Review: Motorola Moto G 4G

We’ve seen both what Motorola calls the high and the low end of its mobile phone spectrum, and now it’s time to check out the mid-range, as Motorola’s “G” enters the appropriately initialled GadgetGuy labs.

Features

A new Moto G might be on its way out to shelves, but that’s only a 3G model, and if you’re in the market for a 4G LTE phone and Motorola is the name you trust, the Moto G 4G might be the one to check out.

Inside the handset is a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, running alongside 8GB storage and 1GB RAM, with a microSD slot upgrading that 8GB to an amount determined by a microSD card.

Connections are more or less par for the course, with 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 with Low Energy (BT LE, BT Smart), GPS, and 4G LTE, with wired connectivity handled through a microUSB port at the bottom of the handset.

Cameras are included as well, with a 5 megapixel shooter on the back with an LED flash and autofocus, while the front camera sits at 1.3 megapixels.

A 4.5 inch 720p High Definition (HD) screen covers this array of technology, protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 and showcasing the 1280×720 resolution with software button loaded in at the bottom of the screen, acting for back, home, and multitask, as Google’s Android 4.4 “KitKat” is loaded here, which this set of soft buttons relies on.

Two physical buttons can be found on the Moto G 4G, with the power button and volume rocker both found on the right edge.

Ports are equal in number to the buttons, with the aforementioned microUSB port a the bottom and a 3.5mm headset jack at the top, both of these in dead centre in their respective positions.

The back of the phone is removable, revealing a microSIM slot and microSD card slot.

The battery is rated for 2070mAh and is not removable.

Performance

Not everyone wants to spend an arm and a leg on a new phone, and if that’s you, you might find that you only have 3G phones to choose from.

But 3G is slow, and with 4G working on pretty much every major network in Australia, having that available as an option even on the “cheap” options is a big deal.

Enter Motorola’s G 4G, a new version of the mid-range Moto G smartphone Motorola brought to our shores in June, now updated to support the 4G technology we’re all enjoying at the moment, increasing the speeds of the Moto E to something a little bit faster that has the potential to make YouTube watching on the bus a little more high def, at least from a mobile perspective.

First, though, you have to pick up the handset.

In the Moto G, Motorola is continuing with its soft touch plastic back, a design that is comfortable on the hands and fingers, fitting the palm nicely, with the 4.5 inch display not too big and not too small.

If the idea of a big phone isn’t on the agenda for you, the Moto G 4G is worth checking into, as it’s a comfortable slot between the 4.3 and 4.7 inch spot, just before the 4.7 inch to 5.5 inches that the non-phablet flagships now take up.

Over to the screen, and while we prefer a Full HD display, Motorola’s G doesn’t have a bad thing going with its 1280×720 display, which is technically running at 1184×720 due to the soft buttons taking up some of that screen space.

That said, even with a few pixels gone, Motorola is showing an admirable 326 pixels per inch, right on target with the pixel count of an Apple iPhone 5S and even the new iPhone 6.

On the eyes, it’s bright, crisp, and easy to look at from most angles, giving other similarly sized handsets a good run for their money when compared directly, with the pixels hard to peep at all.

Using Android is more or less exactly the way you’d expect an Android handset to be, especially if you’ve played with one before this.

As usual, Motorola keeps things mostly stock, with widgetised home screens, a scrolling app menu, dropdown notification bar, and a shortcut dock you can easily move icons in and out of.

We’ll get to more on this shortly, but it’s an easy transition if you’ve ever used a version of Android before, and Google is mostly to thank for that.