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Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked
- ccozan 13y agoI hoped it is based on the X8 architecture, but is just "normal". So it makes not sense to compare it with Moto X, is a different phone, different target, is no "little brother", more like a distant "poor cousin".
- melling 13y agoI don't follow Android that closely. How is the performance of this phone? Cheap phones like this will help get Android into the hands of another billion people. It's probably more important to have a more recent version of Android than the fastest CPU.
- Touche 13y agoIt's quad core. Looks like an excellent phone for the price. Interesting that Motorola is one-uping the Nexus to some degree here (the Nexus is closer to being a flagship, but this is significantly cheaper). This might be my next. What's for sure is I'm never buying another $600 phone again.
- a3n 13y agoI'll never buy one of those again either, subsidized or not. One reason beyond the cost is being at the mercy of the telco for upgrades. So, unlocked, is this thing jail-breakable/cyanogenmodable or similar? What's a reasonable expectation for how many years I could keep it security upgraded?
- soperj 13y agoYou don't need to be unlocked any more to install CyanogenMod, for most popular phones. http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/CyanogenMod_Installer#Supported_Devices http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/CyanogenMod_Installer#Supporte...
- just_bytecode 13y agoThe Motorola blog says that the phone will have an unlockable bootloader (in the U.S) which means you should be able to install custom ROMs.
- evilmushroom 13y agoI really enjoy my $399 32gb Nexus 5. I couldn't be happier. But yeah, $600-900... never again.
- Negativemeat 13y agoIt's quad core cortex A7 @1.2 Ghz, that's not even in the same league as the 2 year old Galaxy Nexus (dual cortex A9 @ 1.2). This is in no way comparable to any modern flagship smartphone performance wise.
- pwnna 13y agoThis is similarly spec'ed to a Nexus 4. A little bit worse, actually, but not by much. This is probably still too expensive for another billion people. I think the most recent version of android is the most important part. really.
- noir_lord 13y agoIt's considerably worse than an N4, N4 has 2Gb RAM, Quad Core 1.5Ghz. It's closer to the 2012 N7 Quad 1.3/1Gb RAM. Still a hell of a lot of phone/screen for the money.
- noir_lord 13y agoThis in the same league as the first generation N7 (very roughly) which is a hell of a lot of hardware for 200 bucks. If this had been around when I bought my N4 I would have been very tempted (as I just want something that is a decent mobile web browser, I don't really use Apps at all).
- bsimpson 13y agoChrome runs like crap in 1GB RAM. The keyboard frequently gets garbage collected while I'm typing on it, and the whole thing can crash if I rotate the screen. That's running on a stock Galaxy Nexus.
- CrazedGeek 13y agoThat might just be a GNex issue. I don't have any issues with Chrome on my phone (which is slightly faster than the GNex but has the same amount of RAM).
- blinkingled 13y agoYou might want to factory reset - after all those incremental upgrades it can be worthwhile. My wife's GNex is on 4.3 stock and it had some lag before I reset it via a fresh burn of 4.3 factory image. Chrome runs better than acceptably on it. (Or are you on < 4.3 - in that case root and download/run LagFix free app to force TRIM. Pre 4.3 it makes a difference.)
- ccozan 13y agoIt is not about a faster processor, but the architecture, X8 in this case. This is what makes the Moto X very interesting, like the always on and some other quirks. I agree that a cheap performant phone is what is quite revolutionary. Google/Motorola does it right.
- MetaCosm 13y agoNot sure how the new OS performance is -- but all the requirements were significantly lowered as they push for cheaper & faster phones.
