Moto X Force

The new Moto X Force (AED 2,549) comes with 48-hour battery life, snappy performance, and a vibrant Quad HD display. And what's unique about the device is that it now comes with a shatterproof display, thanks to the company's ShatterShield technology. There's no denying that the Moto X Force is beefy. Despite having a 5.4-inch display, it measures just 5.9-by-3.07-by-0.36 inches (HWD) with a weight of 170-gms.

Because it's a little shorter than the bigger phones, it's a bit easier to use with a single hand. The phone has a metal frame, with various options for the back and accents including Pebbled Leather, Ballistic Nylon, and Soft Grip. The version we received for review came with a greyish metallic frame and a nylon mesh finish at the back.

The back panel is neat, with just the camera, an LED flash module below it, with the Motorola dimple. Even though the Moto X Force is on the large side, I found it easy to reach across the phone's screen with my thumb and pull down the notification slider.

The front of the phone also shares the same clean design - it has the ambient light sensor, selfie camera, the earpiece, the speakers, the LED flash, the proximity sensor, and an infrared sensor on the front. The display feels noticeably thicker than on other phones. It doesn't impact touch screen sensitivity, but I could tell that Gorilla Glass is replaced with a multilayered ShatterShield display here.

On the plus side, I was unable to damage the screen despite my best efforts. In testing, it survived multiple six-foot drops onto concrete, being tossed around the room, and several hard bumps against a table edge. The metal frame took a beating, getting scraped and nicked, but the screen emerged unscathed.

The screen is a vibrant 2,560-by-1,440 Quad HD AMOLED and it crams 540 pixels into every inch. In terms of quality, the Moto X Force shows bright, saturated colours. The Moto X Force's screen gets bright enough to be used in direct sunlight, and viewing angles are fine. Motorola's notification scheme of just lighting up a few icons when you pick up the phone works well on this device.

The only physical feature the phone is missing is a fingerprint scanner. The Motorola dimple on the back is the perfect place for it and the natural resting place for your index finger. It's disappointing that Motorola opted not to spring for a sensor, especially given that the Moto X Force's price is comparable to other smartphones on the market, that do come with fingerprint sensors.

The Moto X Force supports 4G LTE connectivity, too. The phone supports dual-band Wi-Fi, which guarantees good download/upload speeds just about anywhere you have connection. You also get Bluetooth 4.1 LE.

The Moto X Force has five mics with active noise-cancellation support, so I expected excellent quality on outgoing voice calls. Results were really good. I was able to carry on a conversation in a noisy environment, with ease. The phone's single front-facing speaker delivers good sound quality, with decent depth on the midrange. The speaker gets loud enough to use for streaming video and listening to music.

A Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with 3GB of RAM powers the Moto X Force. So it's snappy and can handle just about anything you throw at it, including heavy multitasking, and high-end gaming. I was able to play Asphalt 8, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and Assassin's Creed Pirates, without any lag, slowdown, or skipped frames.

AnTuTu benchmarks showed a high of 56,753, which naturally throttled down after heavy gaming sessions, but not enough to be noticeable. The company boasts that the Moto X Force 2 has a 48-hour battery life. That's mostly a true claim. In testing, I was able to make it through a day and a half without draining the massive 3,760mAh battery.

That included playing games and taking pictures, both of which are power-intensive tasks. In our rundown test where we set the screen brightness to max and stream full-screen video continuously over LTE, the Moto X Force clocked 9 hours, 4 minutes, which was one of our highest scores.

On the hardware side, the Moto X Force comes with a 21-megapixel, f/2.0 rear-facing camera. I found that improved software meant the Moto X Force produced sharp photos. The camera doesn't perform as well in low light, with a struggling autofocus and some noise and graininess in images. To compensate, the Moto camera app allows you to manually control focus and exposure, which is handy in low-light situations.

The phone is capable of recording 4K and 1080p video, both at 30fps, but frame rates drop in low light or when there's a lot of movement in frame. During daylight, the autofocus locks quickly and footage is well stabilised even though the camera lacks optical image stabilisation. Low-light videos suffer from all the same problems of low-light stills, with the added issue of an autofocus that has no idea what to do.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera is consistently solid, with a wide-angle lens and f/2.0 aperture. It also has an LED flash like the rear-shooter, but using it tends to wash out images or generate noise around the edges of shots. Otherwise, the selfie camera takes great shots during the day, with good colour reproduction and sharpness.

The review unit we received cames with 32GB of internal storage. This can be further expanded by using a microSD card. The Moto X Force runs an almost-stock Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, with some low-key Moto functionality added on.

Overall, the Moto X Force is a powerful and worthy successor to its previous iteration. Its price is somewhat on the higher side, which can put off potential buyers. However, the Moito X Force comes with powerful hardware, great battery life, improved camera, and shatterproof display. If battery life and durability are your primary concern, you won't go wrong with the Moto X Force.