Moto X Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,432 words · ~12 min read
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buy an Intel knock barebones PC and get a limited edition t-shirt and in-game
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items for Planet Side 2 click now to learn more let me start this off by
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saying I'm not a hardcore phone guy so that's the perspective you're about to
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get I spent some time with the Moto X I really liked it here are my thoughts on
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it but if you want the more hardcore perspective you know what Marcus brownley has a video about it and his
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videos are great go watch that I will do a brief summary of some of the stuff
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everyone else has already told you however and it starts with it's
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assembled in America which I guess to me
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as a Canadian isn't quite as immediately relevant but it does represent a very
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positive trend that we're seeing not just with Motorola in this phone but
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Apple's even embracing it with the upcoming Mac Pro it has a customizable
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experience which is partly achieved by that assembly in America so even though
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mine is a bone stock you know Carbon fibery looking black back and black
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buttons you can actually change around quite a few things for over 200
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different combinations it does not support SD expansion hello Google
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influence so there was no getting around that Google's not a big fan of SD
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expansion and we don't find it on the Moto X which is the first phone that has
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really got the Google influence on it since the acquisition of Motorola quite
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some time ago the hardware is it's okay
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it's nothing really special so there's an S4 Pro class processor featuring two
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1.7 GHz cores and a fairly capable adreno 320 GPU Wireless AC is a stand
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out feature however and it's normally not included with this particular
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combination it feels plenty fast out of the box but in reality what doesn't
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these days there's more to it than CPU speed however page nine of an anc's
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excellent review of this phone gives a great Summary of why fast well-designed
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storage is important maybe even more so
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than CPU speed to keeping your device operating in that like new state that
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we've all become quite used to now let's start with the Hands-On I love the shape
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and size I complained quite a lot if you watch my weekly live stream the L show
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or really anything else about the fact that the HTC1 is just a little bit too
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big for me well the Moto X has the same size screen 4.7 in but because of the
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gentle curvature of the back and the fact that the sides of the bezel are
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much smaller I find it much more comfortable to hold and I can type
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one-handed on it very very easily so big thumbs up for the ergonomics of the Moto
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X it does get a little bit toasty on the back side especially when you're doing
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something like using it as a hot spot but again not worse than something like
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the HTC1 and while the plastic backing might not be better for heat conduction
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it will make it so that your hand doesn't get quite as sweaty I love the
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position of the lock button this is another complaint I have about the one
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that recessed lock button on the top or flush lock button that's kind of hard to
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reach without slipping the phone out of your hands no this one's really easy to
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reach very very natural the way that you're normally holding it you can press
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it with your thumb or if you're left-handed you can press it with your middle finger very very nice however
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it's a little bit close to the volume rocker which is not as much bigger than
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the lock button as I would have liked and is difficult to distinguish the two
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from each other when the device is in your pocket which a lot of the time
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let's face it it probably is the other ergonomic thing that I'm not really a
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big fan of is the 3 and 1/2 mm Jack in the middle of the top particularly when
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watching videos or something where I'm holding the phone like this I did found
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it kind of got in the way whereas one that's a little bit more off to the side
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is easier to put my hands around than something that right out of the middle I
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found the auto rotate a little bit on the sluggish side which contrasts with
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the one which I find really really Twitchy to the point where it's annoying
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I think I'd rather have sluggish than you know just like ADHD you know you
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accidentally tilt the phone a little bit and it's like oh do you want to go this way do you want to go that way so that's
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just an observation not so much a complaint or a positive thing and the
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battery life didn't light my world on fire it was about like the HTC1 with my
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general usage although if you want scientific analysis of the battery life
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again head over to that on on tech review it's very excellent I'll link it in the video
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description speaking of lighting my world on fire and batteries those are
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two things you probably don't want together when I plugged the Moto X into
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a charger it was like magic it reminds me of my iPhone 4 lightning fast
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charging the HTC1 is so slow and the
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Galaxy S4 is better to an extent but the Moto X charges in like you know 70% 65%
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as much time as the HTC and it was refreshing to be able to grab the device
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go oh crap I don't have enough battery I'm on my way out the door throw it on a
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charger for 20 minutes and then have that actually help and have it get you
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through the next outing on the screen side of things it's a bit of a different
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approach than well this one again I'm comparing it mostly to the phone that I
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have the most experience with it has an AMOLED screen and definitely suffers
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from what I like to call STD or store
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television display syndrome with oversaturated colors it looks very
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vibrant to the point where it almost makes your eyes want to bleed but that is a characteristic of Ed screens and a
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lot of people like it whites do have a definite yellowish cast that was
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noticeable on both web pages when I'm reading as well as when watching videos
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but the flip side of that is that blacks are amazingly deep you can hardly see
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the difference when you have a black screen up between the bezel and the
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screen which combined with the Touch button design makes the front of the
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phone seem very very seamless overall I
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think I like the implementation it doesn't take up screen real estate
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permanently the way that it did with old Android tablets I mean wasn't that
