The Moto E (2015) Review
by Brandon Chester on April 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Moto E (2015)
WiFi
When building devices to meet a low price, WiFi always seems to be one of the first things on the chopping block. The assumption is most likely that the people in the market for inexpensive smartphones don't require speeds beyond what is offered by 802.11n. What disappoints me is when 5GHz support is also omitted, which leaves the device operating on the increasing crowded 2.4GHz band.
The Moto E's results are in line with other 2.4GHz 802.11n devices. With an absolute max theoretical speed of 72Mbps, 58.1Mbps over UDP is actually a pretty good result. That being said, the improved speed and reduced interference of 5GHz networks would still be appreciated. At $149 cuts have to be made somewhere though, and I would prefer that they be made to WiFi rather than the display or build quality.
GNSS
Like most devices which use Qualcomm's Gobi modems, the Moto E uses Qualcomm's GNSS solution. In Airplane mode with no assistance information the Moto E was able to achieve a lock in 32 seconds, with it taking another few seconds to bring the accuracy to within 10 feet. Both these times will vary greatly depending on the surrounding environment and weather conditions. With assistance info locks take only a matter of seconds.
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Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Buying goods internationally is always more hassle. First off, there's customs fees that may increase the total cost quite significantly. On top of that there's always a concern regarding warranty because if the OEM has no presence in your country, you may have to ship it to another country that increases waiting time and may even cost you.erikiksaz - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
I was under the impression that xiaomi phones don't have all the proper bands for T-mobile. Is this not true?hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Any front camera samples?Did you try charging it using a Quick-Charge 2 charger; or even another normal charger with a high amp rating?
How good (or bad) is multitasking on the phone due to only 1GB RAM?
Brandon Chester - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
The original release of Lollipop has some memory issues of its own, but I never felt like there were problems with multitasking due to the limited amount of memory. There's definitely more app reloading than on the Nexus 6 but it's not a big deal.hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Thanks, aren't you guys gonna share front camera sample pics?It might not be great, but I was curious to see how good/bad it is.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
It's funny that we're talking about a PHONE having "ONLY" 1GiB RAM, when I vividly remember that being a shit-hot amount of RAM for your desktop PC.That aside, I don't see Moto E as a hardcore multitasking phone anyway, it's just a decent phone with a reasonable set of specs for someone who isn't that hardcore of a smartphone user.
hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Times change :) When it comes to PC's I think 4GB RAM is the minimum that should come with a new PC, anyone planning on multitasking needs more. When it comes to laptops like the Surface and MBP, they should be including 8GB atleast: the iGPU uses a portion and that reduces things even further.mkozakewich - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
No, times have changed yet again. A PC should have 1 GB at the very least, with 4 GB being a good amount. Most of these kinds of computers have SSDs, which are a lot faster with their page files. You can swap without too much delay, so you don't actually need much RAM. I've been surprised at how well the 1GB Stream 7 performs, despite Windows 8 taking up about a gigabyte on boot.(If you use Chrome heavily, tack on an extra 2 GB. All those tabs really add up.)
hans_ober - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Don't page file read/writes have a negative impact on the life of SSD's?blzd - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
My desktop PC has never gone above 6 GB of RAM usage, that's while playing a Shadows of Mordor while streaming twitch and Spotify in the background.