Gadgetory

with the Moto G Motorola is breaking into the budget smartphone market we've now spent an entire week with this extremely affordable phone are there too many sacrifices or is this phone one that you shouldn't pass up I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is our full review the motorola moto g we'd also like to thank our pals over a clove for lending us this moto G for review check out clove code at UK to see about buying your own moto G considering the price of the Moto G you can't expect a whole lot out of its hardware in fact when we ripped open the box we expected a cheap flimsy toy like phone instead not only does the moto G look a lot like it's more mature sibling the Moto X it feels even more substantial in the hand thanks to the additional 13 grams of heft and it's slightly thicker build the hardware is quite nice not just because the tiny price tag it is genuinely great hardware it feels a lot like the Moto X in hand it bears the curve back which allows the device to centre itself in your palm really well and the ports and buttons are all in the same places of course the insides of this smartphone are more telling of where corners were cut in order to keep costs down but keeping price in mind which is impossible not to do with this phone they're still rather respectable it's powered by the Snapdragon 400 chipset a 1.2 gigahertz quad-core CPU and Adreno 305 GPU it comes in either 8 or 16 gigabyte variations has only one gigabyte of RAM a five megapixel rear camera and a 2070 milliamp hour battery the price savings are felt through the lack of some features which come standard in most Android smartphones these days LTE connectivity NFC and Wi-Fi AC the display surprisingly isn't bad at all measuring 4.5 diagonal inches it doesn't stretch edge to edge like the display on the Moto X and also unlike the Moto X it's not an AMOLED panel it's a 720p resolution LCD panel which boasts fairly accurate and vibrant colors decent contrast and very wide viewing angles blacks are somewhat washed out but White's are balanced and we have very few overall complaints with the display its sharp at 326 pixels per inch and by itself it looks great far better than we imagined on a $200 foam in fact that's how we feel about this entire device every aspect of the Moto G's Hardware exceeds our expectations of what a $200 smartphone should feel like software is an interesting story on the Moto G unlike Motorola's initial claims the Moto G's does not ship with KitKat the plan is now to update the 4.4 kitkat sometime in January for now though it's running 4.3 jelly bean and it's missing the vast majority of the cool features found on the Moto X mainly due to the hardware requirements it does not have touchless control of a wrist flick camera shortcut gesture since those both require Motorola's x8 mobile computing system and it doesn't have active display notifications since it requires an AMOLED display to conserve power but it does offer a few things from Motorola such as motorola assist for calendar meetings or sleeping not driving which also requires the x8 computing system it has Motorola Care migrate and device ID and if you use a passcode or pattern lock when you connect a bluetooth device you can add it to your list of trusted devices when connected to trusted devices the Moto G will not lock when they disconnect the pattern or passcode is required to access the device again outside those few add-ons this version of software is virtually bone stock Android and that's important on a device like this since both storage options are rather small for the time being we have no complaints when it comes to the software but we can't wait to see what this phone runs like on KitKat performance isn't exactly incredible on the Moto G the Snapdragon 400 is visibly stuttery at times to anyone seeking a mostly smooth experience on the cheap however it doesn't get better than this on Android at this price applications open and switch smoothly and relatively quickly flipping between home pages or panning and zooming in the browser is like butter but the biggest current limitation of the Moto G is its 1 gigabyte of RAM applications are closed more aggressively than we're used to with 2 or 3 gigabytes of RAM we feel the forthcoming KitKat update could make things better in this aspect benchmark scores are respectable and gaming performance isn't anything to scoff at either this device isn't meant to be again powerhouse but it can hold its own even in titles like asphalt 8 it has a tendency to drop frame rates throughout asphalt races but it's usually quick to pick up the slack and muscle through and finish the race the speaker on the backside of the Moto G is fairly loud and quite crisp it's strong in the mids and highs and light on the lows this doesn't help for the speakerphone performance which is laughable caller sounded robotic and tinny often distorting the sound enough to make it difficult to understand that said calls through the earpiece sounded great with plenty of volume the lack of LTE was quite noticeable in web page load times and streaming music we hit peak speeds at around 5 megabits per second down and 2 megabits per second up but the average speeds were closer to 2 megabits per second down the 20 70 milliamp hour battery inside the Moto G managed to impress us to some extent the lack of LTE Snapdragon 400 and 720p resolution display were likely helpful in the Moto G's stamina which consistently managed to power us through a full day of moderate to heavy usage on days of it normally heavy usage though we needed a supplementary charge mid-afternoon to last its into the night the camera is admittedly the low point of the Moto G even in the very best lighting conditions pictures weren't all that impressive there's all on colors like sufficient detail and are packed with noise and artifacts and they're noticeably light on contrast as well we managed to take a few decent pictures but they weren't anything mind-blowing and the instant flight becomes the least bit scarce image quality suffers significantly there were many sacrifices made in order to make the Moto G fortunately Motorola cut costs in the least intrusive way possible the Moto G is a fantastic looking and feeling handset at a 300 or 350 dollar price point but it's only a hundred and seventy nine or 199 depending on capacity and for anyone who might even consider a $200 smartphone as a daily driver to begin with the Moto G is an absolute steal it's not for everyone as the stutters and performance reveal but it's a fantastic option as a stocking stuffer this holiday season or a first-time smartphone buyer or even veterans who don't have a lot of needs or disposable income it also makes for an ideal backup phone for those dire circumstances and that's why we give the moto G a seven point seven out of ten that's going to wrap up this review so if you enjoyed it be sure to click the thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one in the future leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions be sure to follow us in all the usual places Twitter Facebook and Google+ at pocket now before we go we'd like to extend a final thank you to our friends at clove for lending us the review unit and as always I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time