HELLO EVERYONE,
THE FOLLOWING IS A DETAILED REVIEW OF MOTO G
Its been three months since the Motorola Moto G came out and
annihilated every other budget smartphone. At present it's still the
smartphone to buy for everyone who isn't after a flagship model.
However, will it stay this way, and will the Moto G itself be about to
disappear from shelves?
Right now, based on what we know, there's nothing that is going to
compete with the Moto G at this price. It will be getting some stronger
competition in the mid-range market with handsets around £200 with
equivalent specs and better cameras likely to launch in Barcelona.
However we doubt anyone will manage a direct competitor, even three
months on.
The reason for this is that the Moto G is most likely being sold at
almost no profit whatsoever, as Motorola's then owner Google would have
been making money after the initial sale via the Google Play store.
However, now that Lenovo has bought the company
this is no longer true, and we may indeed see the Moto G disappear from
retail as soon as its new owner can come up with a replacement. A
replacement that may well not be as brain-stunningly good value.
Our advice then is to rush out and buy yourself a Moto G
today if you have nay interest in buying a good, cheap smartphone
(caveats about the camera noted below). It may not be around for much
longer.
MOTO G REVIEW
It may not have been accompanied by the flash and razzmatazz of a
flagship phone launch, but the Motorola Moto G is still a huge deal, in
both senses of the phrase. It's the first handset launched by Motorola
in the UK since it was taken over by Google; and it costs just £135 for
an impressive specification.
The Moto G is a solid, no nonsense handset, it's not fancy but it's not ugly either
MOTOOGLE OR GOTOROLA
Google has long had its Nexus-branded handsets, but these were made
by other manufacturers and at just one high-end handset a year, mainly
sold SIM free, they weren't exactly mass market. In comparison Samsung
released 20 handsets worldwide in 2013 alone.
By buying Motorola (or to be precise its Mobility devices arm),
Google now has its own smartphone manufacturer. It feels like a new
business too, we really liked the macho-styled RAZR handsets, but all
that is gone for more curvaceous, colourful, friendly designs that fit
well with Google's other offerings.
MOTO G SIZE AND SHELLS
The Moto G isn't the kind of handset that jumps out at you, in fact
it's very safe, very plain and a little boring. Given its price though,
it's a success, it doesn't feel or look cheap just utilitarian. At
66x130x11.6mm it's not the slimmest handset but the bezels are small and
its fairly compact for a handset with a 4.5in display. Though it feels a
bit weighty at 143g.
It comes in black, but you can buy white, dark blue, cyan, fluorescent yellow, pink or this red
The gloss black front is complemented by snap-on rear covers in seven
colours, for £13 each. There's also tough shell cases with front flip
covers that stay shut thanks to magnets and automatically turn on the
phone when you open it. They cost £25 but look to be well worth the
extra expense, given the protection they give, and again they come in
seven colours. There's also a Grip Shell with a rubber frame for extra
grip and impact protection
The Flip Shells are tough, textured plastic on the outside ...
... with a soft finish on the inside of the screen cover
Speaking of protection, one feature that has made the transition from
previous Motorola handsets is the splashproof coating. This means that
it should survive anything short of a complete immersion in water, we
spilt a pint over the first RAZR with no ill effects. It also has
Gorilla Glass 3 to protect its screen from scratches.
MOTO G ANDROID 4.4
Of course what you see onscreen is arguably more important than what
surrounds it, and with Motorola being owned by Google we were hopeful
that the handset would ship with the latest version of Android. The
handset initially shipped with 4.3, but an update to the latest version,
Android 4.4.2, has now been released. You should update your phone
immediately if required - go to App tray, Settings, About phone, to
check the version number.
The update is available for all now, and is well worth having
Motorola has left Google's OS, largely untouched, just adding a
couple of useful features and tweaking the camera app. The Assist app
makes your phone more intelligent, for example you can set the hours you
usually sleep for and the phone will automatically go silent, or only
allow favourite callers, or those who call twice in succession through.
It will also go on vibrate if you have a meeting in your diary. Both
could be useful, though they're still a little inflexible for our
liking.
The 4.4.2 update brings a few changes. The phone dialler has been
changed and you can now bring up contacts quickly via the numberpad by
simply entering any string of letters or numbers that appear in that
contacts name or number. For example, typing 533 will bring up any
contact with LEE or JED in their names, or any contact whose number
contains that string of numbers. You also get intelligent caller ID,
with the phone searching for unknown numbers and providing you with
information based on that search, so you have some idea who it is before
you answer.
