Introduction
Having spent the best part of two years cleaning the Motorola pipeline of products conceived before the takeover, Google finally has a shop with its name on it. And it's not afraid to use it to challenge some of the old habits and experienced players in the smartphone game.
Motorola Moto G official photos
The Moto X was the first to set on a crusade to prove that high-end smartphones go beyond the number of cores and pixels. Now we have the Moto G on a mission to let everyone know that affordability doesn't necessarily imply crippled functionality. The Moto X was unusual enough to be reasonably successful despite its hefty price tag. The Moto G, on the other hand, is priced to move quickly and will be keeping the competition on their toes.
Not that it will get complacent because of it, like most of the smartphones priced at around the same level do. The Motorola Moto G will bend over backwards to serve you properly and its list of features stretches far longer than most in this price range.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; quad-band UMTS/HSPA support
- 4.5" 16M-color 720p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 326ppi pixel density; Gorilla Glass 3
- Android OS v4.3 Jelly Bean with Android 4.4 update reportedly coming as soon as January 2014
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset with quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A7 CPU; Adreno 305 GPU
- 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash
- 720p video recording @ 30fps with HDR, continuous autofocus and stereo sound
- 1.3 MP front-facing camera
- Wi-Fi b/g/n; Wi-Fi Hotspot
- GPS with A-GPS; GLONASS
- 8/16GB of built-in storage; 1GB of RAM
- microUSB port with USB host
- Bluetooth v4.0 LE
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Ambient light; accelerometer; proximity sensors
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- 50GB of free Google Drive storage
- 2,070 mAh battery
- Excellent speaker loudness
Main disadvantages
- Limited non-expandable storage
- Non user-removable battery
- Questionable camera image quality, limited camera settings
Some corners needed to be cut of course, but since Motorola could afford to give up immediate profits, the hardware didn't take as bad of a hit as it normally would have. We get a base-level chipset of course, but it's of the latest Qualcomm lineup and it should do just fine paired with a 720p screen. And since it requires less power and there's a smaller screen here, Motorola might easily get away with the smaller battery. The unmatched body customization options of Moto X are gone too, but the (very cheaply) replaceable back covers still let you add your personal touch to the smartphone. A well rounded package indeed.
Or is it? You see, being able to sell subsidized hardware might sound like a manufacturer's dream, but it's not all roses. Because when you mostly rely on the software to bring in the profits, you have to make sure your services are attractive. So the microSD card slot got the axe in hope that you'll fall back to cloud storage for most of your multimedia needs. The default skinned Android UI (or launcher, as it's technically called) also isn't the most functional around, so you might have to add a feature or two via third party apps.
It's always going to be a matter of trade-offs in this price segment of the market and we now set out to find out if Motorola did the right ones. Join us on the next page for the hardware checkup.
Barebone retail package
At this point we've pretty much given up any hope of finding anything beyond the absolute essentials in the packaging of smartphones and that includes even flagships. However, the Motorola Moto G goes a bit too far with its effort to save on production and shipping costs.The smartphone ships in the tiniest box we have ever seen and the only accessory you will find inside is a microUSB cable. There're no headphones and you don't even get an A/C adapter for faster charging. Granted, at this point you probably have a few of those lying around, but in case you don't, you should factor in the prices of those if you decide to go for the Moto G.
Motorola Moto G 360-degree spin
The Motorola Moto G stands at 129.9 x 65.9 x 11.6 mm, which makes it one of the more compact smartphones in its price range. It's not the slimmest package around and you can definitely feel the extra thickness around the waistline but at this size it's not too upsetting.Design, build quality and handling
The styling of the Motorola Moto G is clean and efficient (even subdued), as if to make a point that it's a device you're going to use, not show off. Even the vanilla Moto X is quite understated - if you decide to skip using the customizing powers of the Moto Maker. Overall, unlike the Motorola smartphones of old, which tended to be overdesigned, this one bets on simplicity, combining traditional materials and flowing lines.The result is quite good though and even the fact that the Moto G uses two different kinds of plastic for its front and back panels on our black version doesn't spoil the looks. It's clearly not what you'd call an attention-grabber, but that's hardly ever an option when shopping in this price range.
Decent build and acceptable looks are par for the course here and the Moto G over-delivers on both. It's certainly a well put together phone that makes no disturbing sounds of any kind when handled and gives the impression that it will have no trouble keeping it up in the long run. There's Corning Gorilla Glass 3 over the screen for scratch and shutter resistance, while the back can easily be replaced if it gets some damage.
