It can’t match the value of its predecessor,
but is still a fantastic phone thanks to its
great camera and battery life
THE 2ND GEN Moto G was the best budget
smartphone we’d ever seen, until the
incredible Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 staged a
surprise coup last month. This means the 3rd
Gen Moto G finally has some competition, but
with a refined design, superb build quality and
a huge number of features on offer, it has a
real chance to win back its crown.
That said, it’s less of a bargain than its
predecessors once were. The cheapest model,
which has 8GB of storage and 1GB of RAM,
starts at £159. Choosing your own colours
with Motorola’s Moto Maker service adds
£20, and buying the slightly more powerful
version, with 16GB of storage and 2GB RAM,
costs another £30 on top of that. A microSD
card slot means the extra storage isn’t crucial,
but the extra RAM will make a difference to
speed and multitasking.
ANGLE POISE
The new handset shares design elements with
Motorola’s Moto X, with a metal-effect frame
that curves almost seamlessly into the
removable back plate, creating lovely smooth
contours. The edges taper to a pleasing
6.1mm, and the 155g handset feels very strong
and durable. We much prefer it to the flat,
angular edges of the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua.
The machined, textured finish on the power
button is a particularly nice touch, making it
easier to find next to the matt volume rocker.
The removable rear panels come in various
colours, and you can swap them as you
please, making the Moto G more customisable
than other handsets at this price. The subtle
ribbed texture on each panel gives it a
high-quality feel and provides plenty of grip.
When the back is properly clipped into
place, the Moto G becomes IPX7 waterproof,
meaning it can be dunked in up to a metre of
water for 30 minutes without being damaged.
It’s not entirely watertight, though, so if you
get it wet, you’ll need to take off the back and
give it a quick wipe. We found a few droplets
still lingering inside during our tests.
Motorola has also managed to squeeze an
extra 80mAh into the new phone’s battery.
With screen brightness set to 170cd/m2, it
provided an impressive 11h 12m of continuous
video playback – over 90 minutes longer than
the 2nd generation handset. It also beats
every other phone in its price bracket except
Samsung’s Galaxy A3, which lasted 14h 30m
thanks to an energy-efficient AMOLED panel.
The 2nd and 3rd Gen Moto Gs appear to
use the same 5in, 1,280x720-resolution display
panel, which we feel strikes the right balance
between screen size and pixel clarity. Our
colour calibration tests bore very similar
results, with the new handset displaying
85.4% of the sRGB colour gamut. We
preferred it to the older phone’s screen, which
looked very warm and pink by comparison.
Black levels were reasonably dark at
0.36cd/m2 on maximum brightness, and a
contrast ratio of 1,061:1 provided plenty of
detail. Viewing angles were excellent, but its
peak brightness of 339.38cd/m2 means you’ll
struggle to see images and dark video scenes
when using the phone outdoors.
SPEED BOOST
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 chipset appears
in many budget smartphones, but here it runs
at 1.4GHz rather than the usual 1.2GHz, giving
the phone a small speed boost. We tested it
with both 1GB and 2GB of RAM, and both
models proved significantly faster in our
benchmarks than the competition. Both
scored around 530 in the Geekbench 3
single-core test and 1,600 in the multicore
test, whereas the 1.2GHz Snapdragon
410-powered 2nd Gen Moto E managed only
470 and 1,397 respectively.
Both models were equally fast at web
browsing, too, and their impressive score of
781 in Futuremark’s Peacekeeper web
browsing test is one of the faster scores we’ve
seen from this chipset. Web pages loaded
quickly and there were only a few signs of
visible stutter on multimedia-heavy sites.
However, the real difference between the
1GB and 2GB Moto G is its ability to multitask,
as apps and games loaded much faster on the
2GB version – often only by a second, but the
extra RAM does make a surprising difference.
That said, there are plenty of other handsets
available for around £200 that use the
octa-core Snapdragon 615 chipset, such as
the EE Harrier and Sony Xperia M4 Aqua,
which are faster still, making the 2GB Moto G
seem sluggish by comparison.
A processor with a faster clock speed
doesn’t necessarily equal smoother graphics
performance, as the score of 105 frames in
the GFX Bench offscreen Manhattan test
indicates. The Moto G can handle 2D games
perfectly well, though, and when playing
Blizzard’s more demanding Hearthstone we
didn’t see any warnings that the phone didn’t
meet the recommended specifications, as we
have with other Snapdragon 410 phones.
LIVING COLOUR
The 13-megapixel camera sensor is a big step
up from the second generation handset’s
8-megapixel sensor. According to
Motorola, it’s the same sensor
used in the Nexus 6, which
costs more than twice as much.
It also has a dual LED flash,
which is supposed to adjust
colour temperature
to make flash-lit shots look more natural, and
a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.
We were a little disappointed by the flash’s
performance in our indoor photo tests, as it
made our still-life arrangement look rather
green. This was particularly noticeable on the
teddy bear’s fur, and the blocks of
watercolour paint were also less vivid than in
our non-flash shots. Admittedly, it eliminated
a lot of noise, but colour quality suffered.
Plenty of detail was visible, though, and
outdoor shots in particular looked superb.
Colours were rich and vibrant, even in areas of
shadow. HDR was a little strong at times, but
it helped preserve finer details and made
clouds look particularly dramatic. Shooting is
fast, too, with a simple interface that’s easy to
navigate. A quick swipe in from the left
reveals the camera’s settings, while a swipe
from the right opens the Gallery.
SKIN DEEP
Like Motorola’s other handsets, the latest
Moto G runs pure Android – in this case the
latest 5.1.1 update. With no skins to worry
about, Motorola can push out updates much
sooner than other manufacturers. There are
still a few Motorola-specific apps and
features, though. You can set the
phone to enter silent mode
automatically when you’re at
home or in a meeting, or
turn off the screen and all
notifications while
you’re asleep, allowing only favourite contacts
through or anyone who calls twice in five
minutes. It also takes Android Lollipop’s
lockscreen notifications further, displaying the
time and up to three interactive notification
buttons when the screen is turned off. This is
good for the battery life and incredibly handy
if all you want to do is check the time.
With a higher base price and additional
£209 version, the new Moto G isn’t the
budget bargain its predecessors were.
However, we feel its exquisite design and
improved features are enough to
counterbalance the slightly disappointing
choice of chipset, and even the faster
Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 and Sony Xperia M4
Aqua can’t beat its amazing battery life or
stunning rear camera. Likewise, the Moto G’s
5in display makes for a much more
manageable handset than the 5½in screen of
the Vodafone Smart Ultra 6.
The 8GB version is a better buy on
contract, as you can get 1GB of data, 300
minutes and 5,000 texts for £15.50 per month
with no up-front cost from Carphone
Warehouse. Equivalent deals for the Sony
Xperia M4 Aqua and Samsung Galaxy A3 cost
£20 or more per month. Three also has some
good deals on Pay As You Go, with prices
starting at £140 for the 8GB version and
Moto Maker models available on contract.
While the increase in RAM is nice, it’s not
essential, especially when it costs so much
more. The 3rd Gen Moto G might not be the
best-value budget smartphone any more, but
it’s one of Motorola’s best.
Katharine Byrne
