The high-end, on-contract end of the smartphone market tends to get the bulk of everyone’s attention. Unlocked phones tend to be either high price or have less than desirable specs. Motorola is trying to change that with the Moto G.
With similar styling to the high-end Moto X, the Moto G has several small but important differences. The 720p screen is a 4.5″LCD instead of 4.7″AMOLED. The camera is a mere 5 MP, half of the X’s 10 MP and it only records at 720P instead of 1080. TheQualcomm Snapdragon 400 is not the Motorola x8 system that Google has been bragging about, but it’s still a crazy powerful quad-core chip, and one you’re just not going to find on a pre-pay carrier for less than $400 . With these specs, one has to wonder what makes this phone low end instead of mid-range. The answer, of course, is network speed.
Most people are going to have to decide if they can deal with the Moto G’s lack of LTE. The $179 price may be worth it, especially if you live in an area without LTE. An additional plus in the G’s favor is that it ships with Android 4.3 and is guaranteed to update to Android 4.4. That’s a big change from most low-end Android devices, which tend to sit at the same OS level, barring hacking.
For $179, the Moto G beats out a lot of off-contract phones and features. If you’re considering such a handset, we suggest you take a strong look at this model.
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