Speaking of replacing the back panel - that's only as far as the Moto G will go in terms of customization. It's not nearly as impressive as the Moto Maker for the Motorola Moto X, but it's still an option and it does have its benefits. The option to replace a scratched back panel with a fresh new one we already covered, but there's also the feature of being able to change your mind after you've purchased the phone.
You can customize the Moto X all you like, but once you get it that's it, whereas you can buy new panels for the Moto G as you please to freshen up your smartphone. Those are pretty cheap too - can get them online for about €10 a pop.
As for the handling, despite its less than slender profile and considerable heft, the Motorola Moto fits nicely in your hand and is not a problem at all to operate it single-handedly. The curved back with matte plastic allows for a great grip too, so accidental drops aren't very likely.
Controls
Above the Motorola Moto G display you get an earpiece, the front-facing camera, as well as the ambient light and proximity sensors.With the main controls on the actual screen, the space below the display is completely bare. The same goes for the left side of the Moto G.
The mouthpiece has been moved to the bottom, next to the microUSB port. The port has support for USB host, so if you get yourself an extra adapter needed, you can attach various peripherals like keyboards and mice as well as USB memory sticks. However it has no support for MHL or Slimport, meaning pairing with an HDTV isn't an option (unless the HDTV supports wireless streaming of content).
On the right we see the only two hardware controls on the Motorola Moto G. The power key sits slightly above the volume rocker and while both keys are a bit too thin for our liking, they make up for it with nicely solid press.
The 3.5mm audio jack is located in the middle of the Moto G's top, where it's joined by the secondary noise-cancelling microphone.
The 5MP camera lens has the loudspeaker on its side at the back of the smartphone, while the LED flash sits underneath it.
Opening the back panel is a bit of a hassle, involving pushing you fingernail in the microUSB slot and pulling with a reasonable amount of force until you undo the stubs one by one. It does feel like the cover is about to break at times, but after several changes it's still in one piece, so the problem was perhaps mostly in our heads.
Underneath the cover you only get the microSIM slot. Disappointingly enough, the battery isn't user replaceable and there's no microSD card slot. We could live with the first of those shortcomings but the lack of expandable storage on a device where 16GB is the most you can get out of box can be quite the deal breaker for many.
Display
The Motorola Moto G 4.5" 720p display is one of its most potent weapons in the fight for survival in the overcrowded mid-range. Having a pixel density og 326ppi, the IPS LCD matches the Apple Retina screens and is by far the sharpest display in the price range.It's not just the pixel count either - the Moto G screen also impresses with very good contrast and nice color rendering. Viewing angles are also very wide with everything remaining perfectly legible even when you go to extremes. There is some color shift, but even so the display is way better than we've come to expect in this price range.
Our only gripe is the white balance, which is a bit on the cold side, but that's nitpicking really.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
| Motorola Moto G | 0.35 | 315 | 906 | 0.57 | 550 | 967 |
| Sony Xperia C | 0.18 | 151 | 842 | 0.66 | 639 | 962 |
| Oppo R819 | 0.56 | 607 | 1078 | 0.62 | 754 | 1210 |
| Samsung I9082 Galaxy Grand | 0.37 | 382 | 1040 | 0.62 | 586 | 948 |
| Huawei Ascend P6 | 0.14 | 136 | 986 | 0.62 | 670 | 1080 |
| Apple iPhone 5 | 0.13 | 200 | 1490 | 0.48 | 640 | 1320 |
The front display glass isn't too reflective either, which means the Motorola Moto G screen also does pretty well in direct sunlight. An admirable overall performance indeed.
Battery Life
The Moto G features a 2,070 mAh battery, but Motorola didn't specify how long it is expected to last. The capacity isn't too big, but given the efficient chipset and relatively small screen we were quite optimistic about its prospects.The Moto G duly delivered and posted an endurance score of 54, meaning it will last for more than two full days if you do an hour of calls, an hour of video watching and an hour of web browsing each day. The achievement is also much better than what the Moto X managed, but that one had the always on voice commands eating into its endurance.
We should even give the Motorola Moto G a few extra points here as it's notably brighter than most of its competitors at their respective 50% settings
Google Now
Google Now was first introduced back in Jelly Bean 4.1 and is definitely one of the most interesting aspects of the Android OS. Simply put, it's Google's version of a personal assistant. Google Now is meant to be kinda Apple's Siri, but it learns constantly from your daily routines and it also takes cue from the Google searches you do on your computer, not just the ones on your smartphone. You can also use to voice command various aspects of your phone.Unlike the Moto X, where the A8 chipset was always listening for the OK Google keywords to prop up Google Now, the Moto G can only access it by swiping up from the virtual Home key or through the dedicated Google Search app.
