Moto Pure X is a tremendous disappointment on the camera front. Not just a lack of raw support, but also a complete lack of manual controls. One of the best available sensors, intentionally crippled. I use manual controls regularly. Poorly done, Motorola!

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Michael K Johnson December 22, 2015 13:54

Trying to plus-mention Motorola Mobility is an exercise in frustration due to Google+ terrible handling of naming and verification. I couldn’t get it to offer me the actual verified account. G+ ought to sort verified accounts first.

Eugene Crosser December 22, 2015 15:43

I can tell you that verified account does not help here. When I am hellbent to +mention someone/thing, I circle them, post, and uncircle again.

Michael K Johnson December 22, 2015 16:56

+Eugene Crosser Yeah, that occurred to me.

Trying to decide whether to keep this phone. Inexpensive as generally up to date phones go and likely to continue to get OS updates for a while, but total lack of manual camera control is a big deal. :-(

Michael K Johnson December 22, 2015 22:36

Did a direct, side-by-side photo comparison between Galaxy S6 and Moto X Pure. The S6 won, hands down. The loss of detail in the Moto X Pure pictures was an embarrassing waste of what I understand is supposed to be a halfway decent sensor. I was sad about excessive noise reduction reducing detail in low light on the S6 when I would have made different decisions and could have tweaked raw, but the Moto X Pure is much worse. Really makes for a poor camera.

This isn’t just missing OIS. It looks to me like very aggressive de-noise.

In general, the camera app is terrible. I’d rather use a third-party camera app.

Hey, Motorola, give me my camera2 API already!

Other than being slightly larger than I would prefer, missing IR, and not having a user-replaceable battery, I am generally satisfied. If they hadn’t bungled the camera that way, I wouldn’t be considering returning it.

Michael K Johnson December 23, 2015 11:44

On the other hand, front-facing pictures in practically complete darkness (pre-dawn, no lights turned on, dark to the eyes) were in focus with reasonable color balance using the front-facing flash. If I actually took selfies for some reason other than testing the front-facing camera with the relatively unusual front-facing flash, I would care more that they seem to have done a good job with this feature.

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable