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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Lounge Loves | Motorola Moto G
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Lounge Loves | Motorola Moto G

There's no better combination of screen, battery and processor at this price

Among other positives, the phone has two storage optionsPremium
Among other positives, the phone has two storage options

What an idea Moto G

The Moto G makes it value proposition clear right from the moment you see the box it comes in. This is the kind of packaging you usually associate with antacid tablets...or French fries. It arrives in a little box with papers and a data cable. There isn’t even an adapter in the box. Très minimal. Très cheap.

How is the design? Seldom has a phone so completely surrendered itself to the software that powers it. The Moto G has no real design detail to speak of. There is a sweeping contour on the back cover and a little bevelling near the headphone jack. And there is a Motorola logo. Otherwise the phone is utterly plain.

Stylish consumers need not fret. Motorola offers a variety of cheap and cheerful alternate back covers in many brilliant colours that you can snap on and match with your attire or hair or dog.

The phone is well put together. The front is covered in industry standard Corning Gorilla Glass that stands up to most manhandling. The back is made of plastic that is soft to touch. Overall this is a phone to talk with and not talk about.

Helping it get stuff done is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset that powers the 4.5-inch, 329 pixel HD display. And powering the chipset itself is a built-in 2070 mAh lithium ion battery.

Could the screen be bigger? Yes. Could the processor be more powerful? Undoubtedly. But is there a better combination of screen, battery and processor in the market at this price ( 12,499 onwards)? Not really.

In fact it appears that display and battery are the two things on which corner-cutting has been most restrained. I found the Moto G screen lovely to look at in all lighting conditions. Text, in particular, was surprisingly crisp and clear.

The most impressive technical aspect of the phone, however, is the battery life. Motorola promises a life of 24 hours on “mixed usage". It is a somewhat vague claim but not one that I found much to quarrel with. On several nights I left the phone on my bedside table with less than 10% battery left, fully expecting to see it dead in the morning. Only to find it cheerfully chugging away at daybreak, albeit on fumes. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever used a smartphone, in this generation of devices, that has a more forgiving battery. Use some of the phone’s clever low-battery settings and you can eke out even more from every last drop of battery-nectar.

The least impressive aspect of the phone is its camera. The 5 megapixel rear camera is far from exciting, and the stock Motorola camera app is little better. Trying an alternative app such as VSCO Cam may be more satisfying.

As for the software itself, the Moto G comes with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, but most users should be able to upgrade it to Android 4.4.2 KitKat. In my experience the OS upgrade does improve performance and stability. Once you’ve upgraded the OS you can give it an additional performance boost by activating ART mode on the phone. This is an experimental setting on the phone, explaining which is beyond the scope of this review or even this reviewer. But the directions are simple and available online. I found that activating ART added an extra layer of slick to the Moto G’s buttery smoothness.

The phone has two storage options: 8 GB and 16 GB. Since there are no expandable memory slots it makes sense to opt for the 16 GB model. Another minor downer is the built-in battery.

Overall the Moto G is simply great value for money. For the vast majority of smartphone users out there the Moto G is a value proposition that makes great sense. It is powerful enough to be a primary phone, and cheap enough to be bought without too much soul-searching in these times of economic and political uncertainty.

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Published: 15 Feb 2014, 12:23 AM IST
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