Find contacts quickly and easily in the new dialler app, it even brings up there work details if you have Outlook set up on
Motorola has also expanded what you can do with photos from within
the gallery app. You can apply a wide range of filters now to photos you
shoot, add frames around them, crop them in various ways, and even
write (or draw) on the screen with your finger in any colour you like.
You can also print photos straight out of the gallery to services such
as Google's Cloud Print.
Android 4.4 also supports the new version of Hangouts which combines
your instant messaging and SMS apps into one, though you still need to
switch between these two streams to keep track of all your conversations
via both.
The lockscreen now also show the appropriate album art for the music
you're listening to and includes basic playback controls, so you don't
have to unlock the phone to pause or skip tracks. You also get immersive
mode, where the status bar and controls go away, allowing apps to go
full screen until you swipe from the top.
The new Lock Screen will delight music lovers
Slightly faster browsing is another bonus, with the SunSpider
JavaScript browser benchmark recording a score 1297ms, a small but
appreciable improvement over its score of 1,410ms when we first tested
it. Other benchmarks were unaffected by the change, though Google claims
that memory use is improved, the handset is more responsive to touch
and multi-tasking is now quicker.
And if you're not that keen on Google's own launcher, then you can
toggle between the default version and any custom ones you might
download. To do this just head to Settings – Home and then choose the
launcher you want and press Home to switch to it.
Launch your preferred launcher via the settings menu
MOTO G MIGRATE
Motorola has made it easy to move from another Android handset to the
Moto G. You do this by first installing the Motorola Migrate app from
the Google Play Store on your old handset. Once done you connect the two
phones directly via Wi-Fi, which requires nothing more than pointing
the camera on your old phone at the QR code displayed on the Moto G. The
transfer then starts automatically.
The app will pull across call logs, text messages, pictures, movies
and music on the old phone. We got a warning that all the data may not
be transferred (but then we were testing with a 16GB Samsung S3 and an
8GB Moto G). It takes a while to complete the transfer, but you can use
the phone for other things at the same time. In our case it transferred
the call logs, pictures and music fine, but text messages didn't come
across and it ran out of space copying the videos (a sensible choice to
leave).
Contacts and emails will be transferred anyway as they are part of
your Google account, so this is just Motorola tidying up the things that
Google hasn't dealt with. It's very neat, very clever and should
relieve the worries of those who don't want a clean slate on a new
handset.
MOTO G PORTS AND STORAGE
Moving your files over may be easy, but storage is still the Achilles
heel of the Moto G. There's a micro USB port in the centre at the
bottom, and the headphone is directly opposite at the top. Under the
snap cover there's little to play with, there's a micro SIM card slot,
but the battery is integrated and there's no memory card slot.
The basic model has just 8GB of storage (of which you get 5.01GB free
when you first boot it up), as such it's not really suitable for those
who want to load video onto it, or carry around lots of music. For £159
you can get a 16GB model, adding 8GB of usable storage and making it far
roomier at 13GB.
With the handset you also get 50GB of extra online storage for Google
Drive for two years, for a total of 65GB once you count the free 15GB
everyone gets. It's a lot of storage, and Google charges $5 a month for
100GB. Once your account lapses you'll either have to subscribe, or buy
another handset with the offer possibly, to continue to upload content.
You will be able to access and download any content already on Google
Drive - nothing gets deleted.
MOTO G SPECIFICATIONS
The chipset is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 with quad cores running at
1.2GHz. It uses the older Cortex-A7 architecture and so can't keep up
with the flagship Snapdragon 800 but it still keep everything running
along smoothly. Android 4.3 felt slick, with no hesitations when
switching apps.
Using the Chrome browser it scored 1,410ms in the SunSpider 1.0.2
JavaScript benchmark, it's not a great score, and those who are always
browsing the web should look elsewhere. Still, it renders most of the
BBC news homepage in a flash, and only take a couple of seconds to get
the whole thing displayed. A Geekbench 2 score of 1,303 smashes other
budget handsets, though is still a few hundred points short of
Again the Adreno 305 chipset isn't the fastest on offer, but once
again it's a great choice for a handset at this price. The 3DMark Ice
Storm test ran at fairly smooth 23.8fps for a score of 5,412, it also
coped with all the games we threw at it, such as Minion Rush and Real
Racing 3. It struggled with Ice Storm Extreme with just 9.6fps, but then
it's only £135 and it plays current games, so there's nothing to
complain about. It outclasses every handset we've seen at this price,
and even surpasses phones at twice the price we've seen over the last
year.
