By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K
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Motorola Moto G had set the benchmark for budget smartphones with its great build quality, good performance and an equally attractive price. However, the underwhelming camera and lack of a storage expansion slot were the major pain points sticking out like a sore thumb.
Motorola says it has tried to address these issues with the next-generation Moto G by offering a budget smartphone that seeks to tick all the right checkboxes. Is the new Moto G the perfect budget smartphone? We try to find out in our review...
Build & design
The new Moto G doesn't take a big leap when it comes to design. It in fact appears to be inspired by Moto E, Motorola's entry-level smartphone, with its two front chrome grills.
The phone is a little thick at 10.99mm and feels hefty at 149gram.
The front panel has a bigger, 5-inch display flanked by two metal strips at the top and bottom. The strips also feature the phone's speaker outlets. To be honest, we're not really a fan of these strips and prefer Moto X's subtle front-speaker grills.
Just like the previous edition, there's a minor gap between the edge of the front panel, which is slightly raised, and the display that tends to attract dust particles. We feel that Motorola should have fixed this design gripe.
The power and volume keys are at the right edge, while the micro-USB port and 3.5mm headset jack are located at the bottom and top edge, respectively. The metal keys feel good, offer good tactile feedback and are very responsive. The keys are not as narrow as the ones on the first Moto G.
The slightly curved plastic back cover sports a rubberized soft-touch matte finish and feels really good to hold. It offers a great grip and makes the new Moto G one of the best designed phones in terms of ergonomics. The back features an indented Motorola logo, camera lens and LED flash.
Removing the cover reveals the two micro-sim slots, a microSD card slot and a sealed battery. Just like the original Moto G, the new version is customisable with its optional, multi-coloured back panels. Just like the original Moto G, the phone feels solid and durable, and we did not notice any wobbles or squeaks. The back is not very prone to smudges.
The new Moto G Moto G also comes with a nano-coating that makes is water resistant up to a certain level. It will be able to handle minor splashes, but most likely won't survive a dip in the pool.
The new Moto G is also available in a white version.
Display
The new Moto G has a bigger, 5-inch display (0.5-inch more than the original Moto G) though the display resolution is still 720x1280pixels. The display is equipped with Corning Gorilla Glass to protect against minor scratches.
Text and graphics appear sharp and crisp, however, the brightness levels are on the lower side compared to the first generation Moto G. The pixels per inch have also reduced but we did not notice much pixillation. Having said that, colours were not as punchy as they were on the first Moto G.
Viewing angles were excellent and sunlight legibility was also good.
Software
The dual-sim version of Moto G available in India comes with Android 4.4 KitKat. Motorola has promised that the phone will get the Android L software after Google officially real eases it.
Moto G runs an almost stock version of Android complete with on-screen navigation controls. The interface is close to Google's Nexus 5, complete with a Google Now launcher-like launcher, except that Motorola also includes some of its own apps.
Thankfully, these apps are not bloatware and add to functionality. One of the Motorola app called Assist changes how the phone alerts you during meetings or sleep. If you've used an iPhone, you must have used or come across the Do Not Disturb; Assist is similar and allows you to silence or auto reply to missed calls while you're in a meeting or sleeping. You can choose exceptions for Favourite callers or when someone calls twice.
Another Motorola app bundled with the phone is Help. The app is not only a searchable user guide featuring Tutorials, FAQs, How-tos and actionable tips, it also offers a shortcut key to get in touch with Motorola's customer care. Motorola Migrate allows you to transfer content and settings from your old Android phone or iPhone.
The Motorola Alert app lets users alert their preferred contacts in an emergency situation along with their location.
The dual-sim Moto G also comes with settings for managing the behaviour of two sim cards, allowing you to choose the default connection
for data, calls and messaging.
Other than these, you get a pretty neat slate to customize as per your own preference and use the apps that you wish to.
Camera
The new Moto G sports an improved 8MP rear camera with auto-focus and flash and a 2MP front-facing camera for selfies.
