Moto G 2nd Generation Review

[antoainb]

The intro

So I finally decided to do this review. I’ve had the phone for a month now and to be completely honest, the only reason it has taken me so long to do this review is I have been busy with school and I was waiting for Lollipop to come out to the Portuguese/Spanish version. And with that out of the way let’s get to it.

 

The design and build quality

The 2nd gen Moto G is pretty much the same thing as the 1st gen Moto G, only with a bigger screen, better camera and better speakers. Unfortunately they decided to keep the battery the same size, but we’ll get to that later. The device isn’t the thinnest, it’s 11mm thick at the thickest point, but I actually like it better this way. Some of the thickness comes as a consequence of having a curved back, but I’d go for a thicker phone with a curved back that is quite easy to grip than a thin slate that is nearly impossible to manage, for example, a friend of mine has a Sony Xperia M2, a phone that has a 4.8” screen and is smaller than the Moto G, but it’s also thinner and completely flat. I can never use that phone without always worrying I’m going to drop it and worse of all it kinda hurts since it has such sharp edges, this is not the case with the Moto G, this phone is all curves. No, really, it’s sides are pretty much all rounded. This roundness to the design makes for a phone that’s easier to use than it might seem a first, since the shape fits nicely into your hand.

The phone is also quite hefty and it doesn’t feel so plastic-y that it would shatter into a million pieces if I dropped it, it does squeak a bit but it feels quite nice. The back is also made out of a nice soft touch material and although it does attract some fingerprints they seem to go away when I put my phone in the pocket, so no major gripes there. The back is removable (the battery isn’t though, qq) and it let’s you access the SIM card slots (yes, slots, this is a dual sim version) and the microSD card slot. It’s kinda hard to remove at first but after a while it becomes quite easy to do so. Something this phone is quite bad at is haptic feedback, it sounds and feels like it’s coming apart and the intensity of the vibration is really quite weak. Buttons are okay.

Oh, and BTW, dimple FTW!

 

Right hand side of the device

 

Front

 

Back

 

Top

 

Bottom

 

The screen

This phone’s screen is really quite nice, seriously. Colors pop but aren’t so freaking saturated everything just looks like candy, viewing angles are really good (you only see a slight shift in brightness), and it’s also quite bright (I’ve been using it outside in rainy days with brightness around 30 to 40 and it’s quite nice outside, beats the Samsung Galaxy S3’s AMOLED display by a lot, even though they are very similarly priced). The screen is a five inch 720p screen, so it’s not so sharp it will make your mind explode, but it is kinda hard to spot pixels, you need to look for them to find them. The glass in front of it is Gorilla Glass 3, so you should probably expect it to hold against scratches nicely, it surprised me in one regard though, it’s how good the oleophobic coating is, most smudges would disappear after a while of the phone being in my pocket, I now use a Orzly glass screen protector (no PhantomGlass for the Moto G 2nd Gen actually) on it but it was something I noted pretty early on having this phone.

 

The speakers/call quality

This phone has stereo speakers, and while they are good they will not blow your mind, but one should not expect to be blown away by a sub 200 dollar phone’s speakers, that would be stupid. You should compare these to direct competitors and when you do that I pretty much assure you you won’t find something as good for the same price. Something to note however is that the Moto G comes with a equalizer out of the box configured to boost bass to hell, I recommend you either turn it off completely or set it to “Balanced” under Settings>Sound & notification>Audio Effects. This “EQ” is quite bad actually, it doesn’t let you set custom values for anything, you can only use presets.

Call quality is good, people hear me loud and clear, I hear them loud and clear, everyone’s happy.

 

 

 

The camera

“Focus God damn it!”, you will be saying this many times if you get a Moto G, this phone simply does not know how to focus. It also calculates exposure and ISO on the same point as the focus point, making the images either under or overexposed many times. You can go around this if you use an app that let’s you manually set the metering point, something like Camera FV-5, but that’s kinda of an extra hassle and the camera also seems to focus even worse with Camera FV-5 for some reason, which just makes it more painful. The picture quality is quite good when it focus though, colors are good, shutter is nice and fast and low light performance is quite nice too.

Video is meh at best, it’s not terrible but the fact that it’s only 10000kbps bitrate and 720p doesn’t make it great either. If you use an app like Cinema FV-5 you can up the bitrate and get better results, but again, focus seems to be even worse with that app. Another thing I don’t really like about video and the Moto G is the fact that you can’t tap to focus while recording, tapping the screen will take a picture. The Moto G also does Slow-Mo video, but it’s not that good, Motorola had the bright idea to mute the video, fast forward the parts that aren’t in slow motion and then slow down the video 4x. Everything would be just fine if the freaking video wasn’t mute and the parts that weren’t in slow-mo were in normal speed, hopefully Motorola reverts to the original way slow-mo was done, it used to have audio and be at regular speed but they changed it with an update, unfortunately. 

The front facing camera is good enough IMO, takes good pictures and video, won’t blow you away but it also won’t disappoint you.

Here are some sample pics:

 

Good lighting

 

Mediocre lighting

 

Very low lighting

 

Complete darkness w/flash

 

Complete darkness w/o flash (surprise surprise, it's completely dark!)

These are some pictures I took on a school trip to Lisbon last week, I took them with HDR on and off:

 

No HDR

 

HDR

 

No HDR

 

HDR

 

The battery

Not amazing and tighter than what I was used to with the Sony Xperia U, but gets me through a day just fine. Regular day with about 2h of screen on time left me with 50% still in the battery at the end of the day. The most screen on time I have been able to squeeze out of it was 4h20min on a day with mild load during most of the day and about 2 hours of gaming and web browsing.

 

The software

It runs stock android and comes with 4 Motorola apps: Alert (it shares your location via text with people you select, let’s you send emergency alerts, meeting requests at a certain location and it can also send regular updates of your location; cool but I didn’t bother); Assist (makes the phone perform different actions depending on where you are, what time it is, if you’re driving or if you’re in a meeting, again cool but I didn’t bother); Help (it’s helpful); and Migrate, which helps you transfer your data from your old phone (I didn’t use it so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not). You can’t uninstall them but at least they are well designed and helpful, instead of just being plain bloat-y. 

 

How does it perform?

It’s a sub 200 phone, so don’t expect flagship-like performance, that would be stupid. It would mean that current flagships were way, way more overpriced than they already have. It’s not flagship-like, no, but you don’t need that kind of performance to have a phone that fills pretty much all of a regular user’s needs. It has a Snapdragon 400 at 1.2Ghx, an Adreno 305 clocked at 450Mhz and 1GB of RAM, not too shabby but not stellar in any way. It does everything I need it to do well and using it is overall a pretty good experience, only time you can see it kinda struggle is when you have a huge number of tabs open or when you’re doing a lot of stuff in the background and you try to play a game or open a heavier app (or you have a single but rather intensive task going, like updating apps, and you try to play a game). Startup time is also rather slow (about 1 minute) but when it finishes the phone is pretty responsive, something I prefer over having a phone start up in 30 seconds and then having to wait another 30 to 40 seconds to actually use it. 

I also ran some benchmarks for good measure, I don’t particularly like phone benchmarks especially since of the cheating that goes hand to hand with them but for those of you who find it useful:

 

 

The conclusion

The Moto G 2nd Gen is a pretty good phone, decent specs, decent build, decent pretty much everything. There isn’t really that much info that a month of using it will give you that a hands on testing at a store or a day or two with it won’t, it’s a pretty consistent phone and the experience is pretty good. It’s a good buy IMO.

 

TL;DR

It’s a good phone, if you are looking into it buy it, you won’t regret it.

 

The end

@Tech_Dreamer

[david cassar]

Great review. I have the moto g and I love it. The only minor gripes I have with it is that sometimes while multitasking it does lag, but its to be expected. All in all for 170 euro I can't complain. Lollipop made me love it even more. Everything just feels smoother. 

[antoainb]

Great review. I have the moto g and I love it. The only minor gripes I have with it is that sometimes while multitasking it does lag, but its to be expected. All in all for 170 euro I can't complain. Lollipop made me love it even more. Everything just feels smoother. 

 

Yup.

[Interfectorem]

I love Motorola ergonomics. Nice review BTW

[antoainb]

I love Motorola ergonomics. Nice review BTW

 

Thanks!

[Guest]

I liked the first-gen, but I just can't do Android. But for a cheap phone, if it's anything like the first (like you said it was), then it's probably a good choice.

 

Nice review!

[Tech_Dreamer]

NIce indepth review, thorough , fulfilling views & remarks, This review was more than what i expected ..Good Job Anto Keep it up

[antoainb]

I liked the first-gen, but I just can't do Android. But for a cheap phone, if it's anything like the first (like you said it was), then it's probably a good choice.

 

Nice review!

 

It's a first gen blown up to a 5" screen and better camera/speakers. Some people say that the 1st gen display was brighter, but this display is plenty bright IMO. And thanks!

 

NIce indepth review, thorough , fulfilling views & remarks, This review was more than what i expected ..Good Job Anto Keep it up

 

Thanks!

[harrynowl]

Nice review

 

The camera looks a LOT better than the 1st gen Moto G, assuming both are using decent camera software.

 

Although I did notice someone warping through time on your HDR shot

 

[antoainb]

Nice review

 

The camera looks a LOT better than the 1st gen Moto G, assuming both are using decent camera software.

 

Although I did notice someone warping through time on your HDR shot

 

snip

 

I'm using the stock camera app.

 

loominati confirmed

[JoaoPRSousa]

Nice review mate

[antoainb]

Nice review mate

 

Thanks!

[Guest]

@AlexGoesHigh

[handymanshandle]

+1

 (I own a Moto G 2nd Gen too) and I've owned it for 2 months now. I was going to write a review about it a month ago then last month, but I was indecisive about how I'd format the review. So I guess maybe I'll do a 3 month review and refer to some points in your review.

[antoainb]

+1

 (I own a Moto G 2nd Gen too) and I've owned it for 2 months now. I was going to write a review about it a month ago then last month, but I was indecisive about how I'd format the review. So I guess maybe I'll do a 3 month review and refer to some points in your review.

 

Cool!

[Guest]

I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!

[antoainb]

I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!

 

GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT GET IT!

[Tim Drake]

How long have you had it?

 

It is starting to bitch on and lag on me and I have only had it since November.

[antoainb]

How long have you had it?

 

It is starting to bitch on and lag on me and I have only had it since November.

 

I've had it for a month, are you running Lollipop?

[Tim Drake]

I've had it for a month, are you running Lollipop?

Yes, it was getting really bad on Kit Kat but I updated to lollipop a few weeks ago and it got a bit better.

I still get intense lag spikes every now and then.

[emachado99]

Good review! HDR looks really good.

Haven't really tested HDR with my iPhone 5S... I should try it

[antoainb]

Good review! HDR looks really good.

Haven't really tested HDR with my iPhone 5S... I should try it

 

Yeah, I also like HDR quite a lot. It looks surreal at times but the effect is quite cool.