- Zigurd 13y agoI would claim that "flagship" Android smartphones are an unsustainable business model. At first, Android needed faster phones that it was getting from OEMs, but they went way overboard. Samsung soaks up a lot of that excess horsepower with bloatware. Here is a $200 phone with 4(!!!) cores and a very robust GPU. Even that is probably a bit more than neccessary. Android 4.4 got some performance tuning. Once ART is the default VM for typical OEM builds, it should be even less apparent why you need a monster CPU chip. The only thing a thumping CPU gives you is the ability to ignore what your bad apps and OEM bloatware are doing to performance longer than otherwise. Disable the boatware and clear out the sketchy apps you don't use and that Tegra 3 is just fine.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>The only thing a thumping CPU gives you is the ability to ignore what your bad apps and OEM bloatware are doing to performance longer than otherwise. Disable the boatware and clear out the sketchy apps you don't use and that Tegra 3 is just fine. didn't work during previous 20+ years of PC era.
- tsunamifury 13y agoA competitive globally accessible phone price would be $50, not $200. This feels more like a cheap 1st world phone than a global one. ZTE and other have already made 50 dollar phones using Android and Windows + Asha won't be far behind at $60. Motorola has a long ways to go (4x price reduction) to truly get their android devices into India, China And other poorer regions of South America and Africa.
- freehunter 13y agoWoodside said that the average worldwide is more around the $200 mark. They say their target research shows that people are spending $200 on poor quality phones. If that's the target they're going for and that's what they research shows, I don't think they missed the mark.
- YeahKIA 13y agoNokia has been making great windows phones for cheap like the 521 that routinely available for as little as 70 bucks. The hardware is lower spec as compared to this one but windows phone is known to run well on slower hardware. It will be interesting to see how well Android runs on this.
- eitally 13y agoI have recently returned from business trips to China and India and it's a fair statement to say that people are either spending a whole bunch of money on flagship phones ($1000 for a Galaxy Note 3 in India), they're sticking with dumb phones, or they're reluctantly forking over $200-400 for entry level smart phones. Karbonn, Oppo, Meizu and others are all trying to crack this market, but until now they're spent more time trying to compete at the "cheaper flagships than Samsung/HTC/LG/Sony" than than the "accessible decent smartphone" market.
- dnissley 13y agoIt seems very similarly specced to the htc first, the "facebook" phone, which is just about the best deal as far as used handsets go. I got mine for $140 shipped from gazelle's ebay store, and it has been a delight to use.
- Derbasti 13y agoThis is terriffic news! Smartphones are things that drop, that break, that fall into water and that get lost. Shelling out $500 for something this... ephemeral... always seemed absurd to me. Or maybe I am just clumsy.
- mkaziz 13y agoI agree with you. I balked at the Nexus 5 even because I would hate myself if I dropped $350 on the train. $179 is much more bearable.
- mistercow 13y agoI think the subsidies make this worse. When you hand over $200 for a phone, it doesn't feel like it's a $650 piece of equipment.
- tesseractive 13y agoThey make cases that are pretty good with shock resistance, and some phones are actually water resistant -- my last Motorola was. Other than "find my phone" features, I can't help you with losing it, however.
- Raphael 13y agoCalculate the cost. If you destroy a phone on average once per year, then $500 equates to $1.37 per day.
- esolyt 13y agoExcept human psychology doesn't work that way. You will have lost something that has a value of approximately $500. It will feel like someone just stole $500 from you.
- Zigurd 13y agoThis makes much more sense than the Moto X in terms of differentiating Motorola and charting a course that isn't "me too" and competitive with Google's first tier OEM partners.
- pacofvf 13y agoIt's an excellent price for Latin America, I don't know other parts of the world, at $200 USD it will kill other smartphone vendors (Samsung and other Android mostly http://qz.com/145704/slides-mobile-is-eating-the-world/ http://qz.com/145704/slides-mobile-is-eating-the-world/). Also note that latam region already have the same amount of smartphone sales than Europe or US/Canada.
- darrenkopp 13y agoThis is great, I was ready to buy a MotoX until I saw it was $750 unlocked, when at the same time the Nexus 4 was only $350. I'm not surprised that they didn't sell that many of them.
