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
On the camera side the Moto G includes a 5 MP rear facing camera with autofocus and LED flash, on the front it includes a 1.3 MP camera. I did some digging and found that the rear facing camera CMOS is an Aptina AR0543 CMOS. There’s nothing on Aptina’s website about the AR0543, but there is an AR0542 which probably is its predecessor with 1/4 Inch format and 1.4 μm pixels. I suspect this is exactly the form factor of the sensor in Moto G, with some slight improvements, I believe the color filter array is Bayer as well, not RGBW like Moto X. The rear facing camera module has a focal length of 3.5 mm which works out to around a 37mm focal length in 35mm-equivalent units, the system has an F/# of 2.4, which is great for a device of this cost.
On the front is the Aptina MT9M114 1.3 MP, 1/6 Inch with 1.9 µm pixels sensor that we’ve seen a lot of in recent days.
Motorola uses the same camera application as the Moto X, and reflects the most recent UI changes that have rolled out in both OTAs and through the Play Store. The biggest change is a new spot focus and exposure point which can be dragged around the live preview. Motorola calls it manual focus and exposure, in practice it’s really a weighted spot meter and focus point that you can drag around. I’d only call what LG has on the G2 or Nokia bundles as manual focus, but the new camera app is a substantial improvement over the UI as it launched with the Moto X, which didn’t afford any exposure or metering controls (instead taking a scene average), only tap to focus, which ran a full AF search wherever you tapped.
The camera settings menu still is a ring chooser that slides out with a drag from the left side, and has settings for HDR, flash, tap to focus/expose, slow motion video, panorama, location, a new aspect ratio toggle (16:9 and 4:3) and shutter sound. The aspect ratio toggle is what’s new versus the X, since the Moto G has a standard 4:3 aspect ratio sensor and not the 16:9 aspect ratio aspect ratio of the Moto X. By default the Moto G launches with the 16:9 aspect ratio for image capture, cropping off part of the image area, but tapping 4:3 gives you a proper live, full field of view, 4:3 preview. Major kudos to Motorola for giving an aspect-correct live preview. Shot to shot latency is longer than Moto X or other flagships, but not inordinately long or on the order of seconds. I should note that the Moto G does not include the same wrist-flick camera activation gesture as the Moto X.
To evaluate image quality we turn to the usual combination of photos taken at the bench locations, although location 7 wasn’t available, and photo tests in a lightbox with lights on, and off, and of test charts. I also continue to take photos while out and about with devices to get samples in a variety of other conditions.
Moto G still image quality is better than I had suspected. Outdoors in well lit scenes the Moto G is totally capable of delivering good quality shots with good exposure and focus.
My only major criticism is that there’s definitely some off-axis loss of sharpness, the leftmost part of almost every image gets blurry quickly, the right side doesn’t show nearly as much. Alignment tolerances for smartphone optics are a part of module cost, I wouldn’t be surprised to see variance like this. In low light or indoors, the Moto G occasionally struggles to produce images without blur, but that’s a complaint I still levy against some modern flagships. There’s also a bit of light leakage on the Moto G which crops up when outdoors, but nothing crazy. Front facing camera quality is totally par with other flagships I’ve tried, which isn’t surprising.
Camera - Video
On the video side, the Moto G’s interface is, no surprise, just like the Moto X. There’s a video button that immediately starts video capture, successive taps in the image area capture still frames from the live video. Although MSM8x26 supports up to 1080p30 video encode for H.264, Moto G oddly enough captures video at 720p30 in H.264 High profile at 10 Mbps. Audio is stereo thankfully at 128 kbps AAC.
As always I’ve uploaded a copy of the video recorded at the usual place to YouTube and to our servers for you to look at without the additional compression.
Video from the Moto G is well exposed and appears great for being 720p. I would personally miss 1080p, but the Moto G seems great for the resolution it affords. There’s no dropped frames or visible macroblocking, and exposure seems good, again my only desire would be for 1080p resolution.
