Moto G Versus Moto X

 

Image Courtesy - Google Images

The Moto X has finally come to India and the Moto G is already available so you might be trying to decide which to buy. Well that's where GUIthing comes in because we've compared the two Android smartphones in various categories to highlight how they differ.

Price

Motorola smashed it in terms of value for money with the Moto G, offering users a mid-range smartphone for a budget price. There's little to argue about with a price of just INR 12,499/- to buy it outright.

Things are a little different when it comes to the Moto X. It's Motorola's current flagship smartphone so it's bound to cost more than the Moto G and as such has a INR 23,999/- price tag.

This means you can buy nearly 2 Moto Gs for the price of one Moto X. So it is worth the extra money?

Both of Motorola's phones look very similar. Even though the screen sizes are a little different, the devices themselves are about the same size. In fact, the Moto G with is smaller screen is a little bigger than the Moto X. It's also understandably thicker and heavier than its more expensive brother.

Each is well made but feels quite plasticky so there's little in it. With no Moto Maker in India just yet, the Moto X doesn't have a big advantage over the Moto G here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Screen

Screen size is a great way to choose between two smartphones – you'll want to pick a size that's comfortable for you personally. There's only a small difference between the Moto G and Moto X here. The former is rocking a 4.5in display while the latter give you a little extra at 4.7in.

They both use a 720p resolution so it's in fact the Moto G which has a better pixel density but there's not much in it so it's better to go on the size.

The Moto X uses AMOLED technology. Colours are more vibrant and punchy but some users may prefer the more natural look of the Moto G's display.

Image Courtesy - Google Images

Moto G vs Moto X: Processor

Despite its bargain basement price, the Moto G has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the Moto X has a dual-core Snapdragon Pro chip clocked a bit higher at 1.7GHz. It's got 2GB of RAM.

This might seem a little confusing but the bottom line is that both offer decent performance so you needn't worry. The Moto X has a software optimised chip with a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor. Just bear in mind that the Moto G is punching way above its weight here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Storage

With no expandable storage available on the Moto G or Moto X, storage is another area to consider closely. The Moto G is available in 8- or 16GB models while the Moto X has double these capacities. However, it appears that the 32GB Moto X missed its flight to India.

Moto G vs Moto X: Cameras

The Moto G has a mid-range 5Mp main camera which takes surprisingly good photos. It's even got an HDR shooting mode. Although the 10Mp camera on the Moto X isn't quite as good as we'd hoped, it still offers more details and video in 1080p compare to 720p. It's front camera is also better at 2Mp against 1.3Mp.

Image Courtesy - Google Images

Moto G vs Moto X: Software

If you can't find a Moto G or Moto X which ships with Android 4.4 Kitkat, you'll be able to upgrade to the latest software once you're up and running – an advantage of being a Google-owned (Now Lenovo) company.

Although both phones run pretty vanilla versions of Android, there are differences which you should be aware of.  On top of things like Moto Assist, the Moto X has unique features like Active display and Quick Capture. It's also got voice recognition which can learn your voice so there are a few reasons to opt for the Moto X over the Moto G here.

Moto G vs Moto X: Battery life

It's worth noting that neither the Moto X nor Moto G has a removable battery. Each phone offers typical smartphone battery performance of one day with an average usage. Only light users will get more than a day.

Tech Specs - moto x

OS: Android 4.4 KitKat
CPU: 1.7 GHz dual-core Krait Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon Pro
GPU: Adreno 320
Nano-SIM
65.3x129.3x10.4mm, 130g
Display: 4.7in AMOLED 720x1280, 312 ppi
Internal storage: 16GB, 2 years 50GB of Google Drive free
Memory: 2GB RAM
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
NFC
Main Camera: 10Mp, autofocus, LED flash
Camera Features 1.4µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, panorama, HDR
Front Camera: 2Mp
Battery: 2200mAh

Verdict

The Moto G punches so far above its price tag that the large difference in price between it and the Moto X and the small difference in hardware and software mean the Moto X isn't worth the extra money. 

Moto G gets Android 4.4 KitKat in India

Image Courtesy : Google Images

Motorola has started rolling out the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update to the Indian variant of Moto G, the company's budget Android smartphone

The 230.7MB update (on the 16GB version of the phone) brings Google's latest mobile operating system to Moto G which was launched on February 6 in India. The update includes a new phone dialer application and integrates SMS/ MMS capabilities with the Google Hangouts apps. 