- ansible 13y agoI was in the market for a phone at that time. Google then dropped the price of the Nexus 4 to $200 (8GB storage) and $250 (16GB). That was way too good a deal for me to pass up.
- TheLegace 13y agoIt was kind of unfortunate since just 2 weeks before the price drop I had paid about $350 for the Nexus 4. Well that's life I guess.
- ansible 13y agoSo you just missed the cutoff for the refund? That's a bummer. I could maybe have held off and gotten a Nexus 5, but it wasn't clear how much it was going to sell for, or exactly when. I had previously tried out a N4, and found it acceptable (other than the lack of a physical keyboard), so I just went for it. No regrets.
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoI think you mean the Nexus 5.
- mactitan 13y agoFrom the article: There’s no LTE on board, which makes sense given the target market (growing, developed countries where LTE is in limited supply or nonexistent).
- patrickaljord 13y agoSuch as France ;)
- jb17 13y agoOr the UK.
- Zenst 13y agoUK does have LTE or 4G as some call it. Not that it is priced attractivly enough for anybody to use it compared to the lovely 3G deals out there. That and some of the 3G services are more than fast enough and I even used 3G for a game tornament few years back and won. But it is out there and more than one network now - but I live in London so kind of spoilt compared to parts of highland Scotland still to see a mobile signal (lucky peeps). But as said it is not priced well IMHO and if anything America may well have better price bundles with regards to 4G. Now 3G I think the UK is around 3x cheaper. Heck I get unlimited 3G and SMS and plenty of minutes for £15 a month, never seen anything as close for America. But that is a less dense area and later in the day to get 3G compared to the UK. So maybe they invested into kit that is more cheaply upgraded to 4G basestation wise compared to earlier models. But the UK is after all the size of a whole state in America and with that easier population density wise to cost justify rollouts. Albiet UK goverment flaffing about of spectrum sales and the UK mobile market getting burned by paying over the price for the 3G spectrum many years back (rare rare cose of a goverment selling something of not underpriced, indeed only case I can think of). EE (aka was T-Mobile until they merged with Orange) https://explore.ee.co.uk/coverage-checker/?wt.mc_id=ON_EE_V_coverage-checker&wt.tsrc=Vanity https://explore.ee.co.uk/coverage-checker/?wt.mc_id=ON_EE_V_... O2 http://www.o2.co.uk/4g/coverage-and-cities http://www.o2.co.uk/4g/coverage-and-cities Vodaphone http://www.vodafone.co.uk/our-network-and-coverage/uk-coverage-map/ http://www.vodafone.co.uk/our-network-and-coverage/uk-covera... So 4G is out there, but price wise - naaa. That said it is not covering the entire UK, though I can find places in the UK which get no mobile signal 2G onwards. Have to love the highlands in Scotland.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rtpg 13y agoI've never understood why the good cell phones (unlocked) always cost something like 500, 600 euros. Glad to see someone trying to push the prices down, especially if it's not Samsung or Apple, to help keep some variety in presence. Seeing Motorola as "a Google company" is really weird to me.(https://www.moto-g.com/ https://www.moto-g.com/ ), for some reason it makes me feel like Google is going to become the next GE or something.
- ek 13y agoRegarding the latter part of your comment, it's actually interesting to compare GE to Google for several reasons. When GE was founded, it was a new kind of company for the time, and in the same way, Google is a new kind of company for our time, together with companies like Amazon -- their business model is built around leveraging the Internet, in the same way that GE was built around leveraging America's burgeoning industry. Furthermore, Google manages to bring in a third of the revenue of GE with a sixth of the employees, and their net incomes are remarkably close. Think about how many products and services Google already offers, and how many more we already know are in the works. Because it's software, you don't as readily perceive these facets of this admittedly very large organization as you might with a company like GE, whose primary business is to produce a diverse array of physical objects.
- Artistry121 13y agoReally good point. If you have a blog you should write more about this. Very interesting.
