Smashing your phone's screen is a moment that every smartphone user dreads. Buying a case can often help protect against bumps and scratches on the side and back, but everyone knows that phones are a lot like toast: they always land front (or buttered) side down, shattering the front glass panel into a million tiny pieces.
Well, Motorola's saying "No more!" to cracked smartphones with its newly announced Moto X Force, the world's first shatterproof smartphone. It's taken three years to come to fruition, but the display on the Moto X Force is truly indestructible. Motorola's so confident, in fact, that it's guaranteeing the screen for four years of typical use, whether it's dropping it on the pavement, or it happens to fall out of your pocket up a ladder. It's so good, in fact, that you wonder how no-one else has done this before, but having tried it out for myself, I have to say it's definitely been worth the wait.
The secret behind the screen's toughness is all down to what Motorola's calling its Moto Shattershield. While most smartphones typically have two layers making up the display (the LCD or AMOLED panel and the top glass layer), the Moto X Force has five. At the bottom is an aluminium core, which holds everything together and keeps the screen in check. Next you have its 5.4in AMOLED display, which has a whopping 2,560x1,440 resolution, and then a dual touch layer – just in case the first one happens to fail at any time. Then there's an interior layer of clear glass so you can see through to the AMOLED panel, and sitting on top is a layer of hardened plastic, which protects the screen against scratches, bumps, dents – you name it.
Even better, that plastic layer is user-replaceable, so if you do happen to crack it, you won't have to pay a small fortune to get it fixed or send it off for repairs. It's not particularly easy to change the screen, mind, but Motorola told me it would play an active role in helping to assist users replace their screens, as well as publish video tutorials on how to remove and change it themselves.
In action, it's truly astonishing. I was able to whack it quite hard against a metal chair arm several times without incurring a single mark or dent on the screen. There were a few nicks in the metal frame, admittedly, but it's not really surprising when every tech journalist in the country has been hammering it into oblivion.
At this early stage, the screen alone makes it almost an instant buy, but Motorola has also turned the Moto X Force into a bona fide flagship phone as well. Powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip and 3GB of RAM, the Moto X Force should have plenty of power to compete with all the top smartphones, and its massive 3,740mAh battery should give it mountains of endurance as well. Motorola told me it should be able to last for 48 hours of mixed usage, but just in case it does happen to run out, its Turbo Charging feature has received an even bigger speed boost than the Moto X Style, giving you 13 hours of juice in just 15 minutes. It also supports wireless charging and is compatible with both Qi chargers and general power mats.
The Moto X Force comes with 32GB of storage as standard, and a 64GB version will be available via Motorola's Moto Maker service. However, both models come with a microSD card slot that can take cards up to 2TB in size, so opting for a higher capacity smartphone isn't an absolute necessity. Speaking of Moto Maker, the Moto X Force will also be available with a wide range of different rear panels to choose from, including genuine pebbled leather and ballistic nylon (the latter of which feels really classy to the touch). Unlike the Moto X Style, you won't be charged extra for a leather finish either.
On the back is the Moto X Force's 21-megapixel camera, and Motorola promise it should be able to take better pictures than the Moto X Style due to the extra processing power afforded by its more powerful Snapdragon 810 chipset. The front-facing camera, on the other hand, has a 5-megapixel sensor, along with a front-facing flash. Sadly, it doesn't come with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, instead sticking to Lollipop 5.1.1, but Motorola promised that Marshmallow would be coming "soon".
It's certainly an impressive proposition, and the shatterproof display really is true to its name. The Moto X Force won't come cheap, though, as this top of the range handset will start at £499 SIM-free for the 32GB version direct from Motorola, and £534 for the 64GB version. It will also be available from Carphone Warehouse on contract, with prices starting from around £32-per-month. Luckily, you won't have to wait very long before you can get one, as the Moto X Force will be launching in mid-November. Check back soon for a full review.
