Motorola dials up a winner with the Moto G
Smartphone is a great value that has a little bit of style
It’s being hailed as the best new budget smartphone on the market, and while there is very little about the Moto G that screams awesome, it covers the basics very well and despite being cheap, does a few things with some style. Name: Moto G (3rd Generation) Price: $199 at Bell Mobility, Koodo, Telus, Virgin Mobile Operating system: Android 5.1.1 Screen: Five-inch LCD screen, with resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels Features: 13 Megapixel rear-facing camera, 5 Mp front camera. 16 GB storage with up to 32 GB expandable slot; water and dust resistant. Processor: Qualcomn Snapdragon 410 with Quad core,1400 MHz, ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit. Battery life: 2,470 mAh. Got a work day’s use out of it. What’s good: It has a very good megapixel camera, a five-inch, 720p screen dressed with scratchproof Gorilla Glass and it’s also rugged enough to earn an IPX7 rating.
That means it’s waterproof for up to half an hour in a metre of water. Depending on how disaster-prone your kid is, that might sound very enticing. Unlike a lot of ’ droid phones, the Moto G arrives basically free of bloatware. What’s bad: The processor feels zippy while surfing online and for basic usage, but this isn’t the device you want if you play a lot of graphically intensive games.
This is a phone that handles most regular phone functions well, but does leave off some of the frills now standard on higher-end phones. What’s interesting: You can turn on the phone’s flashlight feature with a double karate chop in the air. Sounds silly, but these tired eyes are finding uses for the phone flashlight fairly common, and I found it cool.
I am less enamoured with gestures that work with the camera, which can switch from rear-to-front facing or start recording video.
But at least Motorola is trying inventive things, without jamming too many extraneous features onto the device. The bottom line: The Moto G might not have the splash and power of the best-in-class flagships coming out, but if all you need is a calling/texting/ getting online machine, this phone does a number of things well, and best of all, at a price that doesn’t burn too big a whole in your wallet.