Dubai
Motorola’s Moto G is the best budget smartphone in the market that can compete with high-end devices and is worth every penny.
I will not say it is very perfect but it has everything what an expensive phone can do. Motorola has proven how a high-quality phone can be made at a budget-friendly price.
The 4.5-inch IPS display has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels which translates into 329 pixels per inch. It is still higher than iPhone 5S’ 326 pixels per inch.
The screen is very bright, the text and images are ultra-clear. It is powered by 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Out of the 8GB, only 5.5GB is available for users and it does not have a microSD slot to increase the internal storage capacity. Motorola gives 50GB of Google Drive storage facility free for two years apart from the 15GB of free cloud space for every registered user
It comes with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box and can be updated immediately to Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system.
The main advantage of this device is that it runs on stock Android and no overlay of custom interface like found in other high-end smartphones.
The back is made of polycarbonate with curved edges and rubberized matt finish. It is a bit heavy compared to others in the market and weighs 143 grams.
On the right side of the device houses the power and volume rocker buttons while the 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top and the micro USB port is at the bottom.
The missing features are NFC, 4G LTE and wireless screen mirroring.
The two apps – Motorola Assist and Migrate – bundled into the Moto G is very useful.
The Assist helps users to silence their device during sleep hours and only selected contacts and multiple rings can go through. It can also silence the phone during meeting by referring to your Google calendar.
Migrate lets users transfer their contacts, messages, settings from your old phone. It is easy but only works with Android phones.
It is not a game heavy phone as it has a mid-range Adreno 305 GPU. But users can play FIFA 14 and Real Racing 3 with settings turned to medium and not high. Multi-tasking is very good and browsing heavy sites was easy with no lag.
The biggest disadvantage with this device is the camera. The 5MP camera with LED flash light is mediocre.
The camera app is developed by Motorola. The app is very basic and by flicking the left of the screen brings the menu dial. Flicking from right gives access to gallery.
The menu is simple to use and has HDR mode, flash on/off, switch between widescreen and normal, turn slow motion video, panorama, geotagging and silent mode. No mode to adjust the ISO and exposure settings.
The camera takes decent snaps in decent daylight conditions. In bright daylight conditions, the colours look washed out as in low-light conditions.
In burst mode, the camera can take as many shots as possible till the memory finishes. The camera struggles to focus in macro shots or when pushed to its low-light conditions
It can capture videos at 720p resolution and the videos are decent in daylight conditions. It captures and playbacks MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 format at 30 frames per second.
The 1.3MP front-facing camera captures pictures and videos at 720p.
Regarding connectivity, it has 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0.
The 2,070mAh non-removable battery is pretty small compared to others. It gives a full day of use for moderate users and Motorola hasn’t added any power-saving features apart from the standard battery-saver mode of the operating system. In video playback test, the device lasted for around eight hours. The battery is pretty standard but there are apps on the play store like the Snapdragon Battery Guru which is very good to save power. It is priced at Dh799.
