Gadgetory

motorola calls it the Moto G third generation we call it the Moto G 2015 some people call it the Moto G three but that's confusing whatever you call it the newest mid-range smartphone out of Motorola is more fully featured than ever before and it's price tag has barely gotten a bump i'm michael fisher with pocket now and let's see if that combination is a winning one in our video review of the new Moto G iterative upgrades are usually the name of the game by the time you get to the third generation of any smartphone but the more I use the new Moto G the more I realize how big a jump it is from its predecessor by and large this jump is a good one the new mid plate detail does a good job of making it look slightly more upscale there's now a metallic accent around the camera complete with Motorola's trademark finger dimple and there's ipx7 waterproofing - buyers can now customize the phone using Moto maker previously a privilege reserved for the higher-end Moto X which means there are over 200 color variations available all told under the hood the engines got no tune up as well the Snapdragon 410 processor is Qualcomm z-- 64-bit answer to last year's 400 and it backed up by either one gig or two gigs of ram and 8 or 16 gigs of storage we're testing the higher-end variant but either way you've got microSD expansion as well if you want to add more storage on your own also in any case you're getting a 5 inch 720p LCD under Gorilla Glass 3 a pretty sizable battery and very wide a 4G LTE band support appropriate for a phone that's launching in over 60 countries how's all that hardware come together in the hand well here's where the Moto G shows its price a little the plastic frame feels soft and cheap in the palm evoking memories of the lightweight galaxies of Samsung past the volume and power buttons are mushy the vibration motor is very weak and the display has poor viewing angles low saturation and milky blue grey blacks around back the cover has nice tactility with its ribbed texture kind of like the fiberglass non-skid on a boat deck but it relies on snaps to keep its twin gaskets in place and it's not always evident when you've missed one I expect a few water damage claims in this phones future flip the phone back over and you'll see the first of many software improvements Motorola's brought to the G moto display which shows you waiting notifications and the time automatically when you pick it up or pull it from a pocket underneath that is a very close to stock build of android 5.1.1 with Google now anchored to the left of the home screen and everything else you'd expect from a de-facto Nexus device including excellent responsiveness the Moto Suite doesn't stop at the display either you can set custom behaviors for specific locations so if your phone detects that you're at your favorite burger joint it can silence the ringer and let you beast down your grub and piece or if you're home or driving it can dictate texts to you and let you speak your replies probably my favorite moto features are the quick launch gestures turn the phone sideways and give it a choppity choppity taggle the flashlight on or off or give it a twist to rest to jump into the camera that ladder gesture is a little too sensitive turn your phone over on a tabletop and half the time you launch the viewfinder but it is a really quick and easy way to fire up the camera when there's a shot you don't want to miss that camera is the same sensor you'll find in the Nexus 6 that's Sony's IMX 214 it sports a resolution of 13 megapixels and f20 aperture a dual tone LED flash and a new IR filter to reduce glare there's no optical stabilization and the viewfinder is as bare bones as every other Motorola phone but keeping in mind the price point of the Moto G this camera is very impressive on paper and it's very impressive in the real world - as long as you're pouring a ton of light on the scene outdoors in daylight colors are vibrant and detail is impressive there's plenty of sharpness here a particular note is how dramatic a difference the high dynamic range mode makes while some phones barely do anything with HDR switched on this camera really does a nice of brightening up the shadows also in situations with a lot of hot zones the manual exposure slider lets you tweak the camera to prevent blowout you can tease some really cool shots out of this camera assuming again you have enough light if you don't this camera is really bad I mean truly that's to be expected in near pitch dark conditions of course but as we pointed out in last week's comparison video the new Moto G is worse than the old moto G in low-light particularly when it comes to focus problems and digital noise there's so much noise in these pictures taken at dusk that I had to check to make sure I wasn't using some crazy texture filter I didn't know about but nope that's just how this camera works in low-light this selfish shooter around front suffers from similar problems it's got a nice 5 megapixel resolution but it often struggles to bring enough light into the scene and the level of processing noise ranges from bad to comically bad focus problems also dog photos taken with the flash and there's nothing special going on with video we've used the new Moto G for six days between Greater Boston and New York City on AT&T and our test notes have brought few surprises the single front firing speakers --nt the best or the loudest but it gets the job done a Motorola's famous noise cancellation does great work eliminating wind noise during phone calls I didn't have any problem with cellular Wi-Fi or GPS reception but I found the compass pretty inconsistent and the lack of NFC will bother people who are hoping to use Google pay just like previous Moto G's software performance is far better than you'd expect given the mid-range processor from day-to-day multitasking to heavy gaming titles it more than holds its own finally we got outstanding endurance on our first cycle the Moto G gave us over 6 hours of screen on time over a nine hour period seemingly with power to spare that's outstanding but I haven't been able to reproduce it since I tend to think that's because of an app I've installed in the intervening time or an update gone wrong or something reports from other users and reviewers seem to back up my favorable first impression this phone lasts a good long while unfortunately the power saving mode resulted in a hard crash of the software on one occasion and there's also no quick charge support here so going from a dead cell to a full power pack will take over two hours plenty of charging accordingly motorola touts the new G as its $179 smartphone but that's not the one we tested our two gigs 16 gig variant starts at 219 and with Moto maker and accessory customizations the price goes up from there another question is is this a good $220 smartphone and the answer is it qualified yes the qualification is this it's not 2013 anymore and Motorola isn't launching the G into a vacuum there are competitors offering damn good value in this price range now and with even flagship phones coming down in price these days the compromises of the Moto G stand out more than they would have even last year still there's more than enough positive here to balance out the negative the new Moto G is a highly customizable smartphone with excellent battery life great performance and software that adds usefulness without bogging it down if you can live with its compromises in camera and display it's absolutely a solid Buy just spring for the higher-priced here if you can for more on Motorola's 2015 product lineup check out our related videos here on YouTube and for the full review of the new Moto G hop on over to pocketnow.com at the link in the description below till next time this has been michael fisher captain two phones on twitter thanks for watching everyone we'll see you next time