Smartphones are expensive. Apple’s iPhone 6 and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 cost $650 and $580, respectively, when unsubsidized. And that’s without a monthly data plan.
But
you don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars to get a great unlocked
handset. Take Motorola’s third-generation Moto G, for example.
Starting
at $180, the Moto G boasts a 5-inch screen, a 13-megapixel camera, and
4G LTE network connectivity for fast Internet speeds. What’s more, you
can even customize the Moto G’s colors to look the way you want.
Here’s why Motorola’s Moto G is the best budget smartphone on the planet.
Custom looks
With
a starting price of $180, you can’t expect the Moto G to sport the kind
of high-design aluminum and glass construction found on the iPhone 6
and Galaxy S6. But this is no hideous, low-rent handset; the Moto G is
actually fairly attractive.
Sure,
it’s made of plastic, but it’s not too bulky. And despite its 5-inch
screen, I found the phone extremely comfortable to hold. I could even
use it with one hand, a novel concept in the age of supersized
smartphones.
The
Moto G’s design is also extremely simple: just two buttons, one for
power and a volume rocker on the right side. As with Motorola’s other
handsets, you mostly control the Moto G via its onscreen Android
buttons. (To be honest, I prefer physical buttons. Call me
old-fashioned, but I just like the way they feel.)
This is Motorola’s third-generation Moto G, but it’s the first version that you can customize using Motorola’s Moto Maker service, which
lets you choose your Moto G’s paint job. You can pick from 10 colors
for the handset’s back panel and accent piece, as well as a black or
white front panel.
Oh,
and did I mention that the Moto G is water-resistant? Yep, with an IPX7
durability rating, the Moto G can spend up to 30 minutes in 3 feet of
water without calling it quits.
Excellent 5-inch display
The
Moto G’s 5-inch screen is the perfect size for reading articles and
watching movies, yet the handset is still small enough to fit in your
pocket. No, the G doesn’t have a super-high-resolution screen with 400
quintillion pixels per square inch, but it does have a 720p display that
looks fantastic.
I watched the trailer for the upcoming Deadpool
movie on the Moto G, and though some of the darker scenes were a bit
difficult to make out, the overall image quality was great.
I
did notice that visuals tended to wash out a bit when I looked at the
phone at an angle. Overall, though, apps, websites, and photos looked
crisp and colorful.
A high-quality camera
The
Moto G comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front
camera, both of which are upgrades over the previous-generation Moto G’s
cameras.
I
took my Moto G around Times Square to test its image quality, snapping
pictures of various Spider-Men and “artists,” and was genuinely
impressed with how great the images looked. Even when I compared the
photos with those taken with my Galaxy S6, which has one of the best
cameras around, the Moto G’s shots still looked wonderful.
A
shot of a red flower looked vibrant, while a picture of a basket of
fruits looked warm and inviting. The Moto G’s camera isn’t perfect,
though. For example, the Galaxy S6’s camera captured far more details of
both the red flower and basket of fruit. What’s more, low-light shots
looked pretty awful when I didn’t use the flash.
The
camera’s software could also use some work. For example, the
tap-to-focus feature is turned off by default, which means you have to
enable it through the camera settings menu.
That’s
easy enough for most people, but the Moto G will also appeal to folks
who are buying their first smartphone. They might not know that they
have to dig into the camera settings to turn tap-to-focus on.
Despite
these complaints, the Moto G’s camera is a huge step up compared with
the kinds of cameras budget smartphones used to come with. And for most
people, that’s perfectly fine.
A truly smart phone
Motorola’s
Moto G runs Google’s Android Lollipop operating system. But unlike
other smartphone makers that customize Android with skins and different
app icons, Motorola leaves Google’s OS largely untouched.
The
exception? Motorola does add extra features to Android in the form of
its Moto apps, which include Moto Assist, Moto Display, and Moto
Actions.
Moto Assist
Moto
Assist can automatically set your phone to silent if you’re in a
meeting, at work, or when you go to sleep. To automatically silence
notifications at work, you simply have to make sure location tracking is
turned on, enter your office’s address into the Moto Assist app, and
tell it whether you want your phone to be completely silent or to
vibrate.
Once
you save the settings, your phone will adopt them as soon as it detects
that you are near your office. I set up Moto Assist to silence my phone
in my office, and it worked like a charm. Of course, if you want to be
notified of a call from a specific person, you can set certain numbers
as priority contacts.
Moto Display
Motorola
also included its excellent Moto Display app with the Moto G, which
provides detailed notifications for things like Twitter, email, and text
messages even when the phone’s screen is off.
To
check your notifications, you simply nudge the Moto G. If you’ve got a
text waiting to be read, a white text message icon will appear on your
phone’s screen. You can then tap and hold the icon to read your text
message, email, and so on, and swipe up to unlock your phone to the
appropriate app.
Moto Actions
Finally,
there’s Moto Actions. This app lets you do things like quick-launch the
Moto G’s camera by twisting the phone in your hand. You can also turn
on the phone’s flashlight by holding the Moto G horizontally and shaking
it up and down.
It’s not a mind-blowing feature, and you might look silly doing it, but it’s certainly helpful.
Decent performance
Despite
the fact that it’s a budget phone, the Moto G is a relatively powerful
handset. No, it doesn’t have the latest and greatest processor on the
planet, but I was able to play games like Fallout Shelter without a single hiccup.
The
one problem with the Moto G’s performance is that if you get the base
$180 version of the phone, you’ll only get 1GB of RAM and 8GB of
storage. Now, if you’re just going to be sending texts, checking emails,
and occasionally browsing the Web, that’s fine.
But
if you’re going to be using multiple apps or streaming music and
movies, like I do, you’ll want to upgrade to the more powerful $220
version, which comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. And if 16GB of
space isn’t enough for all of your photos and videos, the Moto G comes
with a microSD slot that accepts up to 32GB cards.
In
terms of battery life, the Moto G is an animal. I regularly got more
than a day’s worth of use out of a single charge. I can’t say the same
for my Galaxy S6.
A budget phone you’ll actually love
The
Motorola Moto G is an excellent smartphone with great looks and an even
better price tag. Will it beat the iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6 in terms of
performance, design, or camera quality? No, but that’s not the point of
the Moto G.
The
point of this phone is to be as inexpensive as possible, while still
providing you with the same creature comforts you’d expect out of
pricier mainstream handsets. And the Moto G more than succeeds at this
task.
With
the Big Four national carriers quickly abandoning subsidized two-year
smartphone agreements in favor of month-to-month plans that require you
to pay the entire cost of your phone, less expensive handsets are sure
to begin looking more attractive to many consumers.
The Moto G is proof that those same consumers will still have smartphones that they’ll love.