The Moto E (2015) Review
by Brandon Chester on April 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Moto E (2015)
Camera Performance
Examining a phone's camera on paper can only tell part of the story about its image quality. The camera's system of lenses and processing after the sensor captures an image have major impacts on the quality of photos. While I do wish we had a more consistent and objective test for comparing camera quality, there's still a great deal of information that can be found by comparing how different smartphone cameras resolve detail and handle noise reduction and sharpening.
Left: iPhone 6. Right: Moto E (2015)
While I normally begin with a test that has several objects in a white box with extremely generous lighting to get an idea of how the camera performs in the most optimal conditions, the Moto E presents an issue with that test. For whatever reason, Motorola's white balance algorithm goes berserk in the presence of the 3000K LED bulbs that I use for lighting. Users can rest assured that I never encountered this issue in any other situation, but it's still somewhat concerning. If nothing else, the Moto E's image quality in the photo above is very good apart from it being yellow.
The Moto E's camera performance in adequate lighting is actually better than I had expected. The tree in the upper right is well captured, and brick walls of the building on the left have a good level of detail. The low resolution limits the amount of detail in the bricks of the orange brick building, and the shrubs on the right side also end up becoming a bit of a mess. The colors of the photo also seem to be shifted slightly toward orange compared to what they actually looked like to me in real life. Overall though, the output is certainly acceptable for posting on Twitter or Facebook, or for sending to someone via MMS/IM. It's not the world's best camera, but it's good enough that I'm sure people will be glad Motorola included it.
Unfortunately the Moto E's sensor size ends up hurting it when it comes to low light situations. The photo has much more noise than any of the other smartphones compared, including the iPad Air 2 which has the same pixel size but on a larger 8MP sensor. It's impossible to see the brick texture on either building due to the noise, and the bricks on the ground that are more than a couple of feet away just end up blending together.
The Moto E is capable of 1280x720p30 video recording. Unfortunately the quality of those videos is nothing exceptional. There's just a general lack of detail to everything, even objects that are very close. Video is encoded with an average bitrate of 10Mbps and uses the H.264 High profile.
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Kakti - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Don't all companies have to unlock phones these days once you're not in a contract though? I personally use the month to month for $45, but figured if they ever scrapped it or raised the price I'd move to an MVNO.Also, I recently received a MS Nokia Lumia 635 from my work - that's another real nice cheap phone IMO. Was originally going to get one for my personal but went with the Moto E when I saw the price. Everyone complains about it at work (they all use Iphones) but I think it's great for what its intended purpose is i.e. make calls, read emails, read news, weather, etc. I dunno maybe I'm just getting old (get off my lawn) but the prices and specs of top end phones these days are so overkill. Having a 2560p 6.5" screen and then needing a 300g battery to power it? No thanks....
RealTheXev - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Several people on XDA forums have been able to contact Verizon and get the phone added to their postpay plan. I would have gone that route myself if I could have unlocked the bootloader (but you can't with Moto's tools).All Verizon LTE phones should come unlocked, but I have no other carriers to try my mothers Moto E on (that would get reception no less).
Gunbuster - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Would be nice to see a review of the new BLU Win JR LTESamus - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
Super nice phone for $150. Probably the only android phone id recommend to people like my parents.grant3 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Does this phone respond to 3-button android headset controls?What is the sound quality on music playback?
I'm disappointed that so much effort and detail was put into analyzing the display/software/etc. but there is nothing about the audio.
Kakti - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Can't comment on android headsets but the sound quality through $10 earbuds is fine. Sounds the exact same as my previous phones playing FLAC files.Playing music without headphones is alright, it's definitely loud enough for most uses; I play music on it after most leave my office and can hear it probably 50-75 feet away. There's roughly 0.0% bass as expected....played some Omni Trio drum and bass and it was like listening to half the song ;) But that's a given for any cell phone speaker really. Playing rock music FLAC files sounded as good as I could ask for from a cell phone.
grant3 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The issue I had with a previous motorola droid was there was a lot of line hiss. i.e., if you were in the quiet portion of a song, you can hear a background hiss (sounds like when you're on a phone call and no one is talking)It's sometimes tricky to notice because the internal amp would shut off when music is paused. and usually people are listening to their phone in a place where there is some background noise.
Kakti - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Just checked with some live concert soundboards - between songs it's pretty much silent and I didn't hear any hiss at volume levels that are comfortable to listen to.ASEdouardD - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Why use FLAC files using $10 earbuds? I'd go high quality MP3.CharonPDX - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I'm curious - is lack of 5 GHz WiFi (n or ac) really that much of a problem in an ultra-low-cost phone?I understand it would be great for future-proofing, but how often are people looking at ultra-low-end phones going to have 5 GHz 802.11n, much less ac? Or the high-enough-speed internet to notice the difference?