More features missing from the Moto X Play: gyroscope and ‘chop twice for flashlight’ gesture

When Motorola announced that their higher-than-mid-range-but-not-quite-high-end Moto X Play would launch with a beefy 3,650mAh battery, many of you were willing to sacrifice top tier specs for a little more juice from your Android. The problem? Aside from the phone being Verizon Wireless exclusive (not so bad if you’re on Big Red), it seems you’ll also have to sacrifice on a feature unique to Motorola devices: “chop twice for flashlight.”

You may remember in the Android 5.1 update, Motorola added the ability to make a double-chop motion on some of their devices in order to quickly activate the flashlight. It was a nice little shortcut, but one that came in handy when you needed to activate the LED light in a hurry. So, why is Motorola leaving it out? It could have something to do with the absence of a gyroscope on the Moto X Play, with Motorola telling one user on Twitter that they couldn’t get the feature to work reliably enough to include it at launch (although they didn’t rule out the feature being added in a future update).

The craziest part is that Motorola was able to include the double-chop feature on the Motorola Moto G 2015 even though that phone too doesn’t come equipped with a gyroscope. If they found a way to make it work on their mid-range offering, why not on their higher-than-mid-range-but-not-quite-high-end phone too?