Better with each generation

In January the first generation of Motorola Moto G landed on our test bench. With no compromise on performance and build quality, it set the tone for budget smartphones in the months to follow. Moto G’s initial success led to the competitors taking note of the buyers’ preferences, and now the consumer is spoilt for choice in the sub-₹15,000 price segment.

Naturally, in a competitive market such as ours, the competition built up on what the Moto G had missed including in the package, to offer alternatives to the buyer. Thankfully, it didn’t take Motorola long to realize that it had to act fast to maintain a strong foothold in the most active price segment of the Indian smartphone market. Hence, the second generation of the Moto G is out even before the year is over. And we at Technophile are ready to tell you if the new Moto G is the phone to have, again.

The first major change in the new Moto G is the growth in screen size. The IPS display has grown from 4.5-inch to 5-inches – we think it’s a really smart move, considering the competition. The resolution remains the same at 720p, which means it’s less densely packed with pixels. But that’s not to say that it has lost any clarity or there’s poor colour reproduction. It’s still top notch. Only, the screen brightness is underwhelming in outdoor usage.

The bigger screen has led to a bigger body – the fascia now actually looks like the first gen of Moto X, with chrome-plated inserts above and below the screen. But the bezels are thinner, and the body itself is slimmer, making it very ergonomic for anyone. It retains the curved back design too, with extremely durable build quality. The screen, as always, gets Corning Gorilla Glass protection. We’re glad that Motorola has retained that reassuring strength of build quality.

We had complained about how the Moto G lacked expandable memory. Well, not anymore – you now get a microSD card slot that supports expansion up to 32GB.

There’s also a new camera – the image resolution has been bumped up from 5 to 8 megapixels. While it takes good photos in well-lit conditions as any smartphone camera would do, it does struggle a bit with the auto-focus indoors. The front camera’s resolution too has been brought up to 2MP, and is quite good.

Now, we were swept off our feet by the first gen Moto G with its under-the-hood performance. We would have loved to see revamped specs too, but strangely, there’s absolutely no change there. The second gen Moto G carries forward the same quad-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, with 1GB of RAM. This means we still get the 9,000 odd points on the Quadrant Standard Benchmark test, which is quite good for this price range. But considering that manufacturers such as Xiaomi are coming up with octa-core wizardry packed in their devices, Motorola should have gone for a processor improvement too.

But the consolation is that while the new Moto G comes with Android 4.4.4 KitKat right out of the box, it has also confirmed that Android L, the next major OS update from Google, will get there ASAP.

Motorola has yet again proved that just because a device is inexpensive, there need not be any compromise on performance or value for money. It has done a lot to keep up with the competition that it sparked off in the first place, showing its seriousness to retain its position in the market. Sure, we would have loved a change in specs lineup too, but even with these ones, it’s probably the best Android smartphone in its range.

₹13,099 (16GB)

Love – Bigger screen; Expandable memory

Hate – Laggy autofocus in primary camera