Easily one of the best smartphone values in the market right now, the Motorola Moto G caused quite a bit of excitement when it was announced a short while back. While the price and specs combo is definitely attractive, will it be solid enough to satisfy your smartphone needs?
Design
At the price range it's selling at, we could easily forgive if the Moto G felt cheaply-built. But, alas, it isn't. In fact, both design and construction feel very similar to the more expensive Moto X. Suffice to say, you're getting yourself a premium-looking phone at a budget price here.
Display
The 4.5-inch display is the first thing that should clue you in about the phone's more affordable standing. The most telling: it sticks to a 720p resolution instead of 1080p, it's not extremely bright (you'll notice this when using outdoors), and contrast isn't exactly topnotch. Still, there's enough crispness and vivid color quality to make for a satisfying experience, especially if you haven't been spoiled by the screens on modern high-end smartphones.
Camera
Now, this is where you really know the Moto G is a budget phone. The 5.0 megapixel camera is quite a disappointment, harking back to a quality that's more suited to phones that came out 2 or 3 years ago. Not only is the shutter slower than modern smartphone cameras, it's also prone to producing photos with a lacking quality (blurry, soft details, and plenty of motion noise) both indoors and outdoors. It uses the same camera app as the Moto X, though, so everything is good on that end.
Features
The biggest issue here is storage. With no microSD card support, you're stuck with the 8GB or 16GB of onboard memory, regardless of which one you decide to get. If you can look past that, then you'll get to enjoy near-stock Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box, with an upgrade to 4.4 KitKat slated soon. From the collection of updated Google apps to Google Now's advanced search, this is one of the few opportunities to enjoy the latest in Google's mobile platform right now. Motorola did remove some of their more premium custom features, however, including Touchless Control and Active Notifications.
Performance
Core components are a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400, Adreno 305 graphics, and 1GB of RAM. While obviously a far cry from the Moto X's X8, it's decent, although you will experience occasional lags if you try to push it with too many running apps, especially resource-intensive ones. Call quality is good on my end, although mixed according to those on the other -- near-perfect in many occasions, but slightly robotic in a few. Speakerphone, again, was impeccable on my end with plenty of volume to boot, although the audio picked up plenty of ambient noise according to those I was conversing with. Motorola claims 24 hours of mixed use life for the battery and it does appear somewhat capable of living up to that -- I used it from 8 in the morning to around 12 midnight and there was still over 30% of juice left.
Overall
Everybody loves a good bargain and the Motorola Moto G is one of the best smartphone deals there is with its $179 price, unlocked and with no contract. Sure, it's flawed (poor camera, middling screen), but if you're on a budget, this could be the sweetest phone available.
Design
At the price range it's selling at, we could easily forgive if the Moto G felt cheaply-built. But, alas, it isn't. In fact, both design and construction feel very similar to the more expensive Moto X. Suffice to say, you're getting yourself a premium-looking phone at a budget price here.
Display
The 4.5-inch display is the first thing that should clue you in about the phone's more affordable standing. The most telling: it sticks to a 720p resolution instead of 1080p, it's not extremely bright (you'll notice this when using outdoors), and contrast isn't exactly topnotch. Still, there's enough crispness and vivid color quality to make for a satisfying experience, especially if you haven't been spoiled by the screens on modern high-end smartphones.
Camera
Now, this is where you really know the Moto G is a budget phone. The 5.0 megapixel camera is quite a disappointment, harking back to a quality that's more suited to phones that came out 2 or 3 years ago. Not only is the shutter slower than modern smartphone cameras, it's also prone to producing photos with a lacking quality (blurry, soft details, and plenty of motion noise) both indoors and outdoors. It uses the same camera app as the Moto X, though, so everything is good on that end.
Features
The biggest issue here is storage. With no microSD card support, you're stuck with the 8GB or 16GB of onboard memory, regardless of which one you decide to get. If you can look past that, then you'll get to enjoy near-stock Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box, with an upgrade to 4.4 KitKat slated soon. From the collection of updated Google apps to Google Now's advanced search, this is one of the few opportunities to enjoy the latest in Google's mobile platform right now. Motorola did remove some of their more premium custom features, however, including Touchless Control and Active Notifications.
Performance
Core components are a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400, Adreno 305 graphics, and 1GB of RAM. While obviously a far cry from the Moto X's X8, it's decent, although you will experience occasional lags if you try to push it with too many running apps, especially resource-intensive ones. Call quality is good on my end, although mixed according to those on the other -- near-perfect in many occasions, but slightly robotic in a few. Speakerphone, again, was impeccable on my end with plenty of volume to boot, although the audio picked up plenty of ambient noise according to those I was conversing with. Motorola claims 24 hours of mixed use life for the battery and it does appear somewhat capable of living up to that -- I used it from 8 in the morning to around 12 midnight and there was still over 30% of juice left.
Overall
Everybody loves a good bargain and the Motorola Moto G is one of the best smartphone deals there is with its $179 price, unlocked and with no contract. Sure, it's flawed (poor camera, middling screen), but if you're on a budget, this could be the sweetest phone available.
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