Motorola has rolled out to the markets the third generation of its Moto G in August, which was a bit of a deviation from the launching pattern of the brand, notes Expert Reviews of UK.
The first Motorola Moto G was launched in September 2013. But since it was not capable of supporting LTE, a refresh of the smartphone was released in April 2014 featuring an LTE capability already.
The 2nd generation Motorola Moto G, also called as the Moto G2 or the Moto G (2014) was released in September 2014 after its predecessor completed its one-year market cycle.
The Moto G brand has been considered as a budget smartphone mainly because of its affordable price point which is less than $200.
However, the third generation of the smartphone, the Moto G3