- Cowen 13y agoThis sounds like a great offering for an unlocked smartphone. I'm personally in the market for a cheap, unlocked smartphone, and if this is as good as the reviews sound, I'll probably buy one straight away. But I think the real test for this phone's market share will be the subsidized price that carriers offer it at, which would have to be substantially lower than current subsidized flagship smartphones. I don't think most smartphone consumers value unlocked phones enough that they would pay a similar amount for one as they would pay for a subsidized iPhone 5S. A subsidized 5C would still be even cheaper than the unlocked Moto G. A subsidized $50 Moto G vs. a subsidized $100 iPhone 5C though? I could definitely see that taking off.
- redidas 13y agoWith such a low unlocked price, I wouldn't be surprised if this hits a subsidized price of $0.
- homersapien 13y agoAt $0 subsidized you would be getting ripped off. You'd be better off buying a subsidized iPhone, selling it, then buying the G at full price (plus pocketing a bunch of $$ at the same time).
- hackula1 13y agoI would bet cash flow is more important to which phone someone buys than absolute value.
- tesseractive 13y agoSure, but there's so much differential that it would make sense to buy a 5S on a contract using a payday loan, put it on eBay, and then use the proceeds to pay off the expensive loan, buy the Moto G, and go buy a bunch of groceries for your family with the difference. The Moto G would be a straight-up ripoff on a traditional contract. I expect it to be a hit in the prepaid market, however.
- jimktrains2 13y agoI guess it's not CMDA (Verizon) compatible. It sure looks nice otherwise, AND it has an FM radio. I hate that most new models have dropped that. EDIT: Reformatting
- josteink 13y agoYou have that backwards. It's Verizon which has decided explicitly not to be compatible with phones which works everywhere else in the world. It's like an ISP which decides that it doesn't want to use TCP/IP, but instead goes off and makes their own network-protocol, which requires its own custom OS preloaded on customer-computers. You can hardly blame phone-vendors for not being on that ship. It's much more profitable to make one model which works everywhere.
- CrazedGeek 13y agoI think he was talking about the FM radio.
- jimktrains2 13y agoAs someone else pointed out, I was talking about an FM radio. Also, you do realize that CDMA is much older than VZW and wasn't created just to create incompatibilities?
- lnanek2 13y agoLTE is GSM based, so it isn't like they were able to keep it up at least, heh.
- sudomal 13y agoI suspect the FM radio has been added to help them to convert feature phone users. It's the sort of feature that's highly prized in countries outside of North America.
- altero 13y ago>highly prized in countries outside of North America not in some european countries, FM radio means you have to pay ~20 euro/year per device for radio receiving license in some countries. Stupid, but it means this phone is useless for us as a corporate phone.
- cs702 13y agoThis phone looks like a game changer to me, because it has the specs of a high-end smartphone but is priced like a crappy low-end one. The cost of an unlocked unit is $300 to $600 LESS than that of other devices with comparable specs, so mobile carriers should be able to offer the Moto G to the masses for hundreds of dollars less than any iPhone or high-end Android device by Samsung, LG, etc. Mobile carriers could offer the Moto G profitably at a negative price -- for example, zero money upfront plus an instant $300 coupon rebate if one commits to a two-year plan. Or they could offer it with much cheaper monthly bills than economically possible with other comparable phones -- for example, 25% off one's monthly bill if one commits to a two-year plan. -- Edits: added context and examples.
- JeremyNT 13y agoIt seems capable, but calling it "high end" is quite... generous. No LTE, 1.2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage - they made some obvious compromises to hit this price point. I think it's probably a smart play for Moto/Goog to target this space, but "high end" it ain't.
- jonknee 13y agoNote that the iPhone 5s also has 1GB of RAM and has a similar CPU speed (1.3GHz). I feel you on the LTE portion, but much of the targeted market has no opportunity to use LTE. Maybe they could have a Moto G+ that costs $50-75 more and includes LTE.
- TylerE 13y agoHigh-end Android is way past those specs. For instance, my HTC One has a 1080p screen vs 720p, twice the RAM, four times the storage, and a 1.7Ghz quad with twice as much on-die cache as the 1.2GHz Quad in this thing.
- kenrikm 13y agoSpecs lie. The HTC One does have a super high-res screen though! http://www.macworld.com/article/2049270/benchmarks-iphone-5s-lives-up-to-the-hype.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2049270/benchmarks-iphone-5s...
- nicholassmith 13y agoI wonder how much Motorola makes per handset at that price point, which could be slightly concerning for the business overall. Google can get away with tiny margins on their physical devices as they're about pushing traffic back to their services, making more money residually, but Motorola makes money by selling hardware for a profit. It's great for consumers when price comes down, but that could leave businesses fighting to try get prices down and reduce overall profit, meaning they're unable to throw as much into R&D, or cut back on customer support or a dozen other areas. It's certainly an interesting marketplace at the moment, most manufacturers seem to be slashing prices reasonably heavily.
- tracker1 13y agoMotorola Mobility is now a Google (R) subsidiary...
- nicholassmith 13y agoFully aware, but it's not important as it's being run as a separate business concern so it's a for-profit enterprise.
- objclxt 13y ago> so it's a for-profit enterprise. Or not, given that Motorola has been operating at a loss for quite some time now.
- fpgeek 13y agoThe Moto G launch featured a large number of accessories (covers, shells, headphones, ...). I suspect part of the plan here is to price the phone aggressively so they can make more money on accessories.
- peterwwillis 13y agoI was talking to representatives from Lyft at a festival here in Baltimore, and I asked them if they had any plans to support non-smartphones like mine, or any other way to use their service. "No" was the answer. I realized, this was genius! They could ensure only wealthy customers used their service, creating a vacuum in which the upper class could use transportation in style and comfort, without having to interface with "those kinds" of people. Also ensuring their customer base was (relatively) well-behaved and polite. Hopefully cheaper phones like this can fuck with these digital social classes.
- MichaelGG 13y agoOr perhaps maybe they realised that most people, especially those that might use their app, are likely to have a smartphone or get one soon. That investing on making a service targeting other platforms is a waste of time and money? That sounds much more likely than some digital class nonsense. Edit: Also the assumption that people with smartphones are going to be better behaved than normal is... not based in reality. It's not like taxis are stopping for e.g. homeless people that camp out inside the taxi all day.
- peterwwillis 13y agoYou're saying basically that investing money in developing your product to gain more customers is a waste. You're also saying it somehow makes more sense to develop two different applications for two different platforms and depend on a THIRD service's platform (Facebook). Instead of just making one simple web 1.0 mobile site that works everywhere, doesn't limit your customer base, and takes less time and money to develop. And it's not nonsense. I'll bet you that some basic research on demographics of the user base would show a clear separation in the economic disparity of cab users vs lyft users. Why the separation? Easier access to cabs. Poor people will find it more difficult to access the internet or a smartphone, but they can get easy access to a plain-old telephone or desktop internet access. The assumption is based on socioeconomic class differences, and is perceived rather than actually noticeable in difference, but i'm not going to repeat what you can find on wikipedia. The other aspect is that rich people may be perceived to tip better.
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- r00fus 13y agoFrom the article: "The 4.5-inch display, with 720p, 329 PPI resolution is the “hero feature” of the phone, and it outperforms the iPhone 5s according to Motorola." I'm assuming they're talking about the display outperforming (bizarre wording) the iPhone5S? Because the stats don't seem to make it comparable much less leading the current performance champ...
- pbreit 13y agoTry re-reading it without the parenthetical: "The 4.5-inch display outperforms the iPhone 5s according to Motorola."
- nazgulnarsil 13y agogot an unlocked LG L9 months ago for $179 with a 4.5 inch screen and LTE. It has been discontinued now, but I have been wondering why LG seemed to be the only company capable of coming out with decent spec phones at decent prices.
- r00fus 13y agoPerhaps it simply isn't profitable? Motorola still hasn't posted a profit since Google's purchase. I don't see how this product is going to turn those tables. It could be they will simply become Google's hardware R&D arm and effectively a cost-center.
- r00fus 13y agoNo way this competes with real high end phones like S4, HTC One, iPhone5 or later. What it does is compete very well against the iPhone4, 4S, S3, and older premium phones. If you're adding a line to a family plan and want a phone that isn't basic, then this becomes very appealing as the iOS/Samsung/HTC/Nokia alternative will cost you either a 2 year subscription, or be $300 or more unlocked. Considering people will still buy iPhones because they want something simple, the attack is really against Samsung and other manufacturers.
- RivieraKid 13y agoI actually think that Moto G offers bigger value for the avg consumer than S4 or HTC One while costing half as much. It doesn't have shitty software addons, it will have quicker updates, the design is better (and the color options is a nice bonus), it looks more comfortable to hold. (And for me, the not-huge size is big plus. I have relativeli large hands but I'm baffled by the appetite for 5" or even more massive phones.) If I had to choose between G a S4 and both costed $200, I would immediately go for the G.
- zmmmmm 13y agoThis. The incredible thing is that if you bought a high end phone last generation, this is still a great upgrade from what you have, and it's 1/4 of the price you paid last time (assuming off contract). I'm actually tempted to ditch my Galaxy Nexus because I'm not excited enough by the N5 or other current phones to spend a huge amount of money on them, but I would certainly pay for a spec bump if it comes cheap enough.
- mtgx 13y agoThe Moto X/G are simple.
- r00fus 13y agoLet me qualify my statement. People will buy Apple because the perceive it's simpler. Apple spends a lot (time|money) on making subtle interactions discoverable. This is simply not the case on the Android side, though it's getting better. Having just bought a Nexus 5, I can see how usable it is, but how frustrating it would be for, say, my parents to use unless I got them on BigLauncher, or did all the setup for them and support as well.
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- bookwormAT 13y ago"I want full week battery life" That's what's wrong with dumbphones. I want multi-year battery life, so I stay with my solar calculator.
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- pandeiro 13y agoThe $179 price is total bullshit. In Brazil, where the phone was actually launched (and being produced), the price is US$279 (8GB) and US$343 (16GB). Not that I, as a Brazilian consumer, am not used to getting dicked on hardware prices for everything. But reading $179 over and over again is kind of making me want to punch my screen.
- differentView 13y agoHow much are iPhone 5S, Nexus 5, HTC One, and Galaxy S4 in Brazil?
- pandeiro 13y agoPrices simply too obscene to mention on family-oriented hackernews
- r4pha 13y agoIphone 5 - Starts at 2.299 BRL (~980 USD) for the 16GB and goes to 2.899 BRL (~1242 USD). I kid you not [0]. [0]: http://i.imgur.com/EEeTi6G.png http://i.imgur.com/EEeTi6G.png
- frooxie 13y agoThe Nexus 5 started at $780 in Norway. I'm pretty envious of the US prices.
- Raphael 13y ago$179 before import duty.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 13y agoNot really Google's fault. Also they are announcing prices for US. Just assume prices in other countries will be ~30-50 percent higher.
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- yabatopia 13y agoIt would be very 'premium' if it supported Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) right out of the box. The specs only mention Bluetooth 4.0, but sadly that's not enough for real BLE support on Android pre 4.4 KitKat. An unexpensive Android smartphone that works with my Fitbit Flex and other BLE devices would be awesome.
- 001sky 13y agoThis is a great product/market fit. Full Kudo's to google on this. If it is a success, i think they will get a Halo effect for their brand. That being said, lets hop there's no surprises in the SW bundle, performances, settings etc.