I would have bought the Moto X hands down if it had the Maxx battery, an sd slot or maybe 32GB of memory (as I enjoy my nexus and not having to have my memory split up), and developer support. Pair that with the user experience that they have provided and you have created a near perfect phone for the masses. As I have said before, I enjoy a smaller screen and would enjoy a top tier phone with a 4.3" screen. A big battery doesn't make the phone thick; the Droid Ultra Maxx is thinner than the Ultra Mini, anyways who really cares if the phone is 3/8" thick compared to 1/4".
The Moto X has the form factor of an amazing device. In my opinion, the Moto X is one of the most beautiful phones ever built with its smooth lines, on screen nav keys, and ergonomic shape. Motorola needs to push the sexy factor of the phone, but to a greater extent push how you don't need the most cutting edge tech to have the best phone. What I laugh at is how people with the Note 2, for example, are usually saying, "this is the best phone ever, but I can't wait to replace it with the Note 3." This to me shows that the current model isn't making you as happy as you would like. Motorola needs to show that the Moto X might not have the best specs, but doesn't require them to be the best. Motorola needs to show how fluid Jelly Bean runs on it as well has how the few, but great, software advances they have made will push phone interaction to a new level, while in my experience with S4 users, all of them have turned off the new "amazing" features of the S4 such as the eye tracking. The same thing goes with Siri from Apple, everybody was saying Siri was revolutionary, but a year later rarely does anybody use it.
In real world use, you wont see a huge difference the performance of the Moto X compared to the S4, HTC One, ect. Comparing the Moto X to the top tier phones is like saying the Lamborghini Aventador is faster than a Corvette ZR1, which may be true on paper, but in real life the ZR1 can do everything the Lambo can do in. They are all great devices however, I agree that Motorola needs to lower the price on the Moto X if they try to compete spec wise however, if they can show how specs don't drive the cost of the device, the user experience does, they will out sell "top tier" phones. People will pay more for a certain experience over specs, look at Apple iPhones. They haven't had the best specs or even 4G (until recently) for the longest time yet people still pay more initially and iPhones hold there value much longer than any android phone. Just look at the prices on Craigslist or Swappa for an android device vs an iPhone. Example from Swappa: iPhone 4s ($225-$410), Droid Razr ($110-$190). Both came out around the same time , but the iPhone is still going for twice the price that the Razr is going for.
A friend recently sent me this link to
Droid-Life comparing the Moto X with the S4 and after he read it he said the S4 was the clear winner, but after reading it I noticed how the author spent more time talking about how the Moto X was a better phone than the other way around. User experience is what they need to sell. I recently broke my GNex and replaced it with another GNex (almost a 2 year old device) because I enjoy the user experience of a Nexus (a Verizon LTE Nexus) device over better quadrant scores or other specs.