Anyway, Google Now gives you short overviews of information it believes is relevant to you right now in the form of information cards. Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, so it offers you a re-route.
It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.
Google Now, if you allow it, can scan your email for upcoming flights, deliveries or restaurant reservations and let you know when they are due. There are also numerous kinds of cards like birthdays (yours and those of your contacts) and what distance you've walked in a particular month. The last one could definitely feel creepy for some users, but it's easily turned off from the Google Now settings menu.
The More section of the customization will update automatically with topics you can choose from once you've start using Google Now search capabilities.
You can now set reminders straight from Google Now's UI. Just hit the bottom left icon (the palm with a stretched index finger). There you can add reminders or just check all the past, ongoing or upcoming reminders.
Google has also integrated Voice Actions into Now. They can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.
You can now set your default transportation method, you favorite sports teams, company stocks you are following, places you are interested to visit and more. Once you add items you want to keep an eye on Google Now will do this instead of you. It will automatically inform you for various changes, news and updates.
One big advantage of Google Now is that the voice typing functionality doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can enter text by speaking anywhere you can use the on-screen keyboard - be it the Messaging app or a note taking app - without the need for a data connection as long as you have pre-downloaded the needed language packs (and those only take about 20-25MB of your storage per pack).
Making voice typing available offline also made it faster as it's not dependent on your connection. What's even more impressive is that the transition hasn't cost it anything in terms of accuracy.
Low-powered quad-core
The Moto G comes with a Snapdragon 400 chipset with four Krait 200, Cortex-A7, cores clocked at 1.2 GHz and the Adreno 305 graphics processing unit. The phone makes use of 1 GB of RAM.The Cortex-A7 processor clocked at 1.2GHz delivers a decent mid-range performance very close to the Cortex-A9 chips, with the added benefit of having lower power consumption.
BenchmarkPi focuses on the per-core performance. It evaluates how fast the processing core is and the Moto G scored just under its sibling by processor - the Xperia C - and not far behind Cortex-A9 competition.
G-reat phonebook
The Moto G phonebook is the stock Android app People, which hasn't been changed since its major redesign in Ice Cream Sandwich.There's a permanent scroll bar available that you can grab and jump straight to contacts starting with a certain letter. There's regular search as you type too.
The quick contacts feature triggers on tapping a contact image to bring up a tabbed popup window. The tabs are phone and email with a list of the available numbers or addresses. These tabs can be navigated with sideways swipes as well.
The single contact view displays the contact's name along with a star to make a contact favorite and a Settings button that lets you edit, share or delete a contact, as well assign custom ringtones to them or set the phone to redirect calls from that contact straight to voice mail.
Under that is a list of all contact info sorted by category - phone numbers, emails, events, notes and so on.
While editing a contact, you can add new fields of different types to fill in more info for the contact. You can link contacts too, if you've added the same person on multiple services.
The contacts that the phonebook displays can be filtered by service (e.g. hide all Facebook contacts) and even group (so you can hide all contacts that don't belong in a group, for example).
The other two major tabs in the phonebook are Groups and Favorites. Groups are listed by service (e.g. your Gmail account), while favorites are a listed as a grid of large contact photos, which is readily thumbable.
Telephony is stellar
In-call quality of the Moto G was great. Voices come out loud and clear and the device held on to signal without issue.The dialer features the neon-blue on black theme, but hasn't grown any new functionality since the Moto X. There's still no smart dialing, which is a real shame and frankly getting annoying.
The dialer is the first tab of the phone app, the other two being the Call log and the Favorites tab (you get the same in the Phonebook). In the Call log, you can't delete individual entries, which is mind-boggling.
We ran the Moto G through our dedicated loudspeaker test and it may be the loudest handset we've tested in our office. It smashed the boards and was actually almost painful to listen to it up close.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overal score | |
| 65.5 | 62.0 | 65.8 | ||
| 65.3 | 61.7 | 75.7 | ||
| 66.8 | 64.6 | 75.7 | ||
| 66.6 | 74.4 | 62.3 | ||
| 64.3 | 66.3 | 75.7 | ||
| 68.5 | 66.6 | 80.7 | ||
| 74.1 | 66.2 | 76.0 | ||
| 81.6 | 75.7 | 82.7 | Excellent |
All you can eat messaging
The messaging section is business as usual but with some improvements. All SMS/MMS communication is organized into threads - each thread consists of all messages between you and one of your contacts. A cool new feature is that you can select multiple threads to mass delete them.Each thread is organized like an IM chat session, the latest message at the bottom. You can manage individual messages (forward, copy, delete) and even lock them (to prevent deletion). You can use search to find a specific message in all conversations.
