The Moto X4 won’t get Android Preview Releases, and is therefore useless for developers.
I’m a student, but I also develop apps. Even with the emulator, there are still bugs you can only find on real devices.
So now every time a new Android version comes out, I’ll either end up with a month where my apps are broken and I’m slowly working on fixing them (so ~10% of the time the app is unusable), or I have to shell out north of $900 just to get the cheapest still supported Pixel in Germany.
Additionally, my largest concern with no mid-range device supporting preview releases is that the mid-range phone experience is going to decline rapidly (slow downs, resource bloat) until the only viable equivalent experience to what we have now is on a $1000+ phone. When phones were sub $500, I could get a new one every two years pretty reasonably. Or if I didn't like my phone, it wasn't a huge hit to upgrade early. But now I'm paying more than 2x what I paid when I started using Android phones. At that price point, Apple starts to look real good.
> Like all Android One phones, Android One moto x4 runs a pure Android experience .... You’ll also get access to the latest updates from Android, such as Android Oreo before the end of the year. Android One moto x4 will be among the first to receive an upgrade to Android P.