The update also adds new photo editing options to the Gallery app, including new filter effects, the ability to draw on photos, advanced cropping and adjustments to colour, exposure, and contrast among others. 

Image Copyright - GUIthing

It also adds support for printing photos, Google Docs, Gmail messages and other content via WiFi, Bluetooth and hosted services such as Google Cloud Print and HP ePrinters. 

Moto G owners who don't receive a notification about the update can check for it through the phone's Settings. After tapping the "Settings" icon, they need to tap on "About phone" and tap on "System updates." They can then select "Download" after receiving a prompt to download and install the update. 

Image copyright - GUIthing

Moto G, which was launched last week in India, is being sold exclusively by e-commerce retailer Flipkart. The phone sports a 4.5-inch screen with a 720p resolution. It is powered by a Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor running at 1.2GHz. The device comes with 8GB and 16GB storage options and has 1GB RAM. The primary camera can shoot images in 5MP, while the secondary camera is 1.3MP.

Motorola Moto G - GUITHING review!

Image Courtesy: Google Images

                                                                 

The American telecommunication major, Motorola has finally launched the much awaited feature mid-range Moto G in India.

The device was launched exclusively on a leading online store in India. The 16GB model of Moto G went out of stock within 15 minutes after its release. Moto G's launch is certainly going to affect the popular local mid-range phones of brands like Micromax, Karbonn & Lava. 

Display and Design:

Image Courtesy: Google Images

                                    

Motorola Moto G has got soft finish matte on the back and has innumerable interchangeable colorful cases. It features 4.5-inch HD (1280x720p) screen with a pixel density of 329 ppi (pixel per inch), best among the smartphones in mid-range segment.

Processor, RAM and Storage:

Moto G powers a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor. Motorola's phone houses a processor made from the industry leader Qualcomm. In terms of storage, Motorola loses points as it fails to plant a microSD card slot in the Moto G limiting its memory capacity.

It is also packed with 1GB RAM.

Camera:

Motorola Moto G, ships with 5.0-megapixel camera and according to few hands on reviews, it is one of the best camera among the smartphones in its class.

Mobile Operating System:

It is to be noted that the Motorola's Moto G is running on the latest Jelly Bean version 4.3 and is also slated to receive the new v4.4.2 KitKat in few days time.

Price:

In India, Moto G (8GB) is priced at Rs. 12,499, whereas 16GB is available for Rs. 13,999.

Pros: affordable, immediate availability of KitKat update

Cons: no microSD card slots

Here's an Unboxing Video for our readers.

Google Nexus 5 - Review

Google's new platform showcase device which has been manufactured by LG. It's also the first time that Google has launched its flagship device in the Indian market just weeks after its international launch. The pricing of the phone and the promise of priority software updates makes it an irresistible proposition. So, how does it perform in real world conditions? We put it to test and find out in our review.

Build/ Design

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 sports a very understated look and there's nothing really striking in the phone's design that will shout for your attention. The phone is made of plastic and doesn't feel very premium.

However, when you place the phone in your hand, you'll feel that it's very pleasant to hold thanks to the soft touch matte finish. Also, despite its large 4.95-inch screen, we didn't face any issues operating it with one hand. This is also due to the phone being quite lightweight at 130 grams.

The Nexus 5's edges are less curved and its corners less rounded compared to other phones, including the Nexus 4. The phone is available in Black and White color variants.

The 4.95-inch full-HD display dominates the front of the Nexus 5, and there are no hardware buttons. A round LED notification light is placed below the display, while the sensor array and the front camera sits above it.

The right edge of the Nexus 5 features the Power/ Screen lock and the Micro-SIM card tray, and the left edge features the volume rocker key. All the keys are made of ceramic and offer decent tactile feedback.

The 3.5-mm headset jack sits at the top edge of the Nexus 5, while the Micro-USB port and speaker grill sits at the bottom edge.

As we mentioned, the back of the Nexus 5 sports a matte soft touch finish giving it a good grip. It is a bit susceptible to smudges, though. The rear features an 8-megapixel ring shaped camera lens and the LED flash, apart from LG and Nexus branding.

Display

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 comes with an IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and pixel density of 445 ppi. The display comes with Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 protection making it resistant to scratches. 

In our use, we found the Nexus 5's screen to be very bright, with text and images looking crisp and sharp. Colours looked vivid and not over saturated like they look on AMOLED display though blacks don't look very deep.

