on the smartphone to unlock it.