Motorola really has marketed their devices in a great manner – possibly Samsung could take a page from their marketing book – they have their flagship, the new Moto X, their mid range device, the Motorola Moto G 2nd Gen. and their low-end device, the Moto E…something for everyone and every price range. The new Moto G – successor to Motorola’s best selling smartphone of all-time – will be available, unlocked, at Staples sometime in October for $249. Later this year it will be available on WIND Mobile, although their pricing was not yet set.
The new Moto G has an upgraded 5-inch IPS display to HD quality with a resolution of 1280 x 720 and 294 pixels-per-inch (PPI). The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core clocked at 1.2GHz with an Adreno 305 GPU clocked at 450MHz. It comes with 1GB of RAM and an option for internal storage of 8GB or 16GB, however, only the 8GB device will be going to Canada – not to worry though, as there is room for 32GB of expansion courtesy of a microSD card slot. A 2070mAh battery powers all this, however in our testing, it gave “phenomenal” battery life.
The camera area was really improved over last year’s model, which took less than stellar pictures – the new 8MP (4:3) main camera has 4X Digital Zoom, Slow motion video, Burst Mode, Auto HDR, Panorama and Touch to Focus. It has a 2MP front-facing camera (FFC) for video chats and selfies. The new Moto G also has Bluetooth 4.0 LE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, and GLONASS. It is running Android 4.4.4 KitKat, but will get an OTA upgrade to Android L as soon as it is released. It measures 141.5 x 70.7 x 6.0 – 11mm (curved back) and weighs in at 149 grams. It does not have LTE, just the HSPA+, but you have to remember the price range of this device.
The improvements on the new Moto X are much greater than the upgrades to the new Moto G, but you are still getting a lot of quality for the money. Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know what you think of the new Moto G and if you plan on making it your next smartphone…as always, we would love to hear from you.