Motorola is making a new Moto X flagship for 2016 featuring a metal unibody design
Motorola is going to revive the Moto X flagship for a fourth generation in 2016, and ahead of any other information seeping out regarding the new handset, an image has already leaked showcasing the phone's metal unibody design.
What could this mean for the Moto X? Well of course a metal unibody is in keeping with the trend for more premium design and build for flagship devices, however, a hallmark of the Moto X for several generations has been a modular design which allowed users to customise a selection of visual features during purchase via Motorola's own Moto Maker webstore. Is this something that can be retained with the switch to a metal unibody?
Other things we can observe include a large camera port, which could suggest (though does not necessarily mean) Motorola has paid extra attention to improving the imaging capabilities; larger sensor sizes are becoming increasingly the norm on flagship phones. There's also a dual-tone dual-LED flash, but that too is quite common now.
We'd also expect to see a fingerprint scanner, 3GB of RAM, Android Marshmallow and a large QHD display upfront.
The image has emerged via Chinese leak site cnbeta. Assuming this is all legit we expect we'll be seeing a lot more of the Moto X (2016) in the coming weeks and months.
Multiple reports and analysts have lambasted Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 CPU throughout 2015, claiming it has held back nearly all top flight Android handsets, crippling them with sub-par performance compared to the company’s 801 and 805 and ALL of this is before we get into the much documented over-heating issues. To be sure, the company’s Snapdragon 820 has A LOT riding on it — it needs to solve all the problems created by the Snapdragon 810 and add in a whole load of improvements.
Most — meaning, 99.9% of flagship Android handsets released next year — will run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 and we do not expect the Moto X 2016 to be an exception, despite Moto’s penchant for using older silicon in its phones. Early indications about the 820’s performance and features are very good, though, and we’ve had plenty of briefings throughout the year about the chipset, so we’re confident the Big Q will come good in 2016.
Stay tuned for updates.