Motorola Moto G combines great specs with a rock bottom price tag.
Moto G – a phone designed especially for emerging markets. This budget ‘Droid promises high-end specifications like most Chinese offerings in this price range, but with superior build and support that only seasoned OEMs are capable of delivering.
Design and Build
The Moto G isn’t a very striking phone. In fact, one could easily mistake it for a Micromax or XOLO when viewed upfront. However, it’s completely different feeling when you hold it. The Moto G sits snugly in your hand and the curved back makes for a very reassuring fit. At 4.5 inches, the phone is very manageable and comfortable in the pocket as well.The rubberised back is interchangeable and you can even opt for a flip cover.
The back cover is removable, which lets you access the two SIM card slots. There is no expandable memory and the 2070mAh battery is non-removable.
Features
The 4.5 IPS HD display is just what the doctor ordered. Colours are vivid and punchy and text is sharp thanks to the 326ppi density. There’s also Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 for added protection. The Moto G has very good sensitivity and Android runs very smoothly on the phone. It’s mostly stock 4.3 Jelly Bean with a planned 4.4 KitKat update on the way.
Moto G has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC processor. This quad-core CPU runs at 1.2GHz and there’s 1GB of RAM accompanying it.
Camera
The camera on the Motorola Moto G is only 5 megapixels, which is presumably one of the corners that was cut in order to get it down to such an appealing price. As 5 megapixel cameras go it’s absolutely fine, taking reasonable quality images, particularly in good light and packing in a bunch of different modes such as HDR and panorama.
However when compared with shots taken on the 13 megapixel Galaxy S4 or the 20.7 megapixel Sony Xperia Z1 the Moto G’s images clearly come out lacking.
There’s also a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front and it can shoot 720p video at 30fps.
Other features
The main selling point of the Motorola Moto G is its astoundingly low $179 price tag in India it is launched with a price point of INR 13,999 for 16 GB & INR 12,499 for 8 GB version on Flipkart.com.
So there aren’t many extra features. It runs Android 4.3 with an update to 4.4 due in January and it’s very close to the stock version of the OS, so in many ways, branding aside this is like a mid-range Nexus phone.
The Motorola Moto G comes with a choice of 8 or 16GB of storage but unfortunately there’s no micro SD card slot, so no way to boost that, though you do get 50GB of free Google Drive storage. It supports Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth 4.0, but there’s no 4G and no NFC or infrared.
The Moto G does pretty well for battery life though, with its 2070 mAh battery keeping it going for around two days with moderate use.
Conclusion
The Motorola Moto G is a fantastic phone for the money. No other handset gives you close to as much for just $199 or INR 13,999 for Indian Market, in fact you’d probably have to spend at least twice as much to get any other phone that offered as much as the Moto G.
It’s a shame the camera isn’t better and the lack of 4G and micro SD card slot will bother some, but really for such a low price the Moto G is an amazing achievement and it’s easily the best value smartphone available.