Quick contacts work here too and there's a call shortcut at the top of the screen when viewing a thread.
You can set the Moto G to delete older messages (by default, it keeps 500 texts and 50 MMS). You can activate delivery reports and read reports too (they are notifications that the receiver has read the message).
Creating a message
Composing a text is still frustrating as the text box starts off as a single line and grows only up to three lines, which makes working with longer texts hard. We mostly let it slide on previous versions, but with a 4.5" screen there's no excuse not to make the text box a tad bigger.
You can add multimedia (photos, videos, sounds, etc.), which will convert the message to an MMS. If you need multiple slides or multiple attachments, you can go to a full-blown MMS editor as well.
Even with the presence of the stock Messaging app Google is set on retiring it to the bench and setting Hangouts as starter. For now the app asks for the spot but by adding SMS support it clearly means business and will gradually be taking over, just like Chrome did with the Browser of old.
In its defence Hangouts offers a pretty sweet interface. On the left you have your conversations - tapping on one will show you a threaded view. A Swipe to the left reveals a mashup of your Google+ and phone contacts along with a search box.
If the other person has Hangouts on their handset and an active connection then you can text away freely - you even get a little shadow under the contact photo to let you know the other person is active.
The Gmail app now features color coded sender images, based on the first letter of the sender's name. This lets you easily see who your most popular email correspondences are with. The default app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but there's no unified inbox.
A cool new feature in Gmail is that you can swipe left or right to move between messages in your inbox.
A recent major update of the app also automatically sorts out your incoming messages into three inboxes - primary, social, and one for promotional emails. We found it to work like a charm - it makes sorting through email messages much easier.
There is also a generic email app for all your other email accounts and it can handle multiple POP or IMAP inboxes. You have access to the messages in the original folders that are created online, side by side with the standard local ones such as inbox, drafts and sent items.
Unlike its Gmail counterpart, this app supports a combined inbox view. It color codes the inboxes so you can easily tell where each message came from. Unfortunately, there's no moving between messages with sideways swipes here.
The keyboard has plenty of room to stretch its legs on the 4.5" screen and typing is very easy. Keys get even bigger when you switch to landscape mode - the long screen becomes very comfortable for two-thumb typing.
In Jelly Bean 4.3 Google introduced a new typing method called Gesture typing. It works in a manner very similar to Swype - you just Swipe your finger over the letters you want to type, lifting after each word is complete. Naturally, the Gesture Typing feature benefits from the already existing Android word prediction, so you can just click on the words the keyboard suggests.
A tap on the text area will reveal a "handle" attached to the text cursor - it's easy and more accurate, which makes correcting mistakes easier. A double tap will bring up the select options - select word and select all - with two handles to adjust the start and end of the selection.
If a word has a typo, it will be underlined in red and when you tap it, the phone will offer a number of suggested corrections along with options to add the word to the phone's dictionary or just delete the word.
Gallery
The Gallery in Android 4.3 Jelly Bean retains its ICS looks and functionality. The Default view of the gallery is Albums, the first of which is always the Camera album, which has a camera overlay icon too. Rather than the familiar stacks, the app uses a grid of photos, two on a line.Besides, Album view, you also get Locations (photos are grouped based on where they were taken), Times (grouped by when they were taken), People (if the photos have tagged faces in them) and Tags (these are general tags you can add manually).
A handy option is the Make available offline feature - it lets you easily select multiple online albums and download them for offline viewing. The Gallery app supports online albums like Picasa (but not Facebook).
Getting inside an album displays all the photos in a rectangular grid, which is horizontally scrollable.
The settings menu lets you do simple edits to a photo (rotate, crop) or go into a more capable editor with a lot more options. The editor can be accessed from a small icon from the bottom left hand-side corner and offers light adjustments (so you can bring out the shadows or the highlights), effects, color styles, red eye correction, straightening a photo, sharpening and face glow (which detects faces automatically). Most of these options have a slider that lets you fine-tune the strength of the effect.