The screen delivers great viewing angles, though it was a little reflective. Sunlight legibility was good though the screen brightness levels could be better.

Overall, the Nexus 5's display is one of the best in its class.

Software/ User Interface

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 is the first smartphone to ship with Android 4.4 KitKat, the latest release of the operating system. As with all Nexus devices, the phone includes the stock build of the operating system, without any additional UI skinning.

Android 4.4 KitKat on the Nexus 5 features a number of visual changes including a new launcher, making the interface even more minimalistic. It sports flatter design elements, muted colours in status icons, transparency, and smoother transition animations.

The first change that you'll notice is the transparent status and navigation key bars at the top and bottom, making the Nexus 5's screen look bigger and brighter. The Android 4.4 KitKat lock screen also features a small camera button, which helps in opening the camera app via the lock screen widget directly from the lock screen.

With Android 4.4 KitKat, you can now have as many home screens as you want by simply dragging an icon or placing a widget on a new one. After enabling Google Now, Google's smart assistant that fetches information and offers updates based on your data and usage behaviour, you'll see that the left most home screen would be Google Now pane with information cards and a search bar. The screen can also be invoked by swiping up the screen from the Home button. The Google search bar with the voice search icon is present on all home screens and cannot be removed.

Interestingly, you can also initiate voice search from the Nexus 5 when it's in the unlocked state by simply saying, 'Ok Google.' The option is only available when you choose US English as the default language option in the Google Now app's settings, though. With this change, Google search is integrated deeply with the phone.

The status bar icons and and UI elements in the notifications tray have been stripped off the blue colour in Android 4.4 KitKat, and now sport a muted white-grey shade.

The launcher has been revamped with icons looking bigger than their Jelly Bean avatars and dots are used to indicate the pagination in the home screen and app launcher, similar to iOS.

When you launch the KitKat app launcher or go back to the home screen, you'll notice a smooth fly away animation.

The app launcher now only features app icons and gets rid of widgets. Due to the larger icons, you'll see a 4x5 grid instead of a 5x5 grid.

Long pressing on the home screen brings up the menu to change the Wallpapers, Widgets and Google Now settings. The choice of default still wallpapers, live wallpaper and custom wallpapers are now available under a single menu.

The KitKat notifications tray features notifications that can be expanded by using two finger pull. It also features buttons for clearing all notifications and for displaying toggles for Brightness, Settings, Wi-Fi, Network, Battery, Aeroplane Mode, Bluetooth, Location settings and Alarm clock.

Android 4.4 KitKat also includes an immerse mode that hides the status and navigation bars offering a full screen experience in apps. Apps like Google Play Books already support this mode and developers can choose to enable it for their apps. The OS also allows developers to display semi-transparent navigation and status bars. We've not seen any apps that take advantage of this feature, however.

Android 4.4 also includes a revamped Phone app that now automatically prioritizes your contacts based on the people you talk to the most. When you first launch the app, you'll see a screen that displays a search bar, a place where most frequently called contacts and favorites are displayed and shortcuts to launch all contacts, the dialling pad, call history and settings.

You can also search for nearby places and businesses, contacts, or people in their Google Apps domain directly from the search bar. 

If you receive a call from a phone number that is not saved in your contacts, the Android 4.4 KitKat-based Nexus 5 will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps. 

We felt that the new Phone app could be a little overwhelming for some as it's not very intuitive when it comes to describing what the shortcut keys do. However, the search feature packs in an online phone directory in the app. It will even fetch numbers for users who've registered their phone numbers with Google.  The number identification feature also works for incoming calls eliminating the need for apps like Trucaller.

Google has also combined its chat service and the Messaging (SMS) app into one app, Hangouts. The app lets you chat with your friends who use the Hangouts (erstwhile Google Talk) service and send messages to contacts. For people who don't actively use Google's instant messaging service or Google+, there's no value add that the unified app offers. It could also confuse these users if they've got unkempt Google+ profiles as it lists Google contacts on top when you want to compose a new message.

The Nexus 5 also includes the new Photos app that allows you to view and edit local and Google+ images. The new Photos app features deeper integration with Google+ and can be used to enable tagging in photos. The old Gallery app is still included in the app, though.

The Email app has also received an overhaul with KitKat, and the app displays the pictures of contacts for emails. Navigation has been made similar to the Gmail app and it also offers the swipe to delete gesture.

