The Moto G (2015) Review

Battery Life

Battery life is obviously one of the most important aspects of any mobile device, whether it be a laptop, a tablet, a smartphone, or a wearable device. To examine battery life on mobile devices we run them through a number of tests. The first is a web browsing test run both on WiFi and on LTE, which is primarily a display bound test. The next test is BaseMark OS II, which stresses the CPU. After that is PCMark which attempts to simulate various real world workloads, and is a good indicator of real world battery life. Finally, we test using GFXBench 3.0 to see how long a device lasts and how well it performs with a constant GPU load.

In both of our web browsing battery tests the Moto G performs very well. Through a combination of reduced platform power and a larger battery we see the 2015 Moto G last nearly 2.5 hours longer than its predecessor in the WiFi test. Unfortunately I don't have data for the 2014 model on LTE, but at 9.27 hours the Moto G's lifetime when browsing on cellular is also very respectable.

BaseMark OS II's battery test stresses the CPU a great deal, and in it we see the 2015 Moto G lasts roughly as long as its predecessor. Since the 2015 model has a significantly larger battery this implies a greater amount of battery drain in a given unit of time, which is what leads to the lower battery score for the 2015 model. If Snapdragon 410 were produced on a lower leakage process like 28nm HPm or HPC rather than 28nm LP we would see a significant improvement to power consumption in CPU heavy workloads.

In PCMark's battery test the Moto G is in a league of its own. Due to its relatively large battery it pulls ahead of other mid range devices by a large margin. The downside of course is that if you were a user going through the workloads PCMark performs you would have substantially worse performance than a device like the Zenfone 2. I think the Moto G's runtime in PCMark demonstrates an important consideration for consumers, with a device like the Zenfone 2 being much faster than the Moto G at roughly the same price, but offering only a little more than half the battery life in a mixed workload. If battery life is your priority in a mid range device the 2015 Moto G appears to be the best option by far.

Low and and mid range devices with big batteries and relatively low GPU performance tend to do well in GFXBench's battery test. While they do last long, the performance during the T-Rex HD test that continually loops is well below what would be considered a playable frame rate, and so it's not really worth discussing in much detail.

Overall, I'm very happy with the new Moto G's battery life. Both the web browsing results and the PCMark result confirm my experience in the real world which is that the Moto G lasts for a really long time. I often found myself only charging it every other day unless I had been using it very heavily, and it's really one of the only devices I own where I didn't even bother to take a look at the battery percentage from time to time. The only disappointment is the knowledge that if Snapdragon 410 were produced on a lower leakage process we could see even higher performance with the same great battery life that the Moto G achieves.

Charge Time

While the Moto G has a fairly substantial battery life, it will eventually die and need to be recharged. We've seen a large improvement in the charge time of mobile devices with the adoption of fast chargers that supply as much as 18W of power to a device. Unfortunately, this hasn't trickled down to low end and mid range devices yet, and as a result they often suffer from very long charge times using their included chargers.

The combination of a 9.39Wh battery and a 2.75W charger leads to the longest charge time on record for a mobile device. While it's only a couple minutes longer than the Huawei P8 Lite, it's substantially longer than most other phones. Since the Moto G has very good battery life users can just charge their phone at night, which puts it in a better situation than the P8 Lite. Despite that, I wish Motorola had considered the additional charge time their larger battery would require and included a 5W charging block to compensate. If a user has a spare 5W or higher charging block or lives in a region where the Moto G comes with one they will see the charge time drop to as low as 2 hours and 50 minutes, which is much more reasonable.