The Moto E (2015) Review
by Brandon Chester on April 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Moto E (2015)
Battery Life
The original Moto E shipped with a 7.52Wh battery. While we don't have data for battery life on the original, it's safe to say that the new Moto E with its 9.08Wh battery and more efficient SoC should have no trouble surpassing the battery life of the original. I've highlighted the 2014 Moto G in the graphs below just to provide an interesting point of comparison.
The combination of a fairly large battery with a power efficient SoC allows the Moto E to take one of the highest spots in our WiFi web browsing test with a runtime of 11.65 hours.
In the BaseMark OS II battery test we see the Moto E pull off a very respectable battery life of 4.35hrs. The score in the battery test is also fairly high, indicating that Snapdradon 410 was able to sustain a high load throughout the test.
The Moto E does very well in GFXBench's battery test, with a score that sits well above most other smartphones. While the performance for the final run is not as fast as flagship smartphones, it actually doesn't really drop at all from the performance of the very first run.
Overall I think the battery life on the Moto E is stellar, and I don't think buyers will have any complaints about it. The Moto E includes a larger battery than the Moto G, and with a smaller display and more efficient components this gives it a significant lead in every test. There's not much more that you can ask for.
Charge Time
The other side of battery life is the time it takes to charge the battery. If a device has a battery life that falls short of the competition, it can be somewhat excused if the time to charge it is very short which minimizes the amount of time the device is dead for. The opposite can also be true, where a device with a long battery life can end up having longer periods of downtime due to a long charge time.
At 4.23 hours, the Moto E has the longest charge time of the devices we've tested to date. While it's not a big issue if you end up charging it overnight, it feels like an eternity when you end up charging it during the day. The problem is that Motorola packages the Moto E with a 5V 550mA charger, which makes it the slowest USB charger I have in my possession. This is definitely another concession for budget reasons, and my recommendation for any buyers is to use the charging block from another device.
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RealTheXev - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
I picked one up for my mother, only $69 at Walmart (Verizon LTE prepay). The only REAL downside is you cannot unlock the bootloader using Moto's official tool (and that's why my mother got the phone lol).BMNify - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Xiaomi Redmi 2, Lenovo A6000 Plus and Micromax Canvas Spark are three better options than Moto E, Lenovo is already widespread in many countries and Xiaomi already caters to the largest smartphones markets that is China, India, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. In 2015, Xiaomi will enter Russia and Brazil which is Hugo Barra's home market.BMNify - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
I have considered the pricing from Flipkart for the above phones but the pricing is nearly the same for these in all the countries in which they are sold officially by the manufacturers.hans_ober - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Yeah, but how's the software support? Heard that Xiaomi/Lenovo have almost non-existent service centers in India.BMNify - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Software updates: Xiaomi has excellent software support, they provide software updates and even small bug fixes in between for all their phones, even the low end $100 phones. Infact their Developer ROM is updated every week. Apart from that Xiaomi is the only company who listens and replies to complaints via facebook, twitter, G+ etc. Xiaomi Devs and even the head Hugo Barra listen and reply to comments, no company is such consumer focused and that is the reason why they have millions of fans with Zero Dollar marketing budget.Service centres: Xiaomi has more service centres than Motorola in India, Xiaomi has exclusive service centres too along with tie-up with 3rd parties/outsourced whereas Motorola relies only on outsourced service centres. Lenovo and Motorola are neck and neck with both sharing the same service centres in most places.
Microsoft/nokia Lumia, Samsung and LG have better service than the above brands but that is expected.
loimlo - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - link
That said, Redmi and Xiaomi series are different with regard to SW update mechanisms. Redmi doesn't get update on a weekly basis. It's not that I need weekly update for my Redmi, but I'd like to clarify the things.Btw, I've been using Redmi for past 15 months. It's a solid phone given its pricing of USD 130.
Tyron - Saturday, March 12, 2016 - link
Lol redmi 2 or the Lenovo A6000 never got even Android 5.1 !!While Moto E2, 5.0-5.1-5.1.1-6.0
Motorola rocks (and lenovo sucks)
Thermogenic - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
The Microsoft Lumia 640(XL) looks to be a very solid competitor to the Moto E.der - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
50th comment woooStanand - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Also, the Verizon-locked Moto E seems to be only usable with Verizon's monthly prepaid smartphone plans that start at $45 per month. That's not a horrible deal for those that want unlimited talk/text and a little data, but many budget buyers (like me) want pay-as-you-go and the option to use an MVNO (like Page Plus).