Google also includes its other apps including Drive, Keep, Play Games, Play Movies, Play Movies, Play Books, Play Newsstand and Quick office for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The new OS also supports printing through Google Cloud Print plugin or apps made by printer manufacturers.

Overall, KitKat on the Nexus 5 is an improvement when it comes to the overall experience of using the phone, though there's till some scope for improvement, especially in apps like Hangouts. The status icons are also inferior at offering feedback compared to the ones seen in previous versions of the OS.

Camera

Image Credit - Google Images

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization, and a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera. The phone features the stock Android 4.4 Camera app with 4 default shooting modes - Still, Video, Panorama and Photo sphere (360-degree).

In the Still mode the app features settings for turning on HDR+, tinkering with Exposure, turning the LED flash on or off, switching between the front and back lenses and revealing more settings that include Geotagging toggle, Countdown timer, changing the picture size, White balance and the scene mode (Night, Action, Sunset, and Party). 

Similarly, in the Video mode, you can change video quality settings (1080p, 720p or 480p), Time lapse, Exposure settings and Flash. We have to say that we're no fans of the nested arc shaped settings toggles and find the app a bit unintuitive. 

Putting the camera of the Nexus 5 to test, we observed that images taken outdoors during daylight came out a tad brighter. 

However, there are a number of issues with the phone's camera that we encountered in our use. We observed that auto-focus is not consistent, and focusing manually takes time resulting in images being different from what we desired. We also observed that there was a slight lag between the time we fired the shutter and when the phone captured the image. 

Comparing images with the ones taken with an iPhone 5 in the same settings revealed that the white balance on the Nexus 5 camera (in the default mode) is skewed towards the warmer end of the spectrum. Low-light shots were also not up to the mark and had noise.

The camera does a good job for shooting videos and supports 1080p video capture.

The 1.3-megapixel front shooter does a decent job for video calling and taking self clicks. It supports 720p video capture.

Overall, the Nexus 5's camera is underwhelming at best. We hope Google pushes out a software update to fix the focus issues and shutter lag.

Performance/ Battery Life

Image Credit - Google Images

The Nexus 5 comes with top of the line hardware (at this point in time), as it is powered by a quad-core 2.26GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 330 chip for processing graphics. Our review unit had 32GB of built-in storage (a 16GB variant is also available), out of which 26.7GB is available to the user. The phone doesn't offer a microSD card slot for expandable storage. 

The overall experience of navigation through the Nexus 5's interface was extremely impressive, thanks to all the power under the phone's hood and the UI being devoid of unnecessary bells and whistles such as transition effects. 

We did not experience any lag at all while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps on the Nexus 5. 

The gaming experience on the Nexus 5 was pretty good with games like Temple Run 2, Subway Surfers, Shadow Gun: Dead Zone and Asphalt 7 running without encountering any issues.

We were able to run a number of video formats except for full-HD MOV and AVI through the native video player on the Nexus 5. We also experienced some issues with audio while playing an MKV format video. This was easily fixed by downloading a third-party video player. The phone then plays full-HD videos without any issues. 

Notably, the Nexus 5 doesn't include FM radio functionality.

Call quality was good on the Nexus 5, and we were able to receive cellular signals even in low signal areas. 

The Nexus 5 comes with a 2300mAh battery, it lasts just about a day with medium usage, including 1-1.5 hours of phone calls, two e-mail accounts with push notifications, playing some music, clicking a few pictures, Twitter notifications and WhatsApp chats. 

It's worth pointing out that we had mostly used 3G data with intermittent use of Wi-Fi and had put the phone's screen brightness at the highest level. Altering these settings might help in running the phone for a longer duration, depending on your usage pattern. 

The Nexus 5 also includes NFC capabilities, and we were able to transfer and receive files through Android Beam, which combines Bluetooth and NFC for sharing data. The phone also allows you to transfer files to other devices through Wi-Fi without being on the same Wi-Fi network. 

Image Credit - Google Images

Our Verdict
The Nexus 5 is one of the best Android smartphones that you can buy for under Rs. 30,000. Powered by a Snapdragon 800 processor, and 2GB RAM, the phone ticks all the right boxes in terms of hardware specifications. Since it's a Google experience device, you're always assured of regular software updates (at least for the 18 months promised period).

Priced at : Rs. 28,999 (India - Google Play Store)