Google has a lot to prove with its first bit of self-made hardware, the Moto X smartphone from Motorola. The company, purchased by Google last year for an impressive $12.5 billion, introduced the phone on Thursday, marking the first device since the deal with Google.
The phone has all the usual features expected of a modern competitive smartphone with one huge exception, the ability to control its functions with voice commands. Unlike Apple's personal assistant "Siri," the Moto X assistant requires no finger control, making it perfect for those who want to operate the device while driving. The phone will constantly listen for its owner's voice and carry out commands when prompted with the phrase "OK Google."
The New York Times uses the example "OK Google, find my a way home." The device will then bring up a map with the best rout to the owner's house. It is even able to learn the voice of its owner and only respond to it. While that might sound creepy to some it's important to note the feature can be turned on and off at the will of the user.
The phone has a 4.7-inch touch screen, which puts it right between the iPhone 5 on the smaller end and the Samsung Galaxy S4 on the bigger end. Google has a history of wanting to create devices that do things for people simply when they ask them to. That's why it recently came out with its conversational search option for its web browser that allows users to ask questions like "How tall is Mathew Perry?" and follow it up with "How about Courtney Cox?" second search will be able to remember you're asking a question about height and respond accordingly.
"We want to change the way people call, we want to change the way people search and we want to change the way people navigate," Iqbal Arshad, Motorola senior vice president of global product deelopment said. "That's what touchless control enabled you to do. So we had to design a mobile computing system to do that."