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apertotes - Thursday, December 19, 2013 - link
No, I do not. There are two sides here. Some say Samsung sells because of marketing, some say Samsung sells because they understand better what the consumer wants (micro-sd, removable batteries, etc.). Neither side is backing their arguments with any proof at all.uhuznaa - Thursday, December 19, 2013 - link
Well, the fact remains that you can hardly view any review of a competing product on Youtube without a Samsung ad being forced down your throat before it. They must be spending a hell of a pile of money on that.apertotes - Thursday, December 19, 2013 - link
So? Is it less of a fact that Samsung high end devices keep a micro-sd slot and removable battery?Bob Todd - Friday, December 20, 2013 - link
Yes it is, for the simple undeniable truth that enthusiasts make up a tiny sliver of this market (just like is true for most markets). We (enthusiasts) are closer to a rounding error on their financial statements than an overwhelming majority. For every user who clamors for removable batteries or the ability to flash a custom kernel to overclock their phone, there are 95 others who just walk into the store and buy whatever cool phone they saw on TV, or whatever their friends use, or whatever the guy at the counter steered them toward. Samsung could bring the Galaxy S5 to market with sealed batteries and no expandable storage and it would still be the single best selling Android phone by an enormous margin. I have no idea why you are so hell-bent on convincing others, or deluding yourself, that the % of people that really care about these things (or read blogs like Anandtech clamoring for in-depth SOC analysis) make up more than a puddle vs. the ocean of people who DGAF.metayoshi - Friday, December 20, 2013 - link
The guy behind the counter is definitely a major factor, and I believe Samsung dedicates some of their money into that. I remember my sister was due for an upgrade from her Verzion Galaxy Nexus, and I convinced her to buy a G2 and even linked her the mini review from this site. She told me battery life and a good camera were priority, and to me, it was a no brainer.In she walks into the Verizon store, and boy was the guy trying hard to sell the GS4. I told her, the LG has essentially the same features as the GS4 down to the gimmicky camera features, but the camera quality (OIS), and the 3000 mAh battery is much better than what the GS4 will deliver. If I wasn't there, there is no doubt in my mind that my sister would have a GS4.
So yeah... for the people that just don't know what all of their options are, and they go to the phone salesmen for the "expert" advice, which makes up the majority of people, what they're really getting is the phone that the employees are getting paid the most money to sell, which, in my case, was definitely the GS4. After that experience, there is no doubt in my mind that Samsung is giving extra commission to employees who sell these Samsung phones.
shaduck007 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
At Best Buy, I always ask the Intel specialist his opinion.apertotes - Monday, December 23, 2013 - link
That is simply not a fact. That is your poorly reasoned opinion. Facts are:1. Samsung invests a lot of money in advertising and marketing.
2. Samsung's phones have micro-sd and removable battery.
Unless you work as a high level Samsung employee, there is no way to know which of those facts affect sales in a more powerful way.
bhima - Monday, December 23, 2013 - link
iPhones have literally ZERO of those features listed in number 2. They sell by the truckload. Bob Todd is spot on and said it best, Anandtech readers/tech enthusiasts make up a rounding error in the financial statements of these companies.apertotes - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link
and that is why HTC did not sell that much. They can't compete on features with Samsung, they are competing with iPhones. And nobody can beat Apple in their own turf. At least Motorola is pricing the G way below.Now, Apple says a truckload of iphones without removable storage or batteries. That is completely true. But Apple is on a league of its own. Neither better nor worse. Simple different. Apple users do not care that much about raw power or features. Also, Starbucks, trendy, hipster, instagram.
boeush - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
"3-4 GB of music" is about 1000 songs."In crappy 64 kbps bit rate, maybe. Personally, I don't do crappy when it comes to my music: all my stuff is ripped to CD-quality at a minimum, and lossless (FLAC) when possible. For instance a single anthology collection for a single band that I have currently on my phone, takes up nearly 10 GiB.