Budget smartphone gets it right
PRICE: Rs 12,499 Making cost- effective devices is something of a speciality for Google. To cut the price tag, the device must be stripped of features and not usability, something that all other phone manufacturers can learn. To start with, let’s just say that the Moto G is as good a smartphone as you can get in the price range.
Equipped with a 5 megapixel camera, 4.5 inch LCD display, 1 GB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz quad-core proces- sor, the phone performs most tasks with efficiency including browsing, gameplay and multitasking, and there was no lag or stutter during the basic run of things.
The camera quality of the Moto G is just about acceptable, but to criticise it one must remember that pointand-shoot cameras in the same price range don’t give you the most fantastic results either. If you’re really passionate about picture quality or image resolution, then you can’t expect a low-end device to work as a camera-phone.
Google has really tried to cut all the possible corners to be able to minimise the cost of this phone. There is no NFC chip, no LTE connectivity and the package box doesn’t even include the power adapter. Then again, this is a device targeted at the consumers in countries where LTE isn’t even available, like India.
I don’t think that price should be a major point of focus when reviewing smartphones, mostly because they keep changing. The Moto G, however, is an exception — the entire device is built around the idea of making it available to those who don’t fancy spending a huge amount of money on phones.
Other products to consider and compare when you are thinking about the Moto G are Samsung Galaxy Duos, Xperia M and HTC Desire X. None of these come even close to the spec sheet and performance that Moto G offers. The choice, in my opinion, is pretty clear. — Atul Dev