Incoming flagships prior to July?

Domingo

Domingo

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Jul 30, 2004
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Hi all, I'm on a 2 year old Moto X Pure with a battery that has become more and more of a liability. Things that used to drain 4-5% of my battery each morning are now taking 10-15% and it's getting worse instead of better. Tried factory resetting, clearing cache, etc. to no avail.

I'm interested in upgrading to something similar, but need to do it before a big trip in August.

The things I'm mostly interested in are:

1. Battery Life. That's the end all be all.
2. Comparable screen size. I can go slightly bigger or smaller.
3. Limited/No bloatware launchers. I hate TouchWiz and Samsung apps so much.
4. Durability. Nothing too fragile.
5. OS Upgrades. 1 update a year is weak sauce.
6. Capacity. 128GB is ideal, but 64 is at least feasible.
7. Camera. I don't care if it's better, just nothing worse.
8. European functionality. This used to be an issue, but it doesn't sound like it anymore? My last few phones have worked fine in Germany and Belgium via AT&T. Any red flags these days?

Is there anything coming soon that fits that? I like the Pixels, but find the screen to be a bit small. Plus, they aren't waterproof...at least officially. Is Moto still making new phones that use mostly vanilla Android? Any chance LG or some of the Chinese phones end up going vanilla or close to it?
 
If battery life is the end all be all; Moto Z Play.

My wife has one and loves it. It consistently gets 10+ hours of SoT in a charge and goes for 2 days of moderate-heavy usage consistently. That's at least twice as much as any other flagship phone, including the iPhone. Plus you can get one of the battery mods for it for at least another day of heavy usage if you want to get crazy with it. Despite its mid-ranger specs, it performs faster than her previous Note 5 in general UI performance by a considerable because it's on stockish Android as well. That Note5 benches a LOT faster, but in this case numbers are incredibly deceiving. It actually seems to be a bit more responsive than my Nexus 6P as well. It has a largish 5.5" display (same size as the Pixel XL and iPhone 7 Plus) at 1080p. The front facing speaker on it gets pretty loud and sounds pretty good. It comes with a base 32GBs internal storage, but it does support 128GB+ SD cards. You can get a dual-SIM version as well for both your US and Euro SIMs. It's fully compatible with T-Mobile and AT&T in the US. Moto says it will get Nougat next month. It's also only $400-$450 new unlocked.

They haven't been the best with updates since the Lenovo merger, but they're no worse than Samsung or LG it seems. Camera is adequate, but nothing close to other flagships. Wife hasn't complained though and she's a wedding photographer and rarely tries to take pics in low light environments.
 
Will look into this model. Other than the slow updates (and hemorrhaging battery), my Moto X has been terrific. If the Z is similar with a good battery, I'd be happy.
 
Can't you just replace the battery in your current phone? The failing battery is a bad reason to ditch a phone if you're overall happy with the performance.
 
Nirad9er said:
Can't you just replace the battery in your current phone? The failing battery is a bad reason to ditch a phone if you're overall happy with the performance.
Click to expand...
I also thought of that alternative and spoke to a technician who repairs smartphones and installs batteries. He cited signs of a failing battery are significantly long recharging times, or the battery is no longer holding a charge. He also said a faulty battery may build up gas near the end of its lifetime and exhibit this with the case swelling or generating heat. This article corroborates what he said.

Because the OP made no mention of the above, does it not sound more likely that his concerns have more to do with how his phone is utilizing the charge rather than the battery itself? The WireCutter published a thorough article on what you should and shouldn't do to extend your phone's battery life. The Moto X Pure is mentioned four times in the article. Perhaps there is something in there that he can use.

Never-the-less I was told that the typical life expectancy for a phone battery is two or three years. So, even if the battery was not yet failing it will expectedly be doing so.
 
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Will check out that article. Recharge times are actually as quick as ever. My issue is mainly that normal usage uses 2x more battery than it used to. Normally I wouldn't care that much, but with services like Uber and Lyft, it can be an issue at the end of the night when my battery % is rapidly heading toward single digits.
I was under the impression that having a battery replaced on a smartphone was often more expensive than it was worth. What do places usually charge for that? If it's anything more than $50-75 I'd probably be better off just getting a throw away junk Android until something better arrives.
 
I'm not sure how much a repair shop would charge to replace a battery, but I replaced the battery (along with the USB port) on my old One M8 for like $12 or something just off of Amazon. It's normally not too hard to do on phones that aren't mostly held together with glue and tape, as some of my M8 was and Samsung phones are (they're the worst to repair).

Here's one for the 2015 X Pure for $15. Not sure if you have the 2015 or 2014 X Pure.

Here's a vid on how to replace the battery on it too:



Not sure if that adhesive template they use to put it back together is easy to find, but I would think you could reuse the existing adhesive and it should hold good enough still. I did that for the speaker grills on my M8 and they stayed on just fine.
 
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Two smartphone repair shops have quoted $60 to replace the battery on my Moto X Pure 64 GB. The shop will request your phone's model number in order to look up the battery. Motorola named my model XT1575.
 
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$60 seems feasible as long as they offer some sort of guarantee. I looked into selling it via Amazon and a few of the trade-in sites. I've gotten pretty decent payoffs for my previous iPhones and Galaxy phones. Nobody seems to want any part of a 64GB Moto X, though.
 
T4rd said:
Not sure if you have the 2015 or 2014 X Pure.
Click to expand...
The Pure Edition came about in 2015.

Moto X (2013) [1st Gen]
Moto X (2014) [2nd Gen]
Moto X Pure (2015) [3rd Gen]
 
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T4rd said:
There was a 2014 Pure Edition as well. It was just GSM only, I think.

Edit: Link - https://motorola-global-portal.cust...prod_answer_detail/a_id/108823/p/30,6720,9197
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Thank you! I'm glad you located that article to confirm that indeed there was a Moto X 2014 Pure and I purchased it! It was the XT1095, and yes it is a GSM unlocked phone which is why they used the term Pure with the phone. Very few (if any) websites or reviews mention that anymore and only speak of the Pure as being associated with the 2015 Moto X Pure Edtion.

Here's another little disseminated fact. In 2013 Motorola also released a Moto X phone which the Motorola marketing team could have labeled as being a Pure phone too. It was the XT1053 and I purchased that one too. Motorola officially labeled it 2013 Moto X - Developer Edition.
 
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Supersnake said:
Thank you! I'm glad you located that article to confirm that indeed there was a Moto X 2014 Pure and I purchased it! It was the XT1095, and yes it is a GSM unlocked phone which is why they used the term Pure with the phone. Very few (if any) websites or reviews mention that anymore and only speak of the Pure as being associated with the 2015 Moto X Pure Edtion.

Here's another little disseminated fact. In 2013 Motorola also released a Moto X phone which the Motorola marketing team could have labeled as being a Pure phone too. It was the XT1053 and I purchased that one too. Motorola officially labeled it 2013 Moto X - Developer Edition.
Click to expand...

Yup, I remember that dev edition phone as well. I would have liked to got one had I not been on Verizon at the time, same with the 2014 Pure Edition. My mom had the 2013 X on Verizon though and it was an awesome phone. Was crazy how fast it performed even after a couple years of use and updates. That was the height of Moto phones, IMO.
 
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