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Comment by chdir | Hacker News Reader

Lots of people loved Moto G as a secondary/travel phone. But for me, it's my primary phone now, even though I consider myself an early adopter of cutting edge technology. Where I live, there are no carrier subsidies. This new trend of having a wonderful sub $200 phone is pretty neat. I don't need games, just a decent smartphone with calendar, email and a handful of other utilities. The recent evolutions in smartphone are pretty banal.

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.

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I second this. It is my only phone, and aside from the camera, it is a great phone at an awesome price.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8272745

I honestly don't notice anything wrong with a 720p screen at that size. Sure it may not be retina, but I don't care as long as my battery lasts all day (it does and into the next day).

Being able to pass out at a strange house and not have to worry about my cellphone in the morning is freeing.

It is retina as in at-least-pixel-per-arcsec.

> I don't need games

I also have Moto G first gen. It launches every game I through at without any problem.

That's true. The processor+RAM are sufficient for most stuff. I haven't stressed it because I don't have a need for that. I hope the manufacturers take a lesson and stop pushing GHz in every person's face like they do with megapixels (unfortunately it hits diminishing returns pretty fast). But seriously, if one wants to be in a market that's rapidly getting commoditized, learn from Moto or Xiaomi, don't idolize Samsung.

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