The New Moto Smartphones Are Here And Ready For Selfies

At a multicity live-streamed launch event this morning, Motorola unveiled three new smartphones with a sharp focus on personalization, contextual awareness, and selfies. Yes, selfies.

The Moto X Style, Moto X Play, and a new low-cost Moto G are Motorola’s latest additions to the wide range of Android-based smartphones available on the market today. To set itself apart from the pack (most notably the Samsung Galaxy line, at which Motorola executives repeatedly took digs), the company is drastically improving its phones’ cameras, making them easier to personalize and throwing in features like location-aware silencing, waterproofing, and turbo-fast battery charging.

The Moto X Style, which ships in September, will sport a 5.7-inch HD display, 21 megapixel camera that shoots 4K video, Motorola’s ultra-fast TurboCharge battery charging feature, front-facing speakers, and customizable design via the Moto Maker website. Owners can choose from a range of colors for the rubberized back, or swap in materials like leather or wood. It also comes with what the company is calling a front-facing wide-angle “selfie camera” to ensure those pouty-faced group shots don’t cut off anybody’s face.

The more affordable Moto X Play (which Motorola promises will cost around $400 less than comparable devices) takes a few of Style’s specs down a notch—a slightly smaller screen, a slightly slower processor, 2GB of RAM instead of 3—but promises much longer battery life than other phones. The Play boasts up to 48 hours of battery from a single charge, which the company claims is 42% longer than that of the Samsung Galaxy S6. This is obviously a common sticking point for many consumers (my iPhone 5S barely lasts through lunchtime some days), and Motorola is leaping at the opportunity to market its new devices as being more reliable and easier to fit into our lives.

Motorola is also pushing its Moto Assist, a location-aware, Siri-style personal assistant that knows to read messages out loud when you’re driving and not be so talkative when you’re in a movie theater (or any other predefined location).

The Moto X Play will start shipping in August.

For $400, you can also get the Moto X Pure, an unlocked, carrier-agnostic version of the Moto X with a pure, bloat-free version of Android installed.

For smaller budgets, Motorola is introducing a new Moto G. The $180 smartphone takes some of the key specs down a notch—smaller 5-inch screen, slower processor, less RAM, a 13 megapixel camera—but throws in extra features like a waterproof exterior that will protect the phone in up to a meter of water for as long as 30 minutes. Oh, and it has a 5 megapixel front-facing camera as well, “for awesome selfies,” as the company put it. The Moto G is available starting today.