Video player
The video player has retained its stock Android interface. Motorola however, have added much better codec support than the one found in Nexus devices. The video player is now perfectly usable out of the box - it plays a host of formats which include H.263, H.264, MPEG4, VC-1, VP8 in up to 1080p resolution.The only files the Moto G refused to play were MOV videos and a single DivX file (for unknown reasons).
You can also wirelessly share videos with a Wi-Fi enabled TV. You can either use the good ol' DLNA technology for sharing multimedia content or use the Miracast protocol for direct mirroring of the smarthone's interface on the big screen.
Music player and FM Radio
Google's own music player called Play Music features the spanking Listen Now feature which tries to determine what you like and the sequence of your track-changing so that it can start offering you music you might like to play next.Google Play Music also gives you the option to stream on your smartphone your whole music collection that you may have on your computer. There's also the nifty option of downloading the content onto the device if you want to have there for connection-less times.
From the Settings key you can get into the equalizer. It can be turned on and off and features several presets that along with a user defined one. If you plug in a headset, you can also play with the Bass boost and 3D effect sliders.
The Now Playing screen uses the song album art and gives you a quick shortcut to the rest of the artist's songs along with the play controls.
While the player is working, the lockscreen features the album art and track info for the current song along with simple playback controls. The notification area also lets you control the playback via an expandable notification.
The FM Radio is a pretty straightforward affair. Once you plug in a pair of headphones (to act as an antenna), the app will scan the stations available in your region. You can also the region manually if the app doesn't configure it.
Great audio output quality
The Motorola Moto G did quite well in our audio test, posting scores that would make even a flagship proud and garnishing them with well above average volume.When connected to an active external amplifier the smartphone showed great dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio and stereo crosstalk. Its frequency response could be better in the lowest and highest frequencies but was close to perfect for the rest of the range. There were no traces of distortion, either.
The great news is, besides some extra stereo crosstalk, there's virtually no degradation when you plug in a pair of headphones. And with the volume levels pretty high in both tests, the Moto G earned an excellent mark here.
And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| Motorola Moto G | +0.08, -0.85 | -92.1 | 91.9 | 0.0059 | 0.082 | -91.4 |
| Motorola Moto G (headphones attached) | +0.10, -1.03 | -92.0 | 91.8 | 0.010 | 0.117 | -50.4 |
| Motorola Moto X | +0.25, -1.12 | -91.6 | 91.7 | 0.0029 | 0.243 | -92.8 |
| Motorola Moto X (headphones attached) | +0.24, -1.08 | -91.4 | 91.4 | 0.012 | 0.244 | -55.0 |
| Oppo R819(headphones attached) | +0.58, -0.13 | -91.0 | 90.9 | 0.015 | 0.438 | -48.7 |
| Oppo R819 | +0.04, -0.09 | -92.4 | 92.3 | 0.017 | 0.045 | -87.9 |
| Oppo R819(headphones attached) | +0.58, -0.13 | -91.0 | 90.9 | 0.015 | 0.438 | -48.7 |
| Nokia Lumia 625 | +0.13, -0.10 | -90.3 | 90.3 | 0.013 | 0.355 | -82.5 |
| Nokia Lumia 625 (headphones attached) | +0.24, -0.00 | -90.2 | 90.2 | 0.014 | 0.460 | -83.8 |
| HTC Desire 600 dual sim | +0.04, -0.31 | -91.3 | 89.5 | 0.020 | 0.052 | -89.6 |
| HTC Desire 600 dual sim(headphones attached) | +0.10, -0.25 | -91.1 | 89.4 | 0.020 | 0.045 | -47.5 |
| Samsung Galaxy S4 mini | +0.06, -0.05 | -93.5 | 92.7 | 0.0090 | 0.056 | -86.2 |
| Samsung Galaxy S4 mini (headphones attached) | +0.08, -0.04 | -93.2 | 91.8 | 0.029 | 0.089 | -53.3 |
Great camera
The Moto G comes with a modest camera without many of the bells and whistles found on some more robust flagship offerings, most notably the ClearPixel 10MP shooter found on the Moto X. It does, however, come with HDR support, which has an Auto mode meaning that it can selectively turn itself on in certain shooting conditions.The camera does have the same minimalist interface as on the Moto X, which includes just two on screen buttons on the right-hand side for video recording and front-facing camera. Taking an image is done simply by tapping the screen (burst shots with a tap-and-hold).
