Motorola has launched the Moto G smartphone in London today. This is Motorola’s first new design smartphone to be released in the UK since becoming part of Google. The handset has an appealing budget price tag yet the tech specs and appearance of a higher end device. Motorola is hoping that this low-cost smartphone can help make its phones as popular as they used to be in its feature phone heyday. The Moto G is also being launched in 30 other countries today in Europe, the US, Asia and Latin America. In contrast the flagship Moto X has yet to emerge from North America.
The £119 ($179) starting price of a Moto G combined with an appealing set of specs should help Motorola climb the smartphone ranks pretty quickly, the management team think. Motorola Chief Executive Dennis Woodside told Reuters that there are around 500 million people in the market looking for a smartphone at the Moto G’s price tag. He thinks the Moto G can afford the company a “substantial change in trajectory” if only a fraction of those 500 million are attracted to the new smartphone. Woodside said the Moto G offers a much more modern set of components and software support than many budget rivals. It offers a “premium experience, with today's technology, with less than 1/3 of the price of the premium competition,” according to Motorola Product Manager Charlie Tritschler. A good example of the software support is that Android 4.4 KitKat will be released for the Moto G “within weeks,” reports The Guardian.
Moto G specifications:
- Operating system: Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (to be updated to Android 4.4 KitKat in January 2014)
- Display: 4.5-inch LCD display with 1280x720 resolution. 329ppi
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor at 1.2GHz. (MSM 8x26, Adreno 305)
- RAM: 1GB
- Storage: 8GB or 16GB, two free years of 50GB on Google Drive (No SD card)
- Dimensions: 129.9 x 65.9 x 6.0-11.6 mm
- Weight: 143 grams
- Battery: 2,070mAh (“all-day”, non-removable)
- Rear camera: 5 megapixels, (4:3 for full resolution), LED flash, 4x digital zoom, slow motion video, burst mode, auto HDR, panorama, tap-to-focus
- Front camera: 1.3 megapixels
- Video capture: 720p (front and rear) at 30 fps
- Networks: GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz); UMTS (850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz); CDMA (850/1900 MHz). No LTE.
- Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0
- Location: GPS/GLONASS
- Covers: yellow, purple, blue, green, red and black
Analysts are positive about the Moto G in a BBC news piece. An IDC analyst, Francisco Jeronimo, talking to the BBC said that a second wave of smartphone adopters has started and these first-time smartphone buyers don’t want to spend cash on flagship devices, “They don't have the need nor the money to afford the most advanced smartphones, as the first wave of adopters had,” asserted Jeronimo.
The Beeb also heard that the Moto G was affordable due to design, “there's fewer pieces [and] it's designed to be easy and fast to assemble,” said Motorola’s Woodside. The phone will be built in China, Argentina and Brazil.
The 8GB Moto G is available now for £119.95 and the 16GB Moto G is available now for £149.95 at Phones 4U on PAYG. You might have to add a £10 airtime voucher to those prices but you can always ask for a PAYG upgrade.
