Moto X's unique design choice earns a 7 out of 10 repairability score

Teardown specialist iFixit had their hands full on Friday as Motorola’s latest smartphone – the Moto X – finally hit retail. First impressions were generally good as the team found the device to be slightly smaller than the Galaxy S 4 and they were impressed with the contoured back shell although a defect next to the SIM card tray is hopefully an isolated incident.

Getting inside the Moto X proved a bit difficult as Motorola not only clipped the rear shell in place, they also used a bit of adhesive. Multiple steps (and tools) later, the team finally breached the interior only to find Motorola’s X8 Mobile Computing System front and center. The brains of the phone, this bundle includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor.