The New Moto G
motorola.com
motorola.com
Yeah I know hardware always keeps getting better and cheaper, but still when you stand back for a second, and think about it, it's kind of wow. I guess the innovation here is making a decent device that's cheap, but the fact that it's cheap and small and has good specs and battery life? Wowzers.
Yet, I almost wish these devices did a little bit more to work in non-handheld modes. I'd be happy to ditch my laptop for most things if I could get better interface access to the hardware in a modern smartphone, even if the interface wasn't optimal, an impromptu computing environment at a coffee shop would be pretty nice. Hell, I just got a Note 3, and it's just about as powerful as the desktop I replaced at the end of last year. I'd wager it's too powerful for most of the mobile junk I do with it. Plopping it down on a table next to my coffee and just turning it onto "computer" mode would be pretty amazing.
Something like what's outlined here with pico projectors.
https://pdf.yt/d/J5nSHPu5dzdpWwvn
Another issue is that, when phone shopping, it's hard enough to tell what are the newer devices vs what are the models on the way out (and on the way out of being supported). $180 is just about at the price of phones that are on the way out vs. ~$300 for phones that are current models. It won't matter to many people, but unless the phone sales guy tells you, or you're up to date on current phone releases, you might give this a pass.
edit I'm thinking basically of this use-case, but with the projector in the phone.
http://www.brookstone.com/laser-projection-virtual-keyboard
edit apparently this is as close as is available (almost)
http://www.ctxtechnologies.com/products/vk300-iphone-docking...
Logically separated layers. Not "you don't like the display server... well you have to re-implement everything from scratch yourself". You know, normal computer things.
Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, of course, already on the desk. Chromecast hooked up to the monitor. Use one of the Android automation apps to automatically mirror the display via Chromecast when the phone is in range of the BT keyboard / mouse on your desk and when it is laying flat on a surface (plopped onto the desk).
Not perfect. Chromecast latency might be an issue. You would still have to plug it into a charger if you don't have wireless charging. But it should work.
There's some tiny bluetooth keyboard projectors that now use green laser light and are very bright.
Here's a vendor that apparently sells them (but I couldn't find any pictures of the green keyboard versions).
Some of their interesting devices
http://www.ctxtechnologies.com/products/misteex/
http://www.ctxtechnologies.com/products/vk300-iphone-docking...
Yeah, I'm excited about this possibility too. It's a shame Canonical couldn't get the Ubuntu on Android project off the ground (too little interest from phone manufacturers/carriers AFAIR). However, all is not lost, there's another project working on this kind of convergence, will happily install their Android ROM when it's ready... https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/linuxonandroid
The same could be done for a desktop-like computing environment... for that matter a laptop shell... just a battery, screen, keyboard, trackpad that your phone controls.
We're really at a point where this should be doable and eminent... if say Tesla and Apple could get together on this (with very liberal licensing for other companies, as long as they meet the full spec) would be the most likely chance of this getting out there and succeeding.
These devices come nowhere close to competing with traditional computers. Not yet...
I posit that phones outperform laptops for a lot of people (possibly because upgrading your phone is more widely encouraged).
For historical perspective, Core 2 Duos are from 2006/7. And T7200 is a laptop version, slower than desktop equivalents of the same era.
Desktop CPUs are still much, much faster than phone CPUs. Here's a table with lots of numbers:
http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks...
The iPhone 5s, with the "desktop class" A7 chip, has about 15% of the computing power of an i7 4770k, by this benchmark.
Personally, I don't use mobile devices - neither phones nor laptops - for compute-heavy operations. Everything from compilation to video transcoding takes way longer than on a decent desktop. Phones are not close to threatening that yet, not by a long shot.
Trivial work, like text editing, light photo manipulation, sure. Anything that could be done on a PC 15 years ago, sure. But they're nowhere near one another.
In the case of a quad cortex A7, like the one in the Moto G, or the MediaTek MT6589 in the bench comparison, we see that the performances are too bad to replace a laptop. With a score of 1258 it is comparable of the best good old netbooks with Intel Atom.
One option is to run compute-heavy stuff on a networked server, which you SSH into from a lightweight phone/tablet/Chromebook. I can definitely see myself working like that, if I could get a phone or tablet with a docking station.
So they are around, just hard to find.
Motorola has been very good at embracing this. Their Moto G is by no mean perfect, but it is an excellent phone at an affordable price.
The 'race to bottom' is often decried in our era obsessed with profits and money, but bringing this kind of first grade technology to anyone on the planet is a pretty good goal. I am very excited by what Android One will be able to bring. It is time for this kind of project : it is now possible to build good smartphones at low prices.
Even as a mobile developer, phone launchs are pretty boring. There has not been a major breakthrough in quite some time and I suspect that they are going to be increasingly rare.
Other than the sub-par camera (low frame rate & grainy), Moto G (first version) is an amazing phone. It has great battery life, perfect screen size (for me), it's snappy, no bloatware. I'm not scared of dropping/losing it as much as I would with an iPhone.
There has been a lot of discussion of screen size in the Moto X thread [0], and I tend to agree that the old Moto G's screen size was great. I previously had a Galaxy S3 and did not mind the larger screen, but after switching to the smaller Moto G screen, I much prefer the 4.5". It is still big enough, but the battery life is far better. My cursory checking of the battery stats for both phones showed that generally the screen use was the driving factor in battery life, so I was happy to make the tradeoff to a smaller screen in exchange for a longer-lasting charge.
Being able to pass out at a strange house and not have to worry about my cellphone in the morning is freeing.
I also have Moto G first gen. It launches every game I through at without any problem.
Even so the G has been great for me as well. I hope the new one has a better camera, that's really the Achilles heel of v1.
(It's strange, but bigger-is-better really seemed to have permeated the Android market. Whatever happpened to the opposite mindset, the one that gave us stuff like the Nokia 8210? The size of friends' iPhones - particularly the 4s - had really seemed just right, and I was rather disappointed when shopping for an Android equivalent to find they were all anywhere from large to hulking enormous by comparison. Even the so-called "Mini" ones were no better, being generally only the tiniest bit smaller than their non-Mini siblings.)
Car driving over Moto G:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzI-Cd3SYVE
30 minutes under water:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVaTKG5q4YI
Under water and scratch test:
Also, Firefox is the only mobile browser that allows extensions and it's only supported on Android, so you can install Adblock Edge and browse the mobile web free from any ads!!
I just don't use my phone enough to play games or mess around with apps.
Your credit is your own business of course. But if it's just a random idea you had, you'll save a lot more money switching to pre-paid, and buying the hardware you want outright.
Plus that'll give you flexibility you didn't have before (to switch carriers when/if you feel like it, without penalty).
The other manufacturers while not a cartel where in no hurry to reduces pricess and the stuff available at point was horrible shit like the Orange San Francisco.
Moto is a far better company now, but also a much smaller and lower-value company.
One could also say buying Nokia was Microsoft's biggest brain fart. Google has managed to clean house faster.
Coolpad 7320 (bought for $139!, 5.5'') and Coolpad F1 (5'') are better for me.
- Faster
- Much better camera
- Dual sim. Very important for me because I can use free unlimited internet on secondary card.
- MicroSD
- Bigger screen space - no Android buttons bar on bottom.
- Same high quality. Coolpad is 6th biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
I compared my Coolpad 7320 with real (hands on) Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and it's quite similar.
(edited post a bit)
Coolpad F1: 71.5 x 141 x 9.3 mm, 151g
It works great. Screen, battery, wifi, GPS, and 3G signals are good. No crashes.
PS. 1. Speaker volume can be increased with MTKTools. 2. Root with latest version of Chinese VRoot (not english version). 3. USB disk doesn't show up in Windows for me, instead I use Total Commander with ADB plugin. 4. New Coolpad F2 will be better, with very fast MT6595.
Very likely a astroturfer working for Coolpad (not too say that the phone isn't better or worse than Moto G).
I actually think the midrange is the most interesting area for mobile phones these days, particularly as more impressive hardware trickles down into the lower models and we reach the end of rapid hardware increases. For around $200-300 (or 150-200GBP) you can pick up powerful phone that will do almost everything a flagship will. They are an even more interesting proposition outside of the US, where a greater number of people tend to buy phones off-contract and thus are more sensitive to the unsubsidised price.
At the low end you have the Moto E and several of the Nokia Lumia devices at around the $100 price point, basically replacing the feature phone. I'd consider these over the cheap Android clones that may have better specs for the same price due to the build quality and software support.
Then, at the lower-end of the mid-range, you have this just announced Moto G (2nd Gen), alongside the Lumia 730 and a few others in the $200 bracket. Such a price is perfect for people like my parents who just want a phone with respectable smartphone features, solid build quality and reliability. I think this really is the sweet spot where sales and growth will occur - are there any other quality phones in this price bracket?
Going up to the higher side of the mid-range, you have the Nexus phones, the OnePlusOne, and the just announced Sony Z3 Compact and Lumia 830. Such phones will do pretty much everything more demanding customers are after in a smartphone, including myself. I imagine they will end up overshadowing the flagship phones, leaving them to just the tech-spec obsessed. Honestly, is there really any need for a $600 phone anymore?
The footnotes on the page say:
* Officially licensed College Cases by UnCommon.
which makes no sense.
It's annoyingly common when sites put asterisks on things but never actually include the footnotes it's supposed to refer to.
I think it was detrimental.
A phone with comparable specs to the Moto G could have achieved their real goal that you mentioned, with the effect of spreading sales opportunities to millions more people. Those millions more in phone sales would have caused many, many more added transactions to the Amazon machine, as I assume they intend with the Amazon Fire Phone.
But my point is the goal of Amazon is to sell media/software and everything about the phone is designed for that. The goal of Motorola is to sell phones, and to a lesser extent push the Android platform's market share(due to momentum from time under Google if nothing else). So the Motorola phone is going to have good cost/value, and the Amazon phone is going to have gimmick, gimmick, gimmick to surface more of their products and services to you.
I used NFC some on my Galaxy S3, and when I was buying the Moto G, I was a bit hesitant about going to a phone without NFC. But I have not once missed not having NFC. NFC has interesting prospects, but I have yet to see a real "must have" use for it.
[1] http://www.motorola.com/us/Moto-G-%282nd-Gen.%29/moto-g-2nd-...
[2] http://www.motorola.com/us/moto-g-pdp-1/Moto-G-%281st-Gen.%2...
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/motorola-moto-g-2nd-generation-first-ta...
If they secretly cheaped out any components this time, that would burn their brand -- and the original Moto G was already "cheapest every component", so what could they downgrade?
My computing device history goes way back to Commodore 64 and Apple IIc, I became a developer in the late 80's and today I am absolutely fascinated by relatively "disposable" < $200 phones, ChromeBooks and laptops.
After decades of developing new software for the next great leap in hardware specs, we're entering an interesting new phase of software development for a new class of hardware targets. Good times!
So I bought a Winphone (Lumia 630). Actually quite pleased with the purchase. Everything just works and it's pretty fast.
Few things that bugged me about the Moto G:
1. Battery life. Some days it was good, some days it was abysmal. I can't work out why. Google Play Services ate a lot of it though apparently.
2. Navigation under Google Maps craps out regularly and crashes, usually right at a road junction. Also it's useless to start a navigation session if you're on a G/E connection. You need an H/H+ for it to even consider working. That's bad as I drive out into the sticks regularly.
3. Chrome just refuses to load pages half the time and white screens.
4. Sometimes calls don't connect with audio.
Nice phone but marred by bugs IMHO.
The larger size probably helps fit he SD slot in.
I would buy a smartphone phone that's less impressive in performance but that would run for about a week. I would be happy to suspend all that "smart" functionality when the phone is idle but the system could run Android and thus give me a browser and Google Maps when I need them. I'm willing to burn energy while I'm explicitly using smart phone applications but I don't like the phone to drain itself out of juice in one day even if I only ever answered a couple of phonecalls on that day.
Apparently you could import the old Moto G with dual-SIM from India, but I am not at all sure that all the radio bands fit my operator etc. The support in Cyanogen for dual-SIM is also reportedly somewhere between bad and nonfunctional.
I often carry three phones in my bag and it feels so wrong. I, and everyone like me, could surely pay a premium for this. But those products are kept to lower spec phones sold in Asia or India.
It's probably possible to buy a US phone and get it working here; but I know (vaguely) that US networks are different enough from the rest of the world that I don't want to make any quick assumption about that, and don't have the time to research it...
The only thing is that I had to change the software keyboard to add Bulgarian, but I think most people change them anyway.
"Availability: Pre-Order"
I've been trying to see if it supports LTE or HSDPA, but I can't see it on their specs page...
I sent one of the first-gen Gs to my mother as an upgrade from her iPhone 3GS. Will be great to use as a standalone music/media player on camping trips, etc, with the SD card support.
I'm guessing a LTE variant is in the works, since last years Moto G got an LTE variant.
Glancing at them real quick, they're a T-Mobile MVNO and their mid-range unlimited plan is $50/month with 2GB of high-speed data. Straight Talk, which is usually on T-Mobile but depending on device and region also uses the other three major carriers, is $45 for an unlimited plan with 3GB of high-speed data. And MetroPCS, owned by T-Mobile, is also $50/month for a mid-range plan, but with 3GB of high-speed data.
Unless it has better roaming priority, I don't see what it brings to the table (maybe pay-as-you-go is a different story, though, if that's what you're interested in).
Potentially because T-Mobile direct offers the same plan for $5 cheaper than PTEL does. (TMO Simple Starter 2GB at $45/month vs PTEL 2GB 'Unlimited' for $50/month).
T-Mobile also has lots of advertising and lots of physical stores, which probably helps a bit.
https://ting.com/blog/device-update-didja-miss-us-2/
They even have a signup for notifications when the iPhone 5S/C is available.
You can buy it with either the US or worldwide GSM frequencies.
[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/09/04/the-new-moto-g-leaks...
repeat 10x
Seriously, please just let me pay an extra pile of cash to ship across the border.
Didn't anyone not see that?
Android 4.4 and 1GB ram are more than enough to run everything you throw at it.
I don't need to hack my phone which I feel like is what everyone always sells Android as e.g. "It's so customizable", "can you do X on an iPhone?". I want to make phone calls. And use maps.
I heavily use Google Voice, but from what I hear, it's being rendered obsolete in favor of hangouts (which I'm very opposed to).
Like Symbian, Series30, Series40, -DOS, NIX, Windows, ....