Motorola's camera app offers basic controls and excludes advanced granular settings for camera attributes. You'll only see two controls — one for switching to the video camera and the other to switch between the front and rear lenses till you swipe from the edge to the right side of the screen to reveal an arc shaped dial that features controls for HDR mode, LED flash, focus & exposure, slow motion, Panorama mode, geo-tagging, widescreen mode and shutter sound.
Similar to the Windows Phone camera app, you click pictures by tapping anywhere on the screen. The soft viewfinder can be moved up and down to zoom in and out or shift focus.
It is also a little unintuitive as the arc-shaped settings panel is hidden by default. There are no special scene modes or filters.
The camera hardware has certainly been improved and we observed that the rear camera takes better pictures even with less light compared to the first Moto G. The pictures offer good detail, colour accuracy and contrast. The default white balance setting is now more white. HDR mode offers pictures with enhanced contrast.
Pictures captured in the low-light situations were also better than the ones shot with the first-generation Moto G with less grain and more detail.
The front-facing camera takes decent selfies but pictures were a bit grainy, especially indoors in low-light conditions.
The rear camera can take 720p normal and slow motion videos and the quality of the videos recorded with the phone was good.
Performance
The original Moto G was one of the best performing budget devices when it debuted. Its successor doesn't really get a bump when it comes to hardware. It is powered by the same 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor coupled with Adreno 305 graphics and 1GB RAM.
We did not notice any major lag while navigating through the phone's menu, launching apps and switching between them. At times the transition effects while exiting the app drawer were a bit jerky though.
In synthetic benchmarks, it beats competitors like the Micromax Canvas Turbo Mini by a margin. The phone scored 17,976 in Antutu, 8882 in Quadrant and 57.8 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. Some of these scores are marginally better than the original Moto G but lag behind the Xiaomi Redmi 1S.
Out of the 16GB storage, 12.9GB is available to the user. Thankfully the new Moto G comes with a microSD card slot for expansion so you'll be able to store multimedia content on your phone without worrying about filling up storage space.
New Moto G offers Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS connectivity options. The Wi-Fi antenna now supports faster 802.11ac standard and can work with compatible routers.
The phone offers excellent call quality and signal reception and we did not encounter issues while making calls even in areas where cell signal is relatively weaker. The phone was able to lock to GPS without any hiccups.
It offers FM radio but unfortunately, you can't listen to it through the phone's speaker even when you've plugged in the headphones to use as an antenna. It also doesn't offer a recording feature. We were able to play most popular video and audio file formats on the phone.
The new front-facing, stereo speakers on the phone offer loud sound output though lack bass. It's one of the loudest phones we've seen.
The phone is backed by a 2070mAh battery (non-removable) and will last you a complete day even if you put the screen brightness at the highest level and use 3G data all the time. You'll be able to make about 2-3 hours of phone calls, play some casual games and browse the web in this time period. The phone can play video continuously for 7 to 8 hours.
Overall, the new Moto G offers performance similar to its predecessor and using it as our primary device turned out to be a great experience.
Gaming
We were able to play games like subway Surfers, Temple Run 2, Banana Kong, and Asphalt 8 without encountering frame drops or freezes. Despite the limited RAM, the phone offers good gaming performance.
Verdict
There's no doubt Motorola has worked on the shortcomings of the original Moto G to come out with a well balanced, good quality smartphone in the form of the second-generation Moto G. Arriving six months after the launch of its predecessor in India, the new Moto G doesn't offer an upgrade in terms of hardware but doesn't disappoint when it comes to performance.
Having said that, it is not just the only value-for-money budget smartphone in the market. At Rs 12,999, the new Moto G is Rs 1,000 cheaper than the original Moto G but costs more than some of the other options. The landscape has changed and the likes of Xiaomi Redmi 1S and Asus ZenFone 5 will give it a tough fight. It's another thing that it is difficult to get one's hands on the Xiaomi Redmi 1S with its weekly stock quota apparently selling out in a matter of seconds.
If you already own a Moto G, there's no compelling reason to switch to the new one. If you're looking for a reliable, clutter-free and well designed budget Android smartphone, the Moto G is still the best out there.
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