| Review of the Motorola Moto G |
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The Moto G is new phone from Google-owned Motorola aimed at the budget shopper. It easily blows away every other low-price smartphone on the market and could single-handedly bring a lot more Android buyers who simply couldn’t justify the price of anything else. Last Updated: 08-Dec-2013 |
Before reading this review,
please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
The Moto G isn’t a high-end smartphone, nor does it even try to compete with the
likes of the Galaxy S4, the
HTC One, the LG G2, or the
Nexus 5. It doesn’t have the specs to do
that. However, what it does have is excellent build quality and one of the
lowest upfront prices of any smartphone on the market, mated to hardware that is
way above what one might expect for the price. It feels like a premium high-end
phone from 2 years ago.
So how inexpensive are we talking? Well $180 regularly, but on sale at the time
of this writing for just $150 on Koodo. Big deal you’re thinking, I can buy a
high-end phone for that kind of money. However, we’re talking about OFF-CONTRACT
here, the PURCHASE-OUTRIGHT price. You can buy the Moto G for this insanely low
amount without signing a contract, or opening a “tab”, or without even signing
up for service at all if don’t want to. If you loose one, this is all it will
cost you to replace it.
As far as which phone I compare the Moto G to in this review, that will have to
be my Galaxy S4, simply because it’s my day-to-day phone and the one I have
available for comparison. Before you call me out for being unfair, note that I
don’t generally include much in my reviews about features and add-ons, I
concentrate on the core functionality. While the Moto G isn’t the greatest at
any one thing, you’ll see that when it comes to core competency, the Moto G
doesn’t need to make any apologies.
RF Performance
Because the Moto G does not have LTE, I performed all of my tests with my S4
locked into HSPA. As far as RF performance on HSPA is concerned, the Moto G
works just as well as the S4. It pulls in signals just as well, and under any
conditions you can throw at it, the phones also produce approximately equal
transfer rates and ping times. In other words, the Moto G passes this test and
manages to stand neck-and-neck with the big boys.
The lack of LTE might be an issue, but it didn’t stop people from lining up to
buy the Nexus 4 when it was released last year. The HSPA networks are getting
less crowded as many people move to LTE phones, and so the overall performance
of such networks has actually been improving over the last little while.
WiFi Performance
Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly, depending upon how you look at it)
the Moto G suffers from the same odd uplink problem as I found when I tested its
big brother the Moto X. It was so
strikingly similar that I’m quoting the text from my review of the Moto X
virtually word for word:
I compared the Moto G with the S4 by performing speed tests under varying
conditions. In my house I run two WiFi access point, one upstairs and one on the
main floor. Down in the basement the main floor access point is very strong, but the
one upstairs is a lot weaker and is excellent for mid-strength testing.
After repeated tests I found the downlink speeds on the two phones to be quite
similar, though the nod always went to the S4, which was just a little bit
faster (by around 5%). However, when it came to the uplink speed, there was no
comparison. My home internet service has an uplink cap at 3 Mbps, and so I
thought that both phones would handle that with no difficulty. In fact, the S4
had no trouble at all and could always deliver a 3 Mbps uplink speed. However,
the Moto G could barely provide 1 to 2 Mbps no matter where I tested it in the
basement.
I guess this is one those cases where you get what you pay for. However, it’s
certainly more acceptable in the Moto G that in it’s more expensive sibling the
Moto X.
Audio Performance
The earpiece on the Moto G provides sound quality that is approximately on par
with the S4, and perhaps even a little richer-sounding (though not quite as good
as I remembered the Moto X sounding). Unlike the Moto X however, the Moto G has
plenty of earpiece volume and it matches the S4 (without the Samsung's volume-boost
activated).
The speakerphone doesn’t fair quite so well, as it produces a lot less volume
that than the S4, though it doesn’t fair anywhere near as badly as the Moto X,
which I complained about having exceptionally low volume. Overall sound quality
in speakerphone mode is quite good, and definitely a match to the Galaxy S4.
Multimedia Audio
Generally one relies on the built-in speaker to listen to the audio track of
videos, and so the quality and volume of this activity is important to overall
rating in this category. The undisputed king of multimedia audio (though the
built-in speakers) is of course the HTC One, which just blows away every other
phone on the market. The Moto G isn’t even in the ballpark, but it does warrant
comparison to the S4.
