This Could Be Motorola's New 'X Phone'
Evleaks has published four photos of a smartphone believed to be part of Motorola's upcoming "X Phone" line. The shown device is locked in a protective black box so that its overall design is kept secret. However a number on the back reads "XFON ATT" which suggests that it's an AT&T version of the upcoming handset – the device screen clearly reads AT&T as well.
Shortly after the screens appeared, another set from gadget blog Tinthe.tn was published revealing an X Phone without the protective casing. The carrier shown on the screen is Vietnam's largest mobile network operator, Viettel Mobile, suggesting that it's not the same phone as seen in the previous batch. Regardless, the latter batch reveals a very sleek smartphone with a large display sporting a thin, rounded frame. Nice.
9to5Google claims that both photo leaks are legitimate, and backs up information the site has been sitting on for some time. The report even sported a drawing that matched the device in both sets of pictures, but the "we've been asked to remove the picture" statement now fills its vacant spot.
According to a source who supposedly had hands-on with an LTE version, the XFON (I like it so we're sticking with it) will launch on all four U.S.-based carriers and offer over 25 different color options. This particular unit was running Android 4.2.2 "Jelly Bean" and had 32 GB of internal storage, 2 GB of RAM, but no SD card slot.
The source also said that the XFON had a screen size of around 4.7-inches but with a very, very slim bezel as seen in the photographs. Both volume and power buttons were on the right side, and the headphone jack was on top center while the charging port was on bottom center.
Previous reports indicated that the Motorola XFON could be customizable on a hardware level much like a desktop PC provided by HP and Dell. That could still be a possibility, allowing customers to pick the SoC, amount of RAM and amount of internal storage based on their budget. The source definitely confirms the outer shell aspect which possibly eliminates the need for the customer to purchase a third-party protective cover.
Images of the Motorola XFON arrive after the Motorola XT1055 appeared on a recent AnTuTu benchmark believed to be an XFON series device. It had a total score of 18252 and revealed to have Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 SoC clocked at 1.7 GHz and Android 4.2.2. This 28-nm LP chip includes four Krait 300 CPU cores, an Adreno 320 GPU, 32-bit dual-channel LPDDR3 technology, and a dual-band Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 component.
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There's a good chance Google will reveal the Motorola XFON series during its 3-hour keynote at Google I/O later this month, so stay tuned.
Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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wildkitten No SD card slot? What drew me to Motorola's Bionic was the SD slot and the removable battery. If Google has Motorola move away from these customer friendly options, they may see customers move away from them.Reply
There is no excuse not to include SD slots on phones. They have been on phones since well before smartphones hit the market. Even the free dumb phones always had them, so they don't add significantly to the cost of manufacturing the phone. The only reason not to include it is to push their cloud services, which with small data caps on cell networks just makes things more difficult for users. -
wildkitten No SD card slot? What drew me to Motorola's Bionic was the SD slot and the removable battery. If Google has Motorola move away from these customer friendly options, they may see customers move away from them.Reply
There is no excuse not to include SD slots on phones. They have been on phones since well before smartphones hit the market. Even the free dumb phones always had them, so they don't add significantly to the cost of manufacturing the phone. The only reason not to include it is to push their cloud services, which with small data caps on cell networks just makes things more difficult for users. -
fatboytyler There is no real reason to have a SD card slot. SD cards are slower than internal storage. Also most phones don't allow more than a 32GB SD card anyways, so you're still going to have the same amount of storage.Reply -
walter87 @fatboytylerReply
Its not about the speed of SD cards vs internal flash. Its about the convenience.
SD Cards are primarily useful for storage of media files (music, videos, pictures and documents), leaving more room on the internal storage for apps. Doing video recording at 1080p a lot can quickly eat up all your usable space and SD cards are convenient hot plug add-ons so you dont need to constantly moving files wired to a PC (cloud sync is dependant on data caps or easy access to Wi-Fi networks).
It also reduces the costs of the devices substantially. Entry level 16GB model phones can be offered at subsidized rates contract with expandable storage of up an additional 64GB.
It makes no sense for a consumer to pay an additional $100-200+ per flash upgrades (to 32GB or 64GB), on a phone that will last them 2 years on contract.
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wildkitten Reply
I'm sorry, but not sure you have any well thought out reason on that. For one thing, a class 10 SD card is not that slow. I can't tell much of a difference on apps on an SD card opening versus those on internal storage.10759515 said:There is no real reason to have a SD card slot. SD cards are slower than internal storage. Also most phones don't allow more than a 32GB SD card anyways, so you're still going to have the same amount of storage.
But it's not really a place for storing apps anyway. It's a great place to store music and other media files, especially since phones are good for taking snapshots and quick videos. And instead of using data to stream music, you can have your music locally and can move files more quickly to your computer via an SD card slot. There simply is no reasonable argument to not having more local storage options, unless you own a cloud storage service, especially when this type of storage is so inexpensive to add to a phone.
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fatboytyler Don't get me wrong, Class 10 are fast, that's what I currently use. It is a convenience, but certainly not a needed feature. However, if it were to come without a removable battery... That is much more of an important feature.Reply -
JD88 The answer is simple. Google wants you to take advantage of their cloud based services instead of having things stored locally on your phone. That argument they gave about speed and "user experience" was PR nonsense.Reply