Core considerations

There’s more. On the home screens are two Motorola specialities. The first is the Activity Graph. It’s a widget made up of apps. It automatically pulls together the apps you use the most and clusters them in circle, the most used in the middle. It’s certainly more convenient than customising the home screen by dragging the appropriate shortcut to it.

UI refinements abound, the AnTuTu score is so last year though

The second is the Social Graph which does the same job for your contacts, putting your most-contacted person at the centre, complete with photo. If you prefer, you can manually control which contact falls where. The bottom of each screen has four icons which move with you as you scroll between pages.

For a mid-range model, this handset has a decent camera – an 8Mp sensor with LED flash where you might have expected to find a 5Mp version. Results are not the sharpest I’ve ever seen from this resolution, and shutter lag was noticeable even in decent light, so if you have time to half-depress the shutter to focus before snapping, you’ll have a more effective result.

Single-core CPU but no slouch

What’s not as impressive, but not unexpected given the price point, is the processor speed. It’s just 800MHz, single-core, of course. For all that, the phone never seemed especially slow, even when plentiful programs were open, as they often are with Android. This phone runs Gingerbread 2.3.7, by the way. Since this is a phone made by Motorola – soon to be owned by Google – you might have thought Ice Cream Sandwich was in order.

I guess it’ll come in high-end phones first, like the Motorola Razr, but no decision has been made yet as to whether it’ll reach down to this phone. Motorola execs told me it should be technically possible for it to run it. Call quality on the Motoluxe was good, with signal strength consistent and reliable. Battery life was pretty good, too, though as always with smartphones, daily recharges are best.

A lot of phone for your money

Verdict

This is a likeable phone with decent screen, a camera that is higher quality than the price would suggest and has neat styling to boot. It would be better if it came with the latest Android software, though this may follow. And a faster processor would make it really hare along. In all, however, this well-priced Android phone has a lot going for it. ®

More Android Phone Reviews
Prada Phone by LG 3.0	Motorola Razr	Ten… Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S	Samsung Galaxy Nexus	Orange San Francisco 2