Both the S4 and Moto G deliver about the same volume (perhaps slightly louder on
the Moto G), but each makes different compromises. The Moto G however doesn’t
mirror the Moto X. Instead of having a richer tone than the S4, it actually has
an annoyingly peakier sound quality. In addition, the volume gradients near the
top are insanely far apart. A jump from the maximum setting to the next lowest
setting cuts the volume in half (or so it sounds). This often means the
multimedia volume is either too loud or too soft with nothing in-between.
Display
This is one of the really surprising pluses for the Moto G. At its price point
you’d probably expect a 960 x 540 screen with lots of color issues as viewing
angle increases. However, what you get is a fairly decent LCD screen with a
resolution of 1280 x 720 with no color or contrast distortions, even at the
slightest of viewing angles. The loss in brightness is relatively minor and is
less apparent that on the much-more-expensive Nexus 5. You also get a maximum
screen brightness that easily trounces the S4.
The only issue I had with the display was one I could never quite put my finger
on. Frequently, when looking at the screen, I swore I could see tiny horizontal
lines, especially in solid colors. However, whenever I looked more closely the
lines seemed to disappear. I examined the sub-pixels under a 6X magnifying glass
and they were arranged in the standard RGB bar pattern. There appeared to be
nothing out place there. This phenomenon continued to occur throughout my time
with the phone, but in the end I couldn’t really see it being an annoyance to
many users, assuming they even noticed it in the first place.
Camera
There’s really not much to report here. The Moto G comes with a relatively
old-fashioned 5 megapixel camera on the back that takes okay photographs, which
many people will find quite acceptable, especially if their primary purpose is
to take photographs to post online. Low-light capabilities are so-so, but
bright-light shots are fairly good. However, don’t expect the quality of these
photographs to match something from an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera. Don’t
ever expect it to hold up to high-end smartphones.
GPS
There is no question that the Moto G supports Glonass satellites, which gives it
markedly better accuracy in tough situations (like downtown buildings), but I
noticed something rather odd when I tested the GPS. Using the oh-so-useful app
called GPS Test I was able to watch what the GPS was doing over a period of
time. What I noticed was that every now and then, for no particular reason, the
GPS would completely loose “knowledge” of the Glonass satellites and the phone
was stuck with just GPS satellites for at least a couple of minutes until it
figured things out again. This would eventually settle down, but the strange
problem would reoccur at random times. There might have been something wrong
with the GPS chip in the phone I tested.
Processor and Chipset
Another surprise waiting for you under the hood is the Qualcomm 400 chipset with
the Adreno 305 GPU. The Qualcomm 400 features a quad-core processor clocked at
1.2 GHz. This isn’t as fast as recent high-end phones based on the Qualcomm 800
chipset (2.3 GHz), but it’s plenty fast enough and being quad-core is a big
surprise. You’d have expected nothing more than a dual-core chip. Sadly it has
only 1 GB of RAM, but that worked just fine on high-end phones just 2 years ago
and unless you run a lot of memory-hungry apps at the same time, you aren’t
likely to find this to be a huge issue.
However, despite the lower specs for the processor, the experience with the
phone was much like that of the Moto X. It was smooth and fluid most of the
time, with just a few hiccups here and there. For the type of user this phone is
targeted at, they will be very pleased with the overall level of performance on
this device.
Battery Life
I didn’t perform any exhaustive tests on the battery life, but my overall feel
throughout the test period was that the phone had pretty decided endurance. In
standby (with the screen off) it would just sip power, and according Battery
Monitor Widget the phone could easily run for 4 days in that state. With the
screen on I found battery drain to be quite acceptable. Battery Monitor Widget
frequently predicted run-down times that were almost as good as I saw on my S4
(which has a 2600 mAh battery vs the much smaller 2070 mAh one in the Moto G).
Conclusions
There’s no question that this might be the best bang-for-your-buck smartphone
out there. While the Moto G may not have LTE, top-rated specs, a 1080p screen,
or a great camera, for the small number of dollars you have to part with to own
one outright, it’s difficult to see any other phone on the market giving your
more value for your money. I would personally have no trouble recommending Moto
G to anybody looking for a quality smartphone at a budget price.
