back to article Motorola Motoluxe Android smartphone

Don’t be confused by the name: it may be seem classy and good-looking but this is a mid-range handset, not a deluxe one. It’s also quite distinctive, which is good at a time when Android handsets are numerous and often me-too copies or unimaginative derivatives. Motorola Motoluxe Android smartphone A comfortable compromise: …

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  1. LarsG

    LOOKS...

    pretty generic actually, except FO the hole to put the lanyard. Most phones used th have this anyway but more dicrete.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    but no

    Ice cream sandwich and no promise of an upgrade path which might hamper sales. Any sensible person will wait a couple of months for the upto date ID's to arrive.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: but no

      OS's I mean, damn this HTC spell checker that thinks its an author.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: but no

        If you care about OS upgrades, chances are you don't really care about this phone and will be looking toward the higher-end of the market.

  3. Lunatik
    FAIL

    ARMv6 in 2012? No thanks.

    1. Nicolas Charbonnier
      Thumb Up

      ARM Cortex-A5 is ARMv7

      This is the new MSM7227 ARM Cortex-A5 processor. Not the old MSM7227 ARM11 type.

  4. DrXym

    Almost a budget phone

    The phone looks almost budget quality but the price is too high. I don't think it's going to do very well.

  5. Piro Silver badge
    Pint

    I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

    Why are Motorola making anything apart from the RAZR MAXX, and the Droid 4?

    Seems like literally everything else is a waste of time.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

      Maybe it's called having a range of products? not everyone can justify £400-500 for a phone. There's a world economic crisis taking place still.

      1. Piro Silver badge

        Re: Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

        But £260 isn't exactly that cheap either, and what you get is relatively mediocre.

        I didn't spend much on my phone either, it's a battered Desire HD I bought off ebay, second hand, so I'm not being elitist.

        But surely they could push the prices of their top devices down through economies of scale and simplifying tooling and parts, by concentrating on fewer models.

        1. Piro Silver badge

          Re: Re: Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

          It'd be nice if I could edit my post - I'll clarify some more - there are some Android devices that are borderline usable because of terrible specs, this one isn't exactly awful, but there are some - with 600MHz CPUs and 256MB RAM, still being pushed out, when that experience is going to be worse than a standard dumb/feature phone running Symbian.

          Apple seem to be doing very well by having a single phone. I think people get confused in this sea of devices, and when they see an "android" phone from a well known manufacturer, they assume they're all as good as each other, when it turns out to be sub-par, they think their friend's iPhone is the business, despite it obviously costing more (people hide the cost of these things in their contracts).

    2. MrF
      Facepalm

      Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

      Why do they offer so many models when it's clear that most will fail in the marketplace?

      Simple, really: Motorola -- and, by extension, every other OEM -- builds to operator demand. Full stop.

      http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha-verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Android handsets are numerous and often me-too copies or unimaginative derivatives."

    Of course iPhone has it's own individual style! The individual style of millions.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "......they assume they're all as good as each other, when it turns out to be sub-par, they think their friend's iPhone is the business....."

    Because they were not clever enough in the first place to check out the spec's, to do some research. So those same people go for an iPhone.

    Which is what I've been saying for years now, iPhone users are usually brain dead, so being seen with one doesn't make you look cool or trendy. It makes you look like you don't know what your doing!

    I dispair at this country! Society is becoming "thicker" by the generation.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Dizzy360
      FAIL

      Duh

      It's spelled 'despair'.

      Best to make sure you can spell properly before you start commenting on whether people are clever, thick etc.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Duh

        A bit pedantic, not everyone has had the benefit of your expensive education.

    3. DAN*tastik

      typo

      ... what you're doing...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I love this elitist attitude that people who don't get why the iPhone is so successful have. The reason is the cliche of "it just works" Apple have no new ideas and no new hardware (compared to other manufacturers) but have made the user experience fantastic.

      When I use my HTC, most of the time it works really well, but there are times when the menu wont scroll straight away, or the wireless stops auto connecting or the screen goes a bit crazy and scrolls through all the homescreen panels on a single touch. All of these things are easy enough to get around, but why should I? why hasn't HTC spent the time developing their software correctly so that none of this is a problem...Apple do, and that is why, when you REALLY look at the two phones side by side the iPhone will always win. Yes the HTC does things the iPhone can't but in reality those things are so unimportant that I forget what most of them are.

      You might see iPhone users as idiots, but they will look at you and think you are a loser, especially if you think that your buying decision is automatically the best choice for every user.

    5. ThomH

      Because everyone in the world agrees with your priorities?

      A simple fact of the world is that equally intelligent people can always find things on which to disagree.

      Trying to make the case that if people don't reach the same conclusions as you about which phone to buy then they must be stupid actually says more about your intelligence than theirs.

