Larger screen, dual-SIM, sturdy build, good battery life, expandable memory, budget price
Processor same as last model, screen resolution hasn't increased, no 4G
The latest version of the budget-priced Moto G adds a bigger screen and expandable memory, but no 4G. What's up with that?
Very recently, Motorola responded to criticisms of the original Moto G by releasing the Moto G 4G, which added you know what plus expandable memory. Otherwise however, it was exactly the same phone. But this latest second generation of the Moto G is rather confusingly a different phone with a different spec, despite the similar name.
Chassis & Screen The main difference is the screen, which has expanded from 4.5 inches to 5 inches, increasing the size of the phone overall (though thankfully only increasing its weight by a meagre 6g). That's generally a good thing, but it maintains the 1,280x720-pixel resolution of its predecessor, but spread over a wider area. That actually reduces the pixel count from 326ppi to 294ppi. It's still HD, and it still looks pretty good, but it's not quite as sharp as the original Moto G or Moto G 4G.
Also on the front, you'll now find a pair of speakers which can go fairly loud without distorting -- very handy for movie viewing or for conference calls.
Software & Processor
There's nothing wrong with the quad-core 1.2GHz processor. It's fast, it's efficient and still has more grunt than you'd expect for this price (it gave our AnTuTu benchmark test a score of 18,123, which is just slightly more than we recorded for the original). The trouble is that it hasn't changed since the last incarnation, which doesn't feel like a move forward.
It's running the bang up to date 4.4.4 version of Android KitKat though, which is good to see, as is the fact that it's pretty much raw Android, without any unwelcome "improvements". Aside from the usual bug fixes and tweaks though, it doesn't appear to be very much different.
Photography
The 5-megapixel camera has now been upgraded to 8 megapixels with a wider f/2 lens -- not a huge jump in quality but a welcome one. It comes with autofocus and an LED flash, plus some extras like touch focus, face detection, HDR and panorama modes. Picture quality is pretty good, though you'll need to drop the resolution a little for widescreen mode. There's also a pretty decent 2-megapixel snapper on the front for video calls and selfies.
So far, so good, but the big omission is 4G, which you can get on the snappily named Moto G 4G, but not here. So you have a choice, but if you want the new phone with the bigger screen, you're going to have to do without fast downloads on the move, which doesn't seem like a particularly good compromise.
Good to see that it's kept the Moto G 4G's microSD slot which allows you to beef up the 8GB or 16GB of onboard memory by up to 32GB -- something you couldn't do on the original Moto G. It's available in both single and dual-SIM versions too -- handy for those of us who like to keep work and play separate, or who regularly travel abroad.
The sizeable 2,070mAh battery remains the same which is no bad thing -- you can expect to get a good day and more out of it.
Conclusion
Motorola raised our expectations of what a budget phone could be with the original Moto G, and we expected the next generation to wow us all over again. This doesn't quite do that, with the same processor and dropping the resolution of the bigger screen. It's still a very good phone for an excellent price, but it's a pity about the lack of 4G.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