To access more settings, you can swipe from the left edge of the screen to the right. This opens up a wheel with a number of toggles, including HDR, flash, touch focus, slow motion video, panorama, geo-tagging, widescreen mode, and shutter sound.
You can also zoom in an out by swiping up and down, while a swipe from the right edge of the screen opens up the gallery.
Shooting with the Motorola Moto G takes some getting used to, as the rather limited number of extended options tend to make your shooting options less flexible. For example, focus relies primarily on auto mode to get the shot right, and contrast tends to be on the low side in those situations. You can compensate for this somewhat by using the touch focus and exposure feature, but that tends to adjust the exposure so drastically that many of your images will be severely over or underexposed.
Shooting without HDR enabled produces generally low contrast images with an inspiring amount of detail. Colors are accurate and there is very little noise, but there's a notable corner softness. Unfortunately the overly agressive noise reduction results in eradicating a fair amount of fine detail and an oil painting effect is visible whenever you shoot grass, foliage or similar.
Standard connectivity features
The Motorola Moto G starts off with the basics - quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 3G globally, or CDMA support for the North American model.Also on board is Bluetooth 4.0 alongside Wi-Fi support which includes b/g/n.
Although it is missing some of the more advanced connectivity features like NFC, and IR-port, or LTE support, the Moto G does have an FM radio and GPS.
Google Chrome is solo
The Moto G comes with Google Chrome as its solitary preinstalled browser. The interface hasn't changed much since Chrome's launch for Android and is clean and minimalist.At the top there's an URL bar with a refresh/stop button next to the tabs and settings buttons. You can switch between tabs with a wide swipe from either the left or right of the top bar.
Opening the tabs area reveals a list of tabs which can each be closed again with a left or right swipe. The animation accompanying this action is neat, too.
Chrome is running on the WebKit rendering engine, so underneath the minimalist UI it's basically the same as all Android stock browsers. Of course, one of Chrome's strengths is its ability to seamlessly sync with its desktop version using nothing but your Google account. This allows you to open an article on your PC and finish reading it on your mobile phone. It also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites. Google Chrome is generous on settings as well. You can control almost every aspect of your web browsing from choosing what content you want to allow to load like JavaScript, images, cookies and pop-ups.
If you are out of Wi-Fi access, you can, for example, choose temporarily not to load images. Digging into Chrome's options, you also have the option to toggle form auto-fill and password storing.
Unfortunately, while Chrome excels in many areas, it falls short on the one that could be a deal-breaker for many Android users - Flash. Sadly, as Adobe has dropped support for Android, viewing Flash content is the one thing you won't be able to do here.
Final words
A Google phone for the masses. At long last. Nothing like the enigmatic Nexus, drip-fed through the Play Store, attractively priced but hard-to-get.
OK, go ahead and call the Moto G the poor man's Nexus. Just don't call it cheap. For what it has to offer, this phone is beyond cheap - but doesn't look it. And definitely doesn't act like one, for the most part. Bottom line, it's the Nexus 7 of smartphones - perhaps even better.
Why and how Motorola can charge so little for the Moto G is not that hard of a question really, but it's not one you should be bothered with. Whether it's worth it is even easier - we mean, a 720p screen and Snapdragon 400 at well less than €200 is a steal. And there's a KitKat update on the way.
The limited storage is the obvious flipside, aggravated by the lack of an expansion slot. It renders the phone almost useless as a medial playback device and not too great for gaming either - not with titles with larger footprint anyway.
OK, Google wants your stuff up there in the cloud, and the free 50GB of Google Drive are some consolation. By giving up immediate cash profits off the Moto G, Google is trying to win on two fronts - tying more and more users into its services and making Motorola relevant again.
The second point is perhaps a preparation for some day when Google decides to really get behind the brand it owns and, for a change, stop outsourcing its flagships. For now it seems like it's working. Once a household name for overdesigned hardware and excess of bloatware, Motorola is now linked to two devices people are talking about and loving as well.
So, let's look at the Moto G - easy to spot in a crowd of budget droids and basic Lumias, which make the bulk of devices in the price bracket - and certainly watched with suspicion bordering on fear by the so-called upper-midrangers. All well-deserved by the way.
Business reason says that price-wise the Moto G should've been pitted against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini, the Sony Xperia SP, the Nexus 4 and the previous generation of flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy SIII. Except that it isn't. It's cheaper. But the amazing thing is it can actually stand such a comparison. Yet, with that unbelievable price tag, it's getting ready to walk all over the cheap droids and Windows-powered smartphones.
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