A devolutionary design
At first glance, you'd be forgiven for mistaking the Moto G for the Moto X. Like the more expensive handset,
it's a subtly designed phone, defined by its softly rounded corners and elegantly curved back. Although it apes
the look of the Moto X, there are a few important differences between the two phones. The 5-ounce Moto G feels
much heavier than the X, and its back curves slightly too much, ruining the balance and making the G look and feel
pudgy in comparison. Its side-mounted buttons poke out slightly too far and feel very plasticky and cheap.
These are the kind of details that Motorola has proven it’s capable of nailing, but at such a low price they’re
apparently impossible to work around. You’re still getting an attractive handset for the price, and one that many
might mistake for its more expensive cousin, but the Moto G falls short of being spectacular.
Motorola has swapped its custom X8 chip for a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and cut the RAM down from
2GB to 1GB. The cuts are clearly a trade-off required to get the price so low, but the specs still look good compared
to the average $179 smartphone. Another change can be found in internal storage, which has dropped from 16GB or
32GB of storage in the Moto X down to 8GB or 16GB. The 8GB version I tested has around 5.5GB of storage for your
apps, photos, and music, and there’s no microSD slot for expansion. Given the Moto G’s pretensions as a phone
for the masses, this is something of an oversight. A capacious microSD can be picked up from retailers across
the world for a few dollars, and a slot for expandable storage is an important feature to many.
Even for me, storage posed an issue; after syncing my (admittedly quite large) music collection over to the phone,
I was left with just 500MB free. Google may want people to use its cloud services instead of local storage, but
if that’s not always practical in the US, it’s a near impossibility in other countries. Thankfully, Motorola is
offering the the 16GB version at just $199, just $20 more than the 8GB edition. The upgrade is a no-brainer.
No LTE is less of a problem outside of America
LTE is probably the Moto G’s biggest missing feature, and in the US that could be a deal-breaker for many potential
buyers. The Moto G is intended to be sold across the world, though. Many countries have no LTE networks at all,
while others, especially in Europe, have well-developed 3G networks that can deliver good speeds compared to
their US counterparts. Although some Americans might not be dissuaded by the lack of LTE connectivity, it’s perhaps
the biggest tell that the US is not Motorola’s target market with this phone.
