We’ve been hearing whispers for a good few weeks now that the Moto G is headed to Verizon on prepaid plans for the incredible price of $99.99. Of course, that only gets you 8GB of storage but, for that sort of price, the Moto G has to be the best value for money in a smartphone there is and that price undercuts the unlocked GSM price from Amazon. With the Moto X now permanantly $399 off-contract direct from Moto themslelves, it’s beginning to look like Motorola is following Google’s march to the lowest price possible in order to break back into the mobile market. We can’t fault them, as it’s a strategy that has its merits and selling something for an honest and low price is an almost surefire way to get a lot of people using your devices.
This mythical $99 Verizon Moto G was spotted in retail packaging not too long ago and we all know it’s heading to Best Buy stores but, Verizon themselves have now let the cat out of the bag and officially announced it. With such an announcement comes word of pricing that folks will be expected to pay after ponying up a hundred bucks for the Moto G. Paying $60 a month will get unlimited talk and text with a paltry 2GB of data, make that $70 a month and you’re looking at 4GB of data. With that sort of pricing, you have to wonder if it’s not better off to pay the extra for the GSM version and head to T-Mobile, whom we’re pretty sure is in a welcoming mood this year.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Moto G, it’s Motorola’s attempt to make a device for everyone, that can’t afford the Galaxy S4s or HTC Ones of the world (or simply doesn’t want to pay that much) and frankly, we think they met their target. With Android 4.4 KitKat (Google’s latest) already running on the device and specs like a quad-core Snapdragon CPU, a 4.5-inch 720p display the Moto G makes other budget smartphones look stupid. Launching on the nation’s largest LTE network without support for the extra speed might seem a strange notion but, it’s $99 off-contract and you’re not locked into a contract so, if oodles of data doesn’t matter much to you or you’re mostly on WiFi most of the time then this is the best hundred bucks you’re likely to spend on a smartphone this year.