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infuriating when just the bottom of your screen was always taken up even when you
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were in full screen video so it doesn't do that it can reorient itself and never
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really glitched out on me it was a bit disorienting at first when the buttons
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disappeared and turned into dots that were obviously not labeled at that point
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but uh once I memorized the positions of the buttons it became a non-issue very
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very quickly the screen is 720p so we're getting used to these these 1080p
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smartphones in this kind of a size range like the S4 and the HTC1 but remember
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guys that is still what Apple would call retina class density so I don't have any
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complaints and it was not very noticeable compared to the HTC1 except
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with very very small text the main
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AMOLED advantages that this phone did get to enjoy was during gaming and
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watching videos there's no blur or smearing Amed doesn't have the same kind
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of ghosting effects that you'll get on a lot of LCD displays and it's extremely
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power efficient so you can see right here this notification right now is only
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lighting up the pixels that are needed the rest of them are actually turned
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completely off and that also contributes to those excellent black levels the
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viewing angle is also awesome even compared to Super LCD 3 which is what's
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in use over here but there are some disadvantages the main one being that
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oversaturation looks unnatural once you're used to once you're used to
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better I mean I guess really that is the main one other than that I really do
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like the screen the touch interface electron are visible to me at a
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comfortable viewing distance on Plain backgrounds and even during video
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playback particularly in cartoons where you're going to have a lot of um single
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color large spaces and you can really pick out that Matrix behind it I wish
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that we were past this Apple's had it right for years and I wish everyone else
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would get on board um the last thing about the screen the backlight flicker
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weirds me out a little bit so you can really see especially when moving it
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quickly and when there's only a few pixels lit up on a black background you
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can really see the flickering of the backlight but it's only really
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noticeable when you're moving the phone quickly and so it stopped bothering me
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after about the first day the lowest light setting on auto is not really
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suitable for nighttime use and this is a little bit ironic to me because usually
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phone manufacturers in Auto setting are trying to preserve battery as much as
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possible and crank things down but I found that for nighttime viewing I
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actually had to manually turn it down even further on the software side this
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is actually my first experience with pretty much bone stock Android and
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I this isn't going to be popular but I don't really know what all the fuss is
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about most of the Annoying stuff about TouchWiz can be worked around and I
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quite like HTC Sense there's some stuff that I just found easier to do
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particularly their multitasking interface is in my mind world's better
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than the stock Android multitasking interface it only shows you nine things
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at a time but they're it's much quicker to switch between them and I generally
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only use about nine things at a time so
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it's absolutely great for me I did find switching from one phone to another
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extremely easy the Motorola transfer wizard is completely painless and
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handles the whole thing wirelessly it only takes probably about an hour and a
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half it took for me to transfer from the HTC1 to the Moto X um I did find that
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again so the whole software thing I did find the update manager pretty
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aggressive I'm again not much of a power user so I just pick up my phone I expect
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everything to be where I left it and I don't really want them changing the functionality around on me that often I
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don't necessarily you know need to update to the latest software like the
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minute it gets released and again I know it's not very popular but their update
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manager just basically says look you have to install this update you can
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postpone it but you actually have to pick a time when we're going to remind you again you can't just do it manually
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at least that's the default setting there's probably some way to change it but I didn't spend enough time with the
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phone that it would have bothered me all right so now on to the whole always
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listening thing Google Now is great in theory but the functionality is still
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quite limited you can't adjust the volume or do other things that seem
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pretty obvious to me like Okay Google Now please mute my phone and it's going
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to be like what it's going to like Google it or something um also most of
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that functionality is disabled if you have any kind of a security lock and I
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do use my phone for work so it's the kind of thing where I really wouldn't I
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wouldn't consider running a phone without a security lock on it I'm not a
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huge fan of the stock Google keyboard swift key has treated me extremely well
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so that was one of the first things that I installed on it my last comment on the
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whole Okay Google Now voice control thing is having voice control that's
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constantly listening to you is the future that is the thing that really
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jumped out because it's incredibly cool to just have your phone be somewhere
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else and this is even Beyond being able to use your smartwatch to answer your
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call or or whatever other things you want to do being able to just talk at
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the phone once it can understand you and has more functionality regardless of
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whether it's woken up or asleep is very very very cool so in summary I guess
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it's also a phone voice quality was good no complaints there no one on the other
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end of the line had any complaints and that pretty much wraps it up thank you
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for checking out my sort of oh right unboxing okay so here's the Box there's
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like some documentation a micro USB
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cable a wall wart and presumably ah Sim
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remover okay my unboxing and review of
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the Motorola Moto X let me know if you liked it let me know if you disliked it
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by hitting those buttons leave a comment and give us your other thoughts I know
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we don't do phones that much but we're constantly trying to improve and as
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