Motorola aced 2013 with the Moto G, and it’s got so caught up in its success that the naming department got all in a fluster and forgot to come up with a new name for the successor.
So it’s bye bye Moto G, and hello… Moto G. Of course, it’s the Moto G2 in reality. That is, as long as you don’t count the Moto G 4G as the Moto G2. Hang on, this is getting confusing.
Anyway, call it what you like, the Moto G 2014, the Moto G 2, the Moto G 2nd Generation… the brand has once again gone low on the price point without compromising the spec sheet.
It should be noted that the new Moto G is about 15% more expensive worldwide than its predecessor (£145 in the UK, $179 in the US with Australia TBA), but Motorola has upped its game in terms of build quality and specs, which should pacify prospective buyers.
The biggest change is the screen, now up to 5-inches while maintaining that 720p resolution. It does show, especially when compared to the new Moto X (which has a stunning 5.2-inch screen that’s just dripping with colour and clarity), and when viewed from the side the brightness drops off significantly.
The latter point isn’t a big deal, given the phone isn’t meant to be used anything other than straight on, but it does highlight where the costs have been saved.
However, when you pick up the Moto G you’d scarcely believe how much it costs, as it’s very well packaged with the now-familiar dent in the back where the Motorola logo lives. It doesn’t do anything (although it would be a perfect way to activate the front-facing camera) but delights ergonomically.
The back of the phone once again removes to allow you to change the colour to your own favourite, and also conceal a microSD slot, which is something Motorola realised you HAVE to add if the phone comes in an 8GB flavour.
That storage is still on the low side, even for a budget phone, as it can fill up with apps quickly, so be wary of that if you’re thinking of spending a fraction of what you usually might on a smartphone.
That said, you probably won’t find yourself using a great many intensive apps as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset, although clocked at 1.2GHz and quad core, won’t be able to perform as well as the higher end models. It’s the same processor put in today’s smartwatches, and while they’re ridiculously overpowered, it does give some sense of how much grunt the Moto G will have.
The camera has been tuned as well, with an 8MP snapper now sat on the back, with a single LED flash, and tap-to-take has been added to make it as simple as tapping the screen to get a new picture.
The camera, like the rest of the phone, isn’t any great shakes when it comes to picture quality, but as you can imagine it once again outperforms the price tag quite significantly.
The rest of the Moto G is very much standard Android 4.4.4, as there’s very little customisation here. That means the phone is essentially a blank canvas, allowing you to go and find out what Android is all about for yourself, but given the low amounts of storage you won’t be able to play with apps too much.
The good side of this stripped down appearance is that the upgrades will flow thick and fast on the software side, with the latest version of Android usually hitting the Motorola range after its stopped off at the latest Nexus device.
Like I said before, there’s a definite lag under the finger, and if you try the Moto G side by side with the Moto X you’ll see the massive difference, but it’s not worth the nearly 80% difference in the price between them.
The final thing to talk about is the front-facing speakers. Motorola claims that this is the result of dedicated consumer research, that it realised that people liked to share their music. Perhaps, but these speakers are no HTC Boomsound.
They sound pretty tinny and given this is going to be a phone that is attractive to the youth market, that could spell disaster on the bus as groups of young things just start playing whatever boogie-woo is in the hit parade these days.
Early verdict
The Moto G was an incredible success in 2013, and while it’s a shame that the new phone doesn’t hit the same awesome price point, there have to be some compromises in getting the additional materials on this phone.
It’s mostly upgraded in every way it could be – bar the slightly disappointing screen compared to last year – and with a decent sized battery (just over 2000mAh) it should manage to easily keep going all day.
I get the feeling it won’t have the same traction the first model did, but that was very disruptive and changed the way a lot of people saw smartphones. If the Moto G is the difficult second album to the Moto G, then it’s going to be a long and award-heavy career for Motorola.
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