  8. Jean Le PHARMACIEN

    Re Obviously! and 'thicker' by the generation

    Thanks for that gem. I feel that you truly made your point

    - try 'despair' rather than 'dispair'

    Could you illuminate us with the country you refer to and I'll send my 40 yr old English Grammar and Vocabulary textbook from my schooldays

  9. MattW

    Full sized SIM?

  10. Jamie Kitson

    Xperia Arc S

    You can get an Xperia Arc S for £240, so why would you bother?

  11. Jim Coleman
    Holmes

    Why does every phone El Reg reviews score 70-80%?

    Surely the very best should get 100% and the worst should get 0%? I'd love to see a chart of the distribution of El Reg review scores. Instead of a nice bell-shaped curve peaking at 50%, I expect we'll see just a huge spike on 70-80% and the rest just blank.

    Just sayin'

    1. Jim Coleman
      Meh

      Well here are the latest El Reg phone reviews...

      Apple iPhone 4S - 90%

      Samsung Galaxy Nexus - 90%, 85%

      Motorola Razr - 85%, 90%

      Motorola Motoluxe - 80%

      Nokia Asha 201 - 80%

      Orange Monte Carlo - 80%

      Orange San Francisco 2 - 80%

      Mokia Lumia 710 - 80%

      LG Optimus 3D - 80%

      Nokia Lumia 800 - 70%, 80%

      RIM Blackberry Curve 9380 - 75%

      Prada Phone by LG 3.0 - 75%

      HTC Explorer - 75%

      HTC Sensation XL - 75%

      Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S - 75%

      RIM Blackberry Bold 9790 - 75%

      HTC Sensation XE - 75%

      Motorola Pro+ - 70%

      RIM Blackberry Torch 9860 - 65%

      ViewSonic V350 - 60%

      Out of 20 reviews, three quarters of them are within the 70-80% bracket.

    2. Jerome 0

      Review scores

      To be fair to El Reg, I think you'll find that sort of skewed distribution on any review site. Anything under 60-70% these days is reserved for stuff that's truly dire.

      1. Jim Coleman
        Meh

        Re: Review scores

        If something "truly dire" scores 60-70%, what do you call something that scores 10%?

        Are you saying that 10% isn't a valid score? Why not? If a phone is average, shouldn't it score 50%?

        If no phone ever scores 100%, then doesn't that make "100%" completely meaningless?

        More to the point, if so many phones score 70-80%, how in heck is a consumer supposed to work out which is the one for them. Isn't the point of a score to provide differentiation?

        If in a maths exam, the worst possible score was 60% and the best possible was 90%, then you are basically cramming the whole of humanity into a tiny 30% bracket, which seems completely daft.

        1. Jerome 0

          Re: Re: Review scores

          Jeez, calm down Jim! I happen to agree with you, review scores all bunched up together are pretty silly. I was just pointing out that you'll find the same thing virtually everywhere, it's not solely El Reg that's at fault.

          Scores in reviews are generally pointless anyway. There's no such thing as the "best" smartphone, everyone has different requirements. Just read the review, decide on the basis of the features whether the phone suits your needs, and ignore the ultimately arbitrary percentage tacked onto the end.

    3. Jamie Kitson

      Possibilities: i) el Reg chooses decent phones to review, ii) el Reg doesn't want to upset the people who give them the phones to review iii) People don't make bad phones.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scores

    I think that's being a bit harsh on the Reg - most kit nowadays does more or less what it says on the box. To start getting down to the 20-40% area something would have to be barely - or non - functional, and I suspect the view would then be "why review it?" For stuff that just works, is built OK, is reasonably priced etc, a score of between 70 and 80% seems fair enough, 80+ is generally reserved for really good, or really good value, stuff and 50-70 for the devices that are a below par, unreliable or expensive for what you get.

    At least the Reg doesn't award 100% scores. When I see that on other sites - one name stands out - I pretty much stop reading because it means what follows is hagiography not review and the company has probably let the hack keep the kit involved.

    1. Jim Coleman
      Meh

      Re: Scores

      Well imho the best phone should score 100% and the worst should get 0%. Everything in between should then be rated according to how it fares in comparison with the two extremes.

      Giving everything 70-80% just because it works OK tells the punter virtually nothing.

      Scoring 60% is meaningless if there doesn't exist a single phone that is worse.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: Scores

        Rather than % give it a score between 1 and 5.

        1. Dire don't buy

        2. Buy only if you have no other choice

        3. Average It's ok.

        4. Good but there are better top end phones available.

        5. Dogs boll**ks.

        1. ThomH

          Re: Re: Re: Scores

          Or better yet, ditch the scores entirely and assume we're capable of comprehending the prose? El Reg's reviews already have a 100-ish word summary verdict for those that just want to skip to the end.

        2. Jim Coleman
          Meh

          Re: Re: Re: Scores

          @AC: Yeah but then everything would be scored as a 3 or 4.

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