The Moto G (2015) Review
by Brandon Chester on August 19, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Display
Since a smartphone is primarily a large display that you interact with, it's important that manufacturers prioritize including a high quality display. As smartphones advanced we first saw increases to display resolution to improve sharpness, as well as a shift from TN displays to VA or IPS panels in order to improve viewing angle. With specs like resolution reaching a point where there isn't much more improvement to be made, manufacturers have moved on to improving display accuracy. While some have begun to focus on the color accuracy of their mid-range devices, others have not. To evaluate the various aspects of a display we use X-Rite's i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer along with their i1Display Pro colorimeter, and SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 software.
The Moto G has a good peak brightness, although the black level is higher than most recent devices, including the 2015 Moto E. What makes the Moto G somewhat difficult to use outdoors despite its brightness is the fact that the display seems fairly reflective, and the capacitive touch sensors show up very easily in the light which creates a pattern that obscures the content on the LCD.
The Moto G's gamma is very accurate, but the overall greyscale accuracy is let down by the panel's blue shift. The white point average is 7627K, which is noticeably more blue than the desired average of 6504K. From 20% grey onward one can notice the blue tint in grey shades, and in the end the average error is a somewhat disappointing 4.5532, with the error in the lightest shades being even higher at around six. In all of these aspects, the 2015 Moto G's display actually regresses significantly from the 2014 model. It's not clear if this is just model variance, or if this is applicable to all versions, but in any case it is disappointing.
In our saturation sweep test we see that blue has a degree of over-saturation at all points, with saturations past 60% overshooting significantly. Red demonstrates some saturation compression, and there's general inaccuracy in yellow, cyan, and most of all, magenta. This is another situation where the 2015 Moto G's display regresses compared to the 2014 edition, and it's to a much more significant degree than the greyscale test, with the older 2014 Moto G having achieved a result that rivals high end smartphones.
Due to the inaccuracy in the greyscale and in rendering primary and secondary colors there's not much hope for accurate reproduction of color mixtures on the 2015 Moto G's display. Shades of green tend to have a decent level of accuracy, but most other colors and shades of grey suffer from over-saturation or under-saturation depending on what primary/secondary color they most relate to, and are just generally inaccurate. When using the Moto G this was fairly evident to me throughout the UI, particularly on icons that I see very often such as those for Google's own apps.
While I don't know how consistent the calibration across Motorola's devices is, based on the results measured for our samples of the 2014 and 2015 Moto G it's clear that the display of the 2015 model regresses in most respects. Peak brightness increases substantially which is appreciated, and maintaining black level has boosted contrast. Unfortunately, the display is far too blue, and this causes significant greyscale errors despite the display's relatively straight and accurate gamma. The inaccuracies in rendering primary and secondary colors combined with the greyscale errors means that there aren't many shades the display actually does render accurately outside of some that primarily consist of a green component. Ultimately I'm let down by the Moto G's display, because this year's model saw no upgrade to resolution, and I had hoped that there would be some improvement, or at the very least no reduction in the display accuracy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
90 Comments
View All Comments
3DoubleD - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Thanks for the response!1. The 5W charging time would be great! Thanks for adding that.
2. I agree, it is too bad they are hamstringing the GPUs in these devices. Three generations of Moto G including the same GPU is pretty disappointing. It seems Motorola is keeping customers interested in AAA gaming on their more expensive phones, which is understandable. From what you are saying, it sounds like the poor display calibration and poor visibility in sunlight would be more apparent to non-gamers than the GPU.
3. What I'm referring to is your comments in the concluding remarks: "The waterproofing is definitely a neat addition, but I think in most cases it's just a nice thing to have rather than a selling point. Once waterproofing is accompanied by the ability to use the display when it's really wet I'll be a lot more interested in it." I suspect many people will see waterproofing as a selling point (AKA a desirable feature) just from a pure ruggedness standpoint. Instances where people are deciding between several mid-range Android phones and pick the Moto G based on it being waterproof are probably more likely than decisions based on many of the other specs.
4. My problem with device thinness is that the benefit of thinner and thinner devices is dubious, yet the benefit for keeping the same thickness, or even increasing it, is substantial. I don't think a objective argument can be made for why a 6.9 mm phone is better than a 8 mm phone or even an 11.6 mm phone (like the Moto G). Even the subjective 'design' argument is pretty shaky, considering everyone was swooning over smartphone designs that first made it to 10 or 11 mm.
So as leading reviewer of phones and a spokesperson for the masses, I'd challenge you to develop a metric for phone thickness that equally considers 'thin design' with ease of use and battery life. IMO manufacturers hit the thin-enough-to-be-usable limit years ago. Let's stop praising thinness-at-all-costs in reviews (as is typical in a flagship Android or iPhone review) and start making a big deal when the design needlessly sacrifices battery life for thinness.
djc208 - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Seems to me the one major category that is missed between those two phones is support. More and more I'm just as interested in how it will be supported, and I wonder how well the Zenphone will be supported against future OS updates. I'd tend to lean toward Motorola for long term support. LG brought be in with great hardware but turned me off with crappy software support.Moto1 - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Zero support from Motorola. Emailed and called and all I get is generic replys-not related to my question. I bought the first moto g in anticipation of fast updates and have had zero-which sucks cause I was promised 5.0 over a year ago.Machete - Thursday, August 20, 2015 - link
False, we have a 1g Moto G in family and it was updated to 5.0 months ago.tipoo - Sunday, August 23, 2015 - link
Must be your carriers fault. My first gen G has been rocking 5 for months.tipoo - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
MicroSD and 2GB RAM were the two things I sorely missed in my first gen G, so this looks like a fair upgrade. Honestly, it's all the phone most people need. Even the weak GPU runs most modern Android games well. The RAM was always the bigger issue than the processing speed, and the minor bump to the latter will be a nice bonus.Now just bring Moto Maker for the G to Canada and take my money, Motorola!
YukaKun - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
So... Is this better than my SGS2? Y know the CPU is better, but is the camera and GPU?I'm having a considerable loss in battery life as of late (from 3 days to just 2) and the S2 is still running anything I need it to (GMail, GMaps and other "light" stuff) with no hiccups. So in my mind, instead of getting a battery replacement, maybe jumping to the MotoG 2015 might be a good idea.
Cheers!
a1exh - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Battery replacements are soooo cheap for the SGS2 though. If it is still going and you're happy. The SGS2 camera was better than the MotoG 2013a1exh - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
As a MotoG 2013 customer I wanted the 2015 to be great. But it isn't. So the Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 is looking like the PAYG phone to get in the UK only it is a bit bigmkozakewich - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Devices like this really highlight the need for colour correction on Android. If it can fill the full sRGB gamut, the only thing left is to tell it where to put the colours. There's no reason something like this shouldn't be able to pull a dE2000 of 1.I remember the review of the Stream 7. Since it ran Windows, they were able to run a correction suite on it, and it ended up with a really good score despite its inability to saturate the blues.