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Motorola Moto X announced: Tailored to fit

Motorola’s UK home page may still only be hinting that a new handset is on its way, but a trip to the US site most definitely confirms that the long-awaited Motorola Moto X is finally here.

The new smartphone is the first project to come out of Motorola from start to finish under its new Google overlords and it was officially announced in the US yesterday evening. As such, the look and feel of the Moto X appears to be a far departure from the company’s previous handsets, namely comprised of the Droid brand in the US and known to us here in the UK by the likes of the Motorola RAZR MAXX and Motorola RAZR i, both of which utilised Motorola’s older design ideals: DuPont Kevlar backing, metal bodywork, water resistance and so on.

Motorola Moto X

Now with the Moto X, the idea is that it’s all about personalisation, primarily from a design standpoint. Buyers will be able to chose from a range of two different colour options on the front, 18 different back plate options and seven different accent options – accent colours affecting elements like the hardware buttons and camera surround.

Customisation even affects the hardware somewhat too, with users having the ability to choose between a 16GB or 32GB model. All of this customisation is tied to a new service Motorola is calling Motomaker – an online store which lets you not only pick colour and storage options, but also lets you add your Google account, choose your wallpaper, engrave the phone’s back and even input a personal message which will appear when the phone starts up. What really impresses us is that if customised phones aren’t to taste they can be returned in the first 14 days, no issue.

Hardware wise it features a 4.7-inch 720p HD Super AMOLED display, a modified 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor called the Motorola X8 chip, 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU, all of which place it in the market as a low-level flagship amidst the Full HD-toting displays of rival handsets from Sony, HTC and Samsung.

With this launch being a US-only affair, users who want to use the Motomaker will have to be prepared to sign up with AT&T, which has exclusivity over the highly customisable Moto X for the time being. If you’re not prepared to take that jump then the Woven Black and Woven White models are on offer from all other major US carriers.

Update 2/8/13: Unfortunately, the Moto X looks like it won’t be making its way across the Atlantic to Europe and will instead remain a US-only affair, which in truth has always been a stronger market for Motorola’s brand. A spokesperson for the company told AndroidCentral:

Because it is the first one, the Moto X has had a real buzz around it, but the US launch is not about the US being Motorola’s priority at all, there are devices coming to Europe. We can’t share what they are as of yet, but they are from the same family. They are cool and they are exciting and there is a lot in Europe coming up.

Don’t forget to check out our first look at the Motorola Moto X for more information.

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