First Impressions: Volume and Bluetooth

VOLUME
As soon as I opened the box and pulled out my new phone I immediately called the 800 number to activate it. At the end of the process they call you to make sure it worked and WOA, the Moto X is LOUD!!! We all jumped at the noise, and then we laughed because the default ringtone is hilarious. It's sort of catchy/danceable yet also sounds like some dude "singing" a voodoo incantation...very strange, but also hilarious. Needless to say I knew I'd have to figure out how to change my ringtone ASAP! Look for a post about ringtones soon ;)

NAVIGATION VOLUME AND BLUETOOTH
So I've also learned that the phone is super loud in my car while navigating. Normally you'd think that's a good thing, especially since in my car I always have the radio on, and I want to be able to hear the directions over the radio. With iPhone I became skilled at lowering the radio volume while the navigation spit out a line, then turned the radio back up. I like to listen to my music loud ;) But with the Moto X I kept having to turn the volume down! It was annoyingly loud, like, OK OK, I get it, TURN LEFT! EXIT NOW! Sheesh, calm down, already! I felt especially bad when I was giving a friend a ride and she was on a work call on her phone, and my phone wouldn't shut up. I ended up turning the volume down to 1/3 of the way, but it still seemed disturbing, so I tried to route it to my bluetooth earpiece. I remember when vocal navigation was new for Google Maps on my iPhone I was really excited to try it out but I was on a phone call using my bluetooth and it totally gave me directions through my bluetooth (so I didn't have to turn down the radio!) during my phone call, only the other person couldn't hear it so it didn't disrupt the call in any way. It was WONDERFUL. Sadly, my Moto X is not able to do the same. It paired with my earpiece no problem (and even paired with a bluetooth speaker I have that had trouble pairing with anything else I had tried), so I was able to make phone calls, and it even used "OK Google Now," but navigation just would not come through to the earpiece. My boyfriend looked it up and said it has something to do with the type of bluetooth it uses, "media bluetooth" or something? Is that a thing? Anyway, it comes down to the fact that I have to get a newer bluetooth earpiece that is compatible with that specific type of technology, which is ok because my earpiece is older than my first iPhone so I'd been wanting to get a new one anyway. Here's the problem: they no longer make them in pink! At least, not affordable, and not bright pink like I like- baby pink is for babies. Anyway I have to spend some time searching for the right earpiece, and in the meantime navigation will come out of the phone speakers, at 1/3 volume.

USING THE PHONE AS A PHONE
So I think it's pretty rare nowadays that we use our phones to actually speak aloud to other human beings. But I noticed in that first phone call when I activated my phone and they test called me that it was really hard to hear the guy on the other end. This was especially jarring since the ringtone right before it had been SO LOUD! I quickly realized that speaker at the top of the phone was positioned too high on my ear, so I lowered it and I was able to hear much better, but now the phone felt super awkward in my hand and at my ear. It's just a strange position. Luckily, like I said, I don't use the phone very often for actually talking, or I could just use my bluetooth. But there's a possibility that I'd be using it more in the future for work projects I want to do, which would also require longer calls than just a test call. Again, I could use the bluetooth, but I would prefer to have options, and that is kind of disappointing.

I should note that I have noticed this problem before when my boyfriend has lent me his phone a couple of times in the past for random reasons. I first noticed it when he had the Motorola Atrix, and more recently with his current phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Maybe this is a hardware design flaw related to phones running Android? I don't know.

PS- Apple announces their "new" iPhone(s) tomorrow. Let's see what the official announcement brings. So. Much. Hype...