MOTO G DISPLAY
The 4.5in display has a resolution of 1,280x720 which gives it 326
pixels-per-inch. This is exactly the same figure as Apple's Retina
Display iPhone 5S, which has 1,136x640 pixels over a 4in display.
There's certainly no problem then with either the screen size or the
detail on offer, it doesn't quite live up to a £549 handset but it's
close.
After tweaking the brightness up from the automatic setting we got
some great results from the display. Blacks were deep and contrast was
good, colours looked accurate yet still vibrant. White's tended towards
the cooler, bluer side but nothing problematic. It's a decent display at
any price and at this price it's outstanding.
This quick shot shows the variation in colour between the Moto G, Nexus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 - click to enlarge
With the top-end handsets getting larger and larger displays, this
isn't a phone that's ideal for playing games or watching a lot of video
on the commute, but then the iPhone has a smaller screen than the Moto G
and that's still a great phone.
MOTO G CAMERA
Motorola's camera app is one the biggest changes to stock
android, it has hardly any onscreen controls, you just tap to take a
photo or hold down to shoot in burst mode at roughly 2-3fps
The camera is one area where the Moto G shows its more budget
leanings. It's a got a five-megapixel sensor and it only shoots video at
up to 720p. The front camera is 1.3 megapixels and again can shoot 720p
video. Quality from the main camera is acceptable, colours are accurate
but there's a distinct lack of detail compared to the top-end devices.
The automatic mode really struggles when there's varying light levels
across the frame, and there's a lack of dynamic range even once you've
tweaked the exposure. In low light it really falls apart with lots of
noise.
Here we're moving the focus/exposure point around, and it's struggling to capture anything in the brighter areas of the image
In comparison to other handsets, even around its own price, the Moto G
isn't particularly impressive. In the one-to-one pixel crops below you
can see that there's a definite lack of detail, with shots looking a bit
blurry and murky.
From top to bottom you can see how the Moto G's murky rendition is outdone by the Nokia Lumia 620
with a cleaner brighter take, these two shots were taken almost
simultaneously. Below that you have our trusty old Samsung Galaxy S3,
which shows that although budget phones have come a long way in terms of
processor speed and screens, their cameras still can't compete even
with older flagship models - click samples to enlarge
Indoors we put the Moto G up against the slightly more expensive
HTC Desire 500 (full review soon). This handset isn't as quick as the
Moto G and has a lower-resolution display, but you can see that its
8-megapixel camera is obviously superior with far more detail in the fur
of our model under typical indoor lighting - click samples to enlarge
It's hard to expect a budget phone to have a great camera, but with
the Moto G being so strong in other areas it's hard not to feel a little
disappointed. For quick snaps to upload to the net it does its job, but
this is one area where the Moto G really isn't a perfectly good,
that-will-do replacement for a top-end smartphone.
MOTO G BATTERY LIFE
As we mentioned above, the back panel may come off, but the battery
itself isn't removable. Thankfully, it's a sizeable 2,070mAh battery,
not quite as big as the 2,300mAh battery in the Nexus 5, and well short
of the 2,600mAh pack in the Galaxy S4, but then both those handsets have
much bigger screens.
In our continuous video playback test the Moto G lasted for an
impressive nine hours and 12 minutes. That's almost two hours better
than the high-end Nexus 5 (which we criticised on that point) and with
few handsets scoring more than 10 hours in this test, it's a strong
result.
MOTO G CONCLUSION
The screen isn't huge, there isn't much storage on the basic model
and the camera is nothing to get excited about, but in every other
respect this is the best value for money smartphone ever. It's
well-built, with a high-quality display, fast enough not to bother even
us, and has a good battery life.
It's easily the best budget smartphone we've ever seen, redefining what we mean by that term. It's largely equivalent to the Sony Xperia SP,
which is quicker in benchmarks, but not noticeably in day-to-day use,
but has less battery life and only Android 4.1. It cost around £300 back
in June 2013 when we reviewed it, and costs £220 today if you shop
around. The Moto G knocks a huge £85 off that price SIM free.
Finding the handset SIM free is a little tricky but it's available from Phones 4 U
now. If you're happy to be tied to a network you can pick up
pay-as-you-go versions for £120 (plus you must buy a £10 airtime
voucher) from the same retailer, plus you get a white snap-on cover to
replace the standard black one. Please note there's no charger in the
box, just a USB cable.
The Motorola Moto G single-handedly says goodbye to compromised,
sluggish budget smartphone and potentially kills off the mid-range
competition too. Simply put, if you're not buying a top-end handset,
then the Moto G is the obvious choice.
thank you for readind
have a nice day jhalgayo