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Motorola Moto G

2014-02-25
I'd like to open this up by saying yeah I know I'm really late on this one the Corsair Flash Voyager go is the easy way to move photos music and videos between your Android device and your PC click now to learn more yes everyone in North America is drooling over the Samsung Galaxy s5 the HTC m8 etc but honestly the Moto G was never about being the best phone available in North America anyway so why don't we approach this from a bit of a different perspective let's consider its importance in another market one that Motorola talked about back when they launched it India the 16 gig version launched earlier this month Android 4.4 KitKat rolled out there on it about a week ago and at the time of filming this the Moto G has 2300 user reviews on flipkart.com more than the Galaxy s4 and HTC One combined so as interesting as the successors to those products are I would actually argue that even today you know for months latest as I am the Moto G is a more important product overall for the world's move toward smartphones than either of those two successors so the main difference between the Moto G and the Moto X are as follows performance is lower in every way slower CPU and GPU with a quad-core a7 processor at 1.2 gigahertz an Adreno 305 GPU one gig versus two gigs of ram and Wireless versus AC wireless and 3G cellular data maximum versus LTE being available on the X all of that though actually sounds worse than it is more on that later the build quality is very solid it is thicker and uses noticeably cheaper plastic but you do get a removable and customizable replaceable backing now however difficult it might be to get off it's got a regular 720p LCD display versus the OLED display on the Moto X that enables the display to power on only the pixels that are needed a great power saving feature it lacks the always listening voice activation and this actually bothered me a lot more than I expected the camera feel straight out of 20 10 megapixels and Jigga pixels aside my iPhone 4 to my eyes anyway actually take similar quality pictures and does it with a faster response on the shutter but that's me losing track of the product positioning of the Moto G I'm complaining the camera is competitive with the iPhone 4 but that still passes for apples value option in India that is with the Moto G is up against and on flipkart.com the 8 gig iPhone 4 actually costs about 50 percent more than the Moto G whose other advantages vastly outweigh that one disadvantage in my opinion let's talk physicality in everyday use she don't have many buttons Cap'n I like the top three-and-a-half millimeter jack it's easy to pocket but I found the positioning of the camera lens a bit awkward for taking pictures in landscape mode the on-board speaker is suitably loud for watching youtube videos in the back seat of a moving car which is all I really asked for but it's got that awkward positioning that requires the now classic hand cup maneuver to achieve optimal performance blah the volume rocker is another thing that bothered me a fair bit throughout the time I use the phone it's short cheap feeling and hard to differentiate from the lock button when you're not actually looking at the phone when you're just trying to feel it I don't have much to say about the software that I didn't already say in my moto X or Nexus 5 reviews its Android 4.4 and it's pretty much stock Android with no real bloatware there are only a few things that really drove me crazy I also don't like the dialer at all dialing by name is something that I take for granted now and is conspicuously accident absent here and switching to the address book is up at the top of the phone where it's not really convenient to reach one-handed and finally hangouts still just plain sucks as a messaging app the chip in my head though tells me that much like the YouTube comments our Google overlords will address it at some point in the future so it's a minor concern but it's definitely something that's bothering me for now but negativity out of the way let's get into the first of my top 4 Moto G advantages versus cheaper and even similarly priced phones from off-brands and other premium brands like Samsung alike software updates Motorola promised and delivered Android 4.4 in a timely manner on the Moto G many of the devices in this price range are still running 4.1 or even earlier versions of Android and when you consider Google's focus on making their OS run faster and lighter with each iteration you could argue that software updates are even more important than getting better specs on your phone in the first place advantage number two performance other stuff in this price range like the Samsung IAT 260 is just plain laughable compared to the Moto G even coming from a premium phone games ran fine at native res and I only know two slowdowns while multitasking or while installing apps in the background I also suspect that any of the stutters I did feel were because the flash storage was almost completely full the entire time I had the phone that will hamper the performance of even the quality flash storage in the Moto G I used an 8 gig but I would really recommend the 16 gig for another 20 bucks if you plan to put lots of apps or even a small to medium music collection on your phone advantage number three that screen where most of its competitors are still advertising their screens as tft-lcd without even specifying a resolution on the product page the Moto G's 4 and a half inch 720p IPS screen is the design choice that even made me forget some times while I was reviewing it that I was holding a device that costs a third of my daily driver the HTC One the viewing angles on it are excellent the colors are vibrant without seeming oversaturated and unnatural like some OLED displays and it was even easy to use outside nice and bright excellent contrast my only complaint here is that the touchscreen seemed to lack the pinpoint accuracy of some other products I've used which was noticeable and things like typing very quickly advantage number four is about the other stuff the all-day battery that got me almost through to light usage days last weekend the Gorilla Glass 3 front cover and the lip on the front of the phone that means I can put it down without worrying about scratches the customizability you can replace the backing with a color of your choice or a flip starting fifteen bucks and these are all little things that maybe don't merit individual advantages but they add up to make the conclusion for this video very simple at a hundred and seventy nine to 199 dollars this is the only phone that really matters in much the same way that at three hundred and fifty dollars the Nexus 5 is the only phone that really matters yes you can find imperfections in both of them but the only way to fix those complaints is to spend more so I believe what I said stands I wouldn't consider recommending something else to my mother if she had two hundred dollars to spend which is about the strongest praise I can give a product oh wait right sorry the part of a phone review where I talk about call quality it's good actually better than expected the Moto G has an extra mic for background noise suppression which at this price point is a very compelling value add just like everything else about this phone so overall great work Motorola oh and I also have a sponsor message to the internet sensation danboard is now available as a portable battery charger for your mobile devices you know like this one when you need more battery life on the go and while cuteness is subjective price to performance is not at the moment this version with a massive 10400 milliamp hour battery and five-star rating is available for 35 bucks on amazon.com it includes both a one end and a 2.1 amp charging port which can be used separately or even at the same time an LED battery level indicator and automatic shutdown functionality for when the battery of your device is finished charging so you don't over charge it there's a 6000 milliamp hour model - that's similar other than being physically smaller and replacing the more standard battery life indicator with get this color-coded LEDs in the eyes anyway they're both available on amazon.com and I'm including a clickable link for those of you with annotations enabled as well as a link in the video description for those of you who are on your phone or have them off or for whatever are the reason so take a moment to check it out because without our sponsors and Thank You Chi Rho for supporting us on this video it would be very difficult for us to keep making videos so guys especially this one very very compelling value right now anyway thank you for watching my moto G review like this video and share it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it we do value your feedback leave me a comment and let me know if you'd like to see more coverage of lower end devices like this one or if you'd prefer I just stay in the realm of sexy drool-worthy flagship phones instead I would actually love to hear what you guys think about that and as always don't forget to subscribe to lioness tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos even though we don't really do unboxings I have to revise my outro
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