Moto X Arrives As Moto Maker Opens Its Customization Doors

Motorola's Moto X smartphone has gone up for sale, landing on store shelves at AT&T locations, while Motorola's own Moto Maker customization service has opened its doors. The 4.7-inch smartphone, which we reviewed earlier this month, is priced from $199.99 for the 16GB model, though if you head down to an AT&T store you shouldn't expect to walk away with anything other than a black or white version.

That's because only two color combinations will actually be stocked by carriers. The other colors – of which Motorola says there are several hundred combinations, when you take into account front and back panels, along with highlight trim – will only be available through Moto Maker, the company's online customization suite that's limited, initially, to AT&T customers.

Moto Maker is a simple step-by-step process for personalizing both the hardware and the software of the Moto X. In addition to the external colors, a boot message can be set, wallpaper picked, and even the Google account you use automatically logged-in from out of the box.

Moto Maker for Moto X walkthrough:

However, whereas Motorola initially intended to offer personalized engravings – called "signatures" – on the back of the Moto X, that has been put on ice for the moment.

At the moment, online purchases through Moto Maker aren't being accepted, so while you can create a phone design there, you can't actually buy it. If you're interested in doing more than just playing with the options, you'll have to pay at AT&T and then punch in the code the carrier gives you into the customizing site, which allows new orders to be shipped.

Meanwhile, Verizon and others will offer the Moto X imminently as well, though only in black and white. Motorola has said that it plans to roll out Moto Maker for those other carriers later in 2013.