Handset maker Motorola Mobility is banking on a strong brand recall and its online sales model for success in India, a market which it had quit in August 2012 and re-entered with Android smartphone Moto G and which could hold the key to the company's rebound globally.

The company that will soon be owned by Lenovo has had discussions with retailers who want to sell Motorola phones in India, where the brand still has strong consumer recall, said Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice-president, EMEA and APAC at Motorola Mobility.

"I have an open dialogue with many of the key players in the industry on the large format retail side and also with the operators. All of them are showing a lot of interest because they're all seeing that Motorola is a highly relevant brand for Indian consumers," said Ahlqvist.

The company is getting a lot of interest from retailers to stock its products - Moto G and Moto X, said Ahlqvist, adding that though it may consider options in the future, it will continue with its present strategy to sell online, which is working extremely well.

Motorola is the only handset seller in India which sells exclusively through online retailer Flipkart. It's first launch Moto G was sold out within hours of launch, prompting it to sell Moto X on the leading e-commerce portal last week, establishing a successful online-only sale model.

According to industry insiders, Motorola has sold tens of thousands of Moto G devices, the 16 GB variant of which is priced at Rs 13,999 and the 8GB at Rs 12,499 on Flipkart, making it one of the most attractive purchases. Ahlqvist declined to share the sales figures of Moto G and Moto X, which is available for purchase priced between Rs 23,999 and Rs 25,999.

The company was absent from India most of last year when smartphone sales exploded and cornered over 15% of the Indian mobile phone market. Indians bought over 41 million smartphones in 2013, according to research firm IDC.

The smartphone market is expected to rise to 60 million devices in 2014, which will make up about 40% of total mobile phones sales from the country, offering huge potential for Motorola Mobility.

Ahlqvist said that the company underwent a huge transformation in August 2012, after Google acquired Motorola's mobility business for $12.5 billion. "It required tough decisions in terms of reducing the number of products and business to a small number of markets but the forced change has helped it build business for the long term", he said, explaining Motorola's move to pull out of the India market.

How much do you listen? Do you ever drift off while chatting to a loved one? Shame on you. If you have the new Motorola Moto X smartphone, it’s listening more than you are.The Moto X, even if it’s in standby mode with the screen blank, is keeping an ear out for your every word. Creepy, huh? But it’s also the killer app on the new handset.

I mean, don’t worry, it’s not waiting to hear your bank card pin code or anything. It’s just waiting, like an adoring lapdog, in case it hears the magic words that bring joy to its heart. If it does hear them, it leaps into action. The words are “Okay, Google Now.” The phone responds with a bong so you know it’s listening and it’s ready to answer your next spoken question – you don’t need to even touch the phone. And it’s a good listener. It never failed to hear me say the key phrase, even from across the room. And once I got used to the right timing (don’t speak until the bong has finished, and do NOT pause when you ask your question as it’ll think you’re done), it worked amazingly.

Google Now knows a lot of stuff that it can say, like the height of the Eiffel Tower and the time in Houston, Texas. And much more that it can’t speak, in which case the screen shows the printed answer.

It can’t, unlike Siri, handle supplementary questions, so you have to start the whole process again by speaking the phrase and asking a whole new question.

With Google Now, the Motorola X is able to answer basic questions - but conversations with your computer are still a way off.

But it’s unquestionably an impressive and delightful feature that augurs well for a future where smartphones and tablets can benignly listen in to answer questions before we even realise we’ve wondered about them.

It’s the standout feature on this handset, though it’s not the only headline-grabber.

For a start, this is a handsomely designed phone which takes style tips from earlier Motorola models: a display that goes to the very edges of the front of the device, a curved back, complete with dimpled circular Moto logo and two more circles directly above for the camera lens and flash.

The 4.7in display is decent but not outstanding, not least because its 720x1280 pixel screen is no match for the full HD displays of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One – both phones heading for their first birthdays. Still, the 312 pixels per inch mean it’s screen resolution is just behind that of the iPhone’s Retina display, and it struggles in bright sunlight unlike, say, the Nokia Lumia 1020.

The camera is a 10-megapixel model and though that beats rivals like the iPhone 5s and HTC One, it’s way behind the 20.7-megapixel sensor on the Sony Xperia Z1 (and Z1 Compact), not to mention the 41-megapixel Nokia Lumia 1020. And image quality is not as pristine or effective as the iPhone 5s manages.

Still, it has another very cool interface feature – the phone launches faster than on any other smartphone I’ve tried. That’s because instead of waking the screen and then launching the camera, as on many phones, or long-pressing the trigger on Windows Phone handsets, here it’s all in the wrist action. Pick the phone up and with a double flick of the wrist the phone wakes up, launches the camera (with a pleasant vibration effect) and is ready to shoot. You can even zoom one-handed by swiping your thumb up or down on the display. There are extra features like burst mode and HDR which improve things. Even so, this camera delivers good, but not the very best results.

Different colored examples of Motorola's new Moto X phones rest on a table at a launch event in New York

Special interface features also include the notifications that show when the screen is sleeping. When an email comes in, the phone pings and shows an email icon. Touch the screen, without waking it and it’ll show you the sender and subject line so you don’t have to wake the phone unless you really want to read the missive. Neat.

Performance is strong throughout this phone, including its full-day battery life which seems unaffected by all that listening the phone does and its processor which was consistently efficient and nippy.

There’s one other thing: nestling on the home screen is an icon marked Windy Day. It’s amazing. It’s just a cartoon about a mouse and red hat being blown relentlessly around. But as you move the phone, your view of the landscape changes. There’s a full 360-degree cartoon world to explore, though the action is where the mouse is. Turn away and the music and sound effects fade, though you may see characters secondary to the main story. It’s beautifully done, and utterly captivating. I’m not saying it’s worth buying the phone for Windy Day alone, but if you have the handset, it’s unmissable.

Overall, some may feel the similarly priced but slightly more powerful Google Nexus 5 is a better choice, though the Moto X’s styling is pretty convincing. And this is an effective and pretty cool phone that’s definitely worth checking out, if only to test the wrist-flicking camera action and the response when you say “Okay Google Now”.