Moto G review (Dual SIM India) – the affordable Beast!

The Moto G is here, it’s hot and probably the best handset for the price considering the brand value and unique features. It’s a beast, an affordable one, for a price tag of under Rs. 14,000. 8GB is available for Rs. 12,499 and 16GB for Rs. 13,999.

Moto Box Pack
Inside the box you will find the Moto G handset, travel charger with dedicated pin (there is no data cable), earphone of a good quality (Motorola could have made it a little better, but considering the price it is good enough), warranty and quick start guide in English and Hindi languages. The battery comes built in.

Design
Instead of the specifications the key features are mentioned on the box pack. The handset has got a curved design that makes it more comfortable to hold and one can easily operate it with a single hand. The screen is with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Moto G comes with improve battery performance and with water repellent coating both on the inside and outside.

The nano water repellent coating does not allow the water to stick on the surface. This could actually make the handset water proof to a certain extent, though Motorola has not specifically mentioned that and hence don’t take it too seriously.

Handset weight with battery is 146 grams and dimensions are 129.31 x 65.71 x 11.42mm.

The 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the top, power / volume rockers on the right and micro USB port at the bottom. There are no physical navigational buttons on the front facing. There is LED notification (single color). Sensors included are accelerometer, light, proximity and magnetic. Sar Value : 1.35 W/Kg Head and 1.06 W/kg body.

Display, Memory and OS
The screen is 4.5 inches with 1184×720 pixels resolution instead of 1280×720 pixels, this is because some part of the screen is assigned for dedicated on-screen navigational buttons, since the hardware buttons are missing. Touch is very smooth in fact as good as experienced on high end phones. Color reproduction and viewing angles are very good.

There is 1GB RAM and optional 8GB / 16GB storage. I got the 8GB version. Of the 1GB RAM 398MB is available on the first boot and 5GB is the space available for apps. There is no micro SD card support. OTG works out of the box.

How to access content of pendrive connected using OTG?
When you connect the pendrive using the OTG cable there will be no notification. Also there is no file manager installed so launch google play and download a file manger app. Connect Pen drive using OTG and then using file manager go to storage / and check usbdisk_1.1.1 and if you do not find the content there look for it in the other usbdisk_ folder.

The Moto G sails on Android 4.3 out of the box and will soon get the much awaited KitKat update.

Performance
This dual SIM handset (Micro SIM slot) is powered by 1.19GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8226 quad core (cortex A7) chipset with Adreno 305 GPU. The performance is very good and lags free. This is the same hardware that powers the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and there is a huge price difference between these two handsets.

Benchmark scores

• Quadrant Standard – 8673.
• AnTuTu – 17194.
• Vellamo – HTML5 1937, Metal 522.
• Nenamark 2 – 56.9 fps
• Multi touch : 5 points.

Gaming Review
There is no micro SD card and hence you will be left with limited space of about 5GB. I could install 2 heavy games the Modern Combat 4 and Asphalt 8 on the internal storage. Both the games played very smoothly.

Camera and Entertainment
The rear camera is 5MP resolution with LED flash and front camera is 1.3MP resolution. The front camera is no good. The camera interface is different and when using the rear camera for the first time you might get disappointed with the blurry output. This is because by default the auto focus is switch off and when you tap the screen it will click. There is no tap to focus option.

You need to enable control focus and expose. Once done you will get a green circle which will be the auto focus point, you can move this circle anywhere on the screen. Just make sure the subject is in circle if you want it to be sharper and focused.

The LED flash does a very good job in combination with the camera. The rear camera can record slow motion videos and can shoot 720p videos. The slow motion quality is okay and the 720p normal video is very good. Do check the sample images and videos at the end of this Moto G review. You can shoot images when the video recording is on.

Long shots are good, close ups are not that impressive not much detailed, however the close-ups when using in video mode are pretty good.

This handset can play full HD videos in H/w and S/w mode using MX player.

Others
The display is visible under direct sunlight. 3G worked well I got the H+ signal. No issues with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. GPS is with A-GPS and GLONASS, I got the first lock instantly. Sound is loud and clear. There is audio effects (equalizer) option in sound settings.

There is Moto G protect option  that will help you locate, lock and even wipe the data from the phone in case it gets lost or stolen.

The build quality and the finishing are very good. When you hold the handed it gives a premium feel. The Moto G is indeed tough, I accidentally dropped the handset from approx 2 feet it fell face down (the front screen hitting first), it survived without any scratches or dents.

Battery Performance
The non removable battery is of 2070 mAh capacity. There is the battery saver option in battery settings. Battery life is still impressive even when that option is switched off. I ran the benchmark apps for about 13 minutes the battery dropped by 3% and when playing the Asphalt 8 game for about 16 minutes the battery dropped by 6%. The maximum temperature during the review was 35 degrees.

I guess the battery life will be much better than other handsets. You could easily play the Asphalt 8 game for about 5 to 6 hours on a single charger.

Verdict
The handset comes powered by the same hardware that is used on the Galaxy Grand 2. Price wise the Moto G definitely has an advantage.  The camera could have been a little better but it is not that bad. There are many other things that make it a very good buy especially the water repellent coating, gorilla glass 3 protection, excellent battery performance and tough build quality.

And if you add the brand value and software updates, it definitely worthy.

Do check the Moto G with KitKat review here.

Moto G available on Flipkart for Rs. 12,499 (8GB) and Rs. 13,999 (16GB).

Image Gallery

Sample Images

Moto G handset and gaming review video

720p sample video shot using the Moto G handset

Slow motion video sample

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