Motorola Announces the New Moto X: Initial Impressions and Hands On
by Joshua Ho on September 5, 2014 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Moto X
The Metal Frame & External Antenna with Dynamic Tuning
While I’ve discussed material choices before in the context of mobile devices, the new Moto X requires a new depth of understanding in order to really appreciate the amount of work Motorola has done to enable the industrial and material design desired. In order to avoid issues with the metal frame detuning internal antennas and maintain radio performance, Motorola has developed their own custom antenna tuner that is supposed to be even better than the QFE15xx antenna tuner that Qualcomm has made as a part of their RF360 package.
Of course, at this point the iPhone 4’s “death grip” issue has been discussed to death. In short, due to a lack of antenna diversity, it was possible to easily detune the phone’s antenna and significantly decrease signal reception by putting a finger on the gap between two parts of the metal frame. Understanding how an antenna tuner can help to resolve this situation requires an understanding of impedance and how it relates to antennas.
The first and inevitable question is what impedance is. To briefly summarize this topic, impedance is essentially resistance in an AC circuit. Impedance in an AC (alternating current, or what comes out of most power outlets) is determined by resistors, capacitors, and inductors present in the circuit. In antennas, what’s really happening is that electromagnetic waves in the air are causing the antenna to resonate, and as a result the waves are converted in electrical signals. While this is easy enough to understand, the crucial portion of this is where the antenna connects to the rest of the system. Antennas inherently have an impedance determined by natural resonant frequencies, the height above the ground, and the conductors used to construct the antenna. For the most part though, this is relatively easy to tune for at the factory such that the impedance mismatch is small.
The major problem is that the real world is not just the inside of a factory. As mentioned before, the hand detunes the antenna due to its capacitive effects. This means that the impedance changes. For those still following along with the physics, the reason why an impedance mismatch causes reception to worsen is because the electrical signal is still in the form of a wave in the AC circuit, parts of the wave will reflect just like how some light is reflected when crossing from one medium to another, which is why water can appear to be a mirror from one side but a window from another.
Now that we’ve gone over the physics, let’s get back to the Moto X. Motorola has developed their own custom antenna tuner. While Qualcomm has their own antenna tuner, the major differentiator is that this antenna tuner actually detects capacitance changes at the antenna and adjusts impedance accordingly. In practice, the antenna is retuned incredibly quickly, with next to no hesitation. Motorola demonstrated this by showing two Moto Xs that were identical except one had the antenna tuner disabled. The Moto X without this antenna tuner rapidly dropped from ~23 dBm output power to ~7 dBm output power. The unit with the antenna tuner managed to achieve around ~15 dBm output power after detuning. Remember, decibels are a logarithmic scale so this represents around a 6.3x increase in power output.
In addition, in discussions with Motorola’s engineering team they claimed that the new Moto X improves upon the receive sensitivity of the first Moto X. This is no small feat as the original Moto X was known to have some of the best radio reception amongst its peers. Once again, this makes sense as even though polycarbonate is RF transparent there will always be some level of reflection, just like how there is reflection with impedance mismatches, and I would once again refer to our article on materials in mobile devices to get a better understanding of this subject.
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joannecdinkins - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
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joannecdinkins - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
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JoricK - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Yeah, great preview Joshua. Thanks a lot !peckiro - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Great article. Motorola err Lenovo may have a winner here, and for much less than the other flagships.KJCtech - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
The Moto X looks like its going to be my next smartphone. I feel I might be spoiled by it.tuxRoller - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Are you sure about the ir needing visible light? Why? It has three EMITTERS.I would think the ir sensors would detect an objects presence then switch on camera for details (like focus point of eyes). Perhaps a bit more detail in that section?
Otherwise, tremendous preview!
Zoomer - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
FF cam likely has a IR filter, which means visible light is needed.Hmm...might be a good idea to remove the IR filter. Selfies are overrated.
tuxRoller - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
The ir filter is a good point, however the article suggests that the ir system ON ITS OWN can detect eye focus (or at least make a good guess). That wouldn't need visible light in order to work.As I said, is really like a bit more clarity in that section, but I don't expect it. For some reason the writers have never responded to me...
JoricK - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Don't you think it's a mistake going from 4,7 to 5,2'' ?gg555 - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Great article.One question, you talk about the four microphone noise cancellation being designed to improve the performace of the voice command functionality. But will it also function for noise cancellation during calls?
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That aside, for those worried about the battery size, I think we really have to wait for reviews to see how it performs. It seems like Motorola is doing a lot of its own optimizing to help with things like this. There are two sides to this equation, battery size and power consumption. Keep in mind that the iPhone has always had a relatively small battery and yet it has hands down the best battery life amongst smartphones. That's because of how Apple optimizes the rest of the hardware and software. And AMOLED screens are very power efficient. Anyway, I'm not saying 2300 mAh is good, but you really have to wait to see.
That aside, I do feel torn about this phone. It has a great design. The four microphone noise cancellation could be a singularly great feature in a world where smartphones having actually been going backwards and embracing worse technology (Qualcomm's mediocre Fluence, over the Audience Earsmart chip). It still seems unclear if the phone has stereo front facing speakers or not, but if it does that would be great. The AMOLED screen ought to be very good and I'm glad Motorola skipped the gratuitous QHD screen resolution. And the focus on improving phone reception, explained in the article, sounds like another good step to improve the functional details that many manufacturers shrug their shoulders about and go "good enough."
On the other hand, 2 GB of RAM, USB 2.0 and the 801 processor really are lasts year's flasghip specs (the 805 processor has been in several phones available already a few months ago). And though the new camera module may be an overall improvement, it's hard not to feel like the move from a 1/2.6 to the smaller 1/3.06 sensor size is not a step backwards (as well as the lack of OIS being disappointing)--it's really a run of the mill camera by today's standards. The IR hand gestures functionality also feels pretty gimmicky to me, it's hard for me to see really carying about this much.
Also, what is up with that ugly enormous logo on the back? A real blotch on an otherwise beautiful design, especially poking like a silvery scab through the customizable wood (or other material) back. It seems like an attempt on Motorola's part to make some big glossy thing like the Apple logo (similar size and placement). But the Motorola "M" is never going to have the cache of the Apple logo, get over it. Anyway, do we all need to be flashy Apple snobs? Go back to the more discreet logo of the original Moto X please--that was in good taste.