Moto G (2nd Generation) — Review

Hardware

The first generation of Moto G was a revelation in terms of hardware accomplishments at a low price point. In many ways, it set the standard for many of 2014’s low- and mid-range devices, as other manufacturers scrambled to catch Motorola’s early lead in the space. It’s not surprising then, that the second generation Moto G builds on the design and aesthetics of the first, while mixing in some of Motorola’s newer design traits.

As before, the face of the phone sports a Nexus-like shape, with rounded corners and a gentle taper at the top and bottom of the front. The left edge is bare, with the power button and volume rocker – now plastic instead of chromed – on the right edge. The headphone jack is dead center at the top, matching the Micro USB port on the bottom (Motorola continues to get the USB port orientation “right”, by the way).

The 5-inch screen of course dominates the face of the phone, but it’s flanked at the top and bottom by new plastic bars set into a slightly smaller overall bezel. At top, the plastic bar hides the earpiece for making calls, and at bottom it’s hiding a welcome addition to the Moto G design – a front-facing speaker. These plastic bars made their first appearance on the Moto E and seem to be one of Motorola’s new design traits. They do distract a little when the screen is off, but in general use you won’t notice them.

Around back, there’s a soft-touch black cover that can be removed to expose two Micro SIM slots and the SD card. Unlike the original Moto G, the back cover is a little easier to remove this time around. The “dimple” in the original Moto G’s design – which holds the Motorola “M” logo – is still present, but it’s more subtle this time around.

Inside, you’ll find practically the same guts as the original Moto G. It’s still powered by a 1.2 Ghz quad core Snapdragon 400 chipset, it’s still got 1GB of RAM and even the battery is the same.

Like the original Moto G, the second generation is solid and possibly a little heavier than you’d expect, although that weight is evenly dispersed. It doesn’t bend, doesn’t flex and generally isn’t bothered by a bit of rough handling. Button placement, while perhaps nonstandard compared to other devices works out alright – in your left hand, your index and middle fingers fall fairly naturally into place, but in your right it’s a bit of a shuffle with your thumb – not too difficult, though.

What’s been lost in the jump to the new Moto G is the ease of one-handed use, and that’s disappointing. The original Moto G was a fantastic little device where you wouldn’t have a problem reaching across the screen with your thumb, but the new one has given this up. Motorola’s pushing the compact phone designation onto the Moto E, repositioning the Moto G as a budget device aimed at media consumption with a spacious 5-inch screen.

Screen

Motorola has traded the original Moto G’s 4.5 inch display for a 5.0 inch model in the new Moto G. In truth, they shouldn’t have. While the screen itself is larger and sticks with the IPS LCD technology, the pixel density is lower. Colours are also more washed-out when put next to the original.

The original’s display scored well on daylight visibility – you could see the original Moto G screen anywhere with a small boost to the brightness, including using it for a couple of weeks on the sun-drenched streets of Singapore earlier this year. The new Moto G? At max brightness, the screen is too dim out and about in Sydney, unless you’ve found some shade or it’s morning or evening time. The final nail in the coffin is the dull, washed-out view you get when you look at it off-axis.

Another issue I’ve seen with the screen is with the touch response. Occasionally while testing, the screen would completely lock up and stop responding to touches, requiring it to be switched off (the screen, not the phone) and back on again to restore its missing touch response. Otherwise though, the touch input is accurate

All in all, the screen changes are disappointing. There’s been trade-off that feels like it shouldn’t have to have been made. Motorola had this nailed last year and seems to have taken their eye off the ball this year.

Battery life

Another area in which the original Moto G excelled was battery life. I could use it for hours on end without putting a significant dent in the battery.

This hasn’t changed so much in the new Moto G – the internals are exactly the same, but with a bigger screen there’s more backlighting to be done and so the battery goes that little less of a distance.

Connectivity

Pretty much unchanged from the original Moto G – you get Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, GPS with GLONASS support.

On the cellular connectivity front, Motorola’s again made the Moto G a 3G-only device. If you live in a metropolitan city where 3G has become useless and slow, you’re going to want to look elsewhere. There are phones in this budget range with 4G, although you might need to spend a bit more to find the parts arranged as well as they are in the Moto G.

It should also be mentioned that the GPS and compass in the new Moto G perform far better than the original. There wasn’t too much wrong with the original’s GPS, but these days it has a tendency to get stuck in one spot – perhaps a software update went wrong, or the GPS components in the original have developed a fault over time. It’s hard to tell, but it’s easy to see the better and more accurate location on the new model.

Sound

Manufacturers are starting to sit up and take notice of the success HTC’s found with their BoomSound front-facing speaker arrangement. HTC themselves have made BoomSound a near-standard feature across their entire range, and it’s even made it into the Nexus 9 tablet. People want a quality audio experience from their devices, manufacturers have worked out how to make speakers face towards the user and it’s no longer acceptable to just stick a tiny speaker on the back of a device.

One of the major design changes to this year’s Moto G is the addition of two bars above and below the screen. At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking they’re BoomSound-alike stereo speakers, but in actual fact the top one hides the earpiece for making and receiving calls, while the lower bar hides a very welcome left/right stereo speaker arrangement.

The sound coming from that speaker can go up pretty high – enough to attract the attention of onlookers in public, and enough that you can use the phone as a loudspeaker in a quiet room if you want to listen to some music. You probably won’t want to push it too hard – it’s a $300 phone after all (and there’s that excuse again) – but it’s an improvement over the original. Well played, Motorola.

Performance

We liked the performance of the orginal Moto G, and the new phone shares the same guts as the old one, still going out to a 720p screen. I guess what I’m saying is, I couldn’t really tell the difference.

We know that KitKat performs well on lower spec hardware, and you can’t help but feel this setup (a Snapdragon 400 with 1GB of RAM) was pretty much what Google’s engineers had in mind.

Apps open quickly, storagre access seems fast and the phone is responsive. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Camera

The biggest complaint about the original Moto G was undoubtedly the camera. The quality of photo that could be pulled out of the middle-of-the-road 5MP unit surprised us, but ultimately disappointed when push came to shove. “That’s OK”, we told ourselves, “the phone doesn’t even cost $300, so something’s got to give”.

Technology evolves, though. Now there are some fairly decent cameras in some fairly cheap phones. Note liberal use of the word “fairly”, there. Let’s call a spade a spade – it’s still not the best camera around, but the new Moto G’s 8MP rear camera is actually a damn sight better than the original.

Motorola’s also seen fit to upgrade the front camera on the Moto G. It’s not a huge bump though, going from a pretty average 1.2MP to a pretty average 2MP unit.

Curiously, given the company’s deference to the Google experience, Motorola’s own camera software is still running the show. With a swipey, gesture-based UI it takes some getting used to and feels like a bit of a throwback to some of the older camera UIs Google’s tried over the years in their own camera interfaces.

Swipe in from the left for a settings ring, swipe in from the right for previous snaps (on first use this function asks you to set a default from either Google’s Photos app or the on-device Gallery but neither option seems to make much of a difference). Zooming is accomplished by holding your finger anywhere on the screen and sliding it up or down. Theres a focus/exposure point you can move around the screen if you tap on it and drag your finger around, and you can take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen.

It’s that last part that gives the camera a bit of a learning curve. We’re so used to having to press a specific button to do something, that tapping anywhere almost paralyses the user with choice. In practice, as long as you hold the phone securely it’s fine, but pressing on the screen often moves the phone and results in a blurry image (especially in HDR mode). There is an option to use the volume keys as the shutter, and you’ll probably welcome it.

Motorola’s software doesn’t offer any bells and whistles like face detection or automatic touching-up of skin blemishes. In that respect I find it refreshingly honest – whatever you see on screen is the photo that gets taken – to a degree.

The camera still doesn’t fare super well in low light, often blowing out where there are nearby light sources, but that’s really pretty consistent with what we expected.

Give it a well lit scene, handle the phone properly, and the new Moto G’s camera will do its job well enough.