Motorola P30, an iPhone X copycat, actually looks pretty great
When the Motorola P30 was leaked earlier this week, all I could see was the latest Android-laden iPhone X. Even though the Essential Phone PH-1 was the first major smartphone with a notch, Apple put one on their iPhone and sold an outrageous amount of units. Since then, several China-based companies have taken to cloning the iPhone X industrial design as best they could. When you're in a place where making a good, cheaper copy isn't looked down upon, it's rewarded, it makes good business sense to make said copy.
Some thoughts on this
Xiaomi built their first few years of business on making extremely well-made dead-ringers for Apple products. Huawei's made products that look different enough that they're not exactly copies, but most certainly meant to do direct battle with Apple products. When you see companies taking the top spots in your country, doing so with devices that copy iPhone designs, you go ahead and do the same.
Can you guess which one is made by Motorola? Learn more about the design similarities in our article Motorola P30 copied Xiaomi who in turn copied Apple.
You do what you have to do, especially when you're a company like Motorola, acquired and now owned by Lenovo. That's a company inside another company where the larger company is also a publicly owned company. They're not in a position to say no when there's real opportunity for profit.
I don't want to pretend like I know what I'd do were I in Motorola's position. I really don't know what it feels like or how to act when you're a hardware designer in a massive smartphone company, much less a leader of said company. But it seems to me that the Motorola P30 more than a little bit like the iPhone X. Because of that, I think about the questions and answers above.
Look at this phone
Beyond the moral obligations of smartphone designers and makers, there's this phone. It's looking like it's going to be a pretty awesome phone, especially if this charger mockup means there'll be transparent plastic around its exterior. But even supposing there's no transparency to the Motorola P30, it looks really nice.
They've got what they describe as "ingeniously polished artwork" contained within this smartphone with "high purity metal polysilicon powder, fired at high temperature, CNC carved once, 1250 rpm double-sided polishing and so on." That's one fantastic translation right there – the end result is a device that looks as though Motorola really put some thought into the materials and the final production value of the phone.
One version of the phone has a multi-color alternating gradual process" used in order to "capture the color of the future space," which is completely awesome. This is a similar effect to – or seems similar here in press images – to what Huawei did with their Huawei P20 and P20 Pro series. Here Motorola says they've got a process which allows "each piece of plating [to become a] one-of-a-kind piece that exhibits different variations in different light angles."
Above you'll find a gallery of official final specifications for this smartphone. This device was revealed in China today, and will go on sale in China first. We've not yet heard any plans for this device to be released outside of Asia – so we'll expect that there it'll stay. It'll be released in 64GB and 128GB editions in Ice Jade White, Bright Black, and Aurora colors. Pricing for the Motorola P30 will begin at CNY 1,999 (around $288 USD) and they'll be on sale on September 15th.
And whoever was responsible for the presentation of this phone in these photos and renderings, I need to say – wow. This is one AMAZING presentation. I bet whoever has this in their portfolio also has mention that they've sold bottled water to fish, because wow.