Motorola was once one of the largest cellphone manufacturers in the world. The company did not adapt to the smartphone world all that well however, and it was first purchased by Google, and then Google opted to sell the company to Lenovo. Since Lenovo took over, we’ve seen a number of ‘Moto’ devices hit the market, and the Chinese company is slowly, but surely, pushing out the Motorola brand. That being said, we’ve seen a couple of Moto-branded devices introduced this year, including the Moto G Play, Moto G Plus, Moto Z and Moto Z Force handsets. As you can see, the third-gen Moto E is not present on this list, that’s because Motorola did not introduce this smartphone just yet, but that might change soon, read on.
The budget Moto E (2nd-gen) handset got announced back in February last year, and considering we’re in August 2016 now, its successor is long overdue. Well, the third-gen Moto E handset surfaced on Zauba in India quite recently, and that listing, more or less, suggests that the device will launch soon. The listing dates back to August 8th, and shows the 16GB storage variant of the Moto E. We still don’t know when exactly will this handset land, but it seems like its release is closer than we might think. Anyhow, the Moto E (3rd-gen) had already surfaced on GFXBench (back in April), and thanks to that listing, we know what to expect in terms of specifications. The Moto E (3rd-gen), will, according to GFXBench, ship with a 5-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of native storage. The device will be fueled by MediaTek’s MT6735P 64-bit quad-core SoC running at 1GHz, and the Mali-T720 GPU will also be a part of this package. On the back of the Moto E (3rd-gen) you’ll be able to find an 8-megapixel shooter, while a 5-megapixel camera will be available up front. Android 6.0 Marshmallow will come pre-installed on this smartphone, and on top of it, you’ll get an almost stock version of Android, though several Moto apps will be included.
On top of all this, it is also worth mentioning that the Moto E (3rd-gen) had gained Bluetooth certification back in June, which also confirms that it should launch soon. In any case, stay tuned, we’ll make sure to keep you in the loop.