Motorola Moto G Review
by Brian Klug on December 18, 2013 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- *VA
- Cortex A7
- snapdragon 400
- Moto G
Battery onboard mobile devices remains one of the biggest concerns for shoppers, and even in a mass market device like the Moto G it’s an important axis. Although Moto G has a removable back door, the battery isn’t designed to be user accessible and is sealed inside, there’s a sticker which pretty much explains the situation.
Inside, the Moto G has a 2070 mAh, 3.8V battery for a capacity of 7.9 watt hours. It loses the stacked 3D structure that was a highlight feature of the Moto X, but still is a relatively large battery for a device with a 4.5 inch LCD display.
To evaluate battery life we turn to our battery life testing suite, which we run over WiFi and all the cellular interfaces appropriate for the device. Here we see a good combination of regular spikes in CPU usage with idle time, hopefully simulating constant, reasonably paced usage. As always the display is set to exactly 200 nits and configured the same way we always configure devices for maximum consistency.
The Moto G starts out with an impressive result on 3G. There’s no LTE on the Moto G so we’re only looking at the subset of devices that I’ve tested on 3G with the new battery life test. Still it’s impressive that the Moto G can crank out just over 7.5 hours on here, considerably more than Moto X forced onto 3G.
The WiFi test opens up considerable more comparison points, and here I’m really impressed by what the Moto G is able to crank out.
Cellular talk time is self explanatory, and again the Moto G winds up with an impressive result. I remember when Motorola seemed to somehow always be able to dominate the call test, Moto G definitely reminds me of those days.
Compared to the Moto X, the WiFi and 3G battery life tests really wind up being a story of the power consumption tradeoffs between LCD and AMOLED that remain to this day. The display size to battery capacity ratio is pretty big with the Moto G, and of course there are further improvements to overall efficiency with the latest Qualcomm silicon and modem block inside.
I mentioned that the Moto G doesn’t come with a charger in the box, a choice which cuts down on cost and is starting to make a lot of sense give the ubiquity of cheap USB chargers.
Thankfully Moto G seems to be good about its charge signaling, as it can pull up to 2 amps on appropriate chargers. The Moto G seems to be compliant with BC 1.2, and seems well behaved with drawing whatever is appropriate from other chargers as well.
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Death666Angel - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
Um, what? Just did a bit of googling, the Nexus 4 had 4.4 at the end of November (25th is what I came up with most) and Moto X got 4.4 6 days ago on the 12th. Nexus 4 already has 4.4.2. So I have no idea what you are talking about, because it doesn't seem to be reality.cmikeh2 - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
It's dependent on the carrier, but the Verizon version of the Moto X actually got 4.4 before the Nexus 4 did.shaduck007 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
thanks for Mentioning the Lumia, it's 1/3 the price of the MOTO G.Thinking of what is the best value!!
Sam
fortelv999 - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
?? They announced some weeks ago that the RAZR HD, MAXX HD and RAZR M would all get Kitkat sometime soon-ish, even the ATRIX HD i think, all the Snapdragon S4 familyfokka - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
the atrix HD? i believe that when i see it.Bob Todd - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
If you think a few months time is enough for a new parent company to take over and magically transform device support for phones that were in the pipeline for over a year, you don't know much about how acquisitions work or how long those kinds of transitions take in a large corporate environment.The proof will be evident once we see how quickly, if at all, the Moto X and Moto G are updated beyond 4.4. Being the absolute first non-Nexus device with 4.4 on the X, and getting it right around the same time as the still supported Nexus line was a great start. We'll see if they can keep it up. I'm cautiously optimistic, and I say all of this as a former Atrix owner who never got some planned updates.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
"If you think a few months time" Google bought Motorola on August 15, 2011.Bob Todd - Thursday, December 19, 2013 - link
I should have looked it up before replying, but I was mainly responding to the "The phone was out several months AFTER Google's acquisition" comment. And what I said still holds true. Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility on 8/15/2011. The acquisition didn't actually complete until 5/22/2012. The phones in question came out around September/October of 2012, which is indeed just a few months after the acquisition, and not long enough for Google to really have anything to do with their product planning.trynberg - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
I guess you missed the news that Moto was upgrading the RAZR HD to 4.4 in 2014? Confirmed on Moto's website weeks ago.ollienightly - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
i really don't know what you are wining about. razr hd has already been given green light for kitkat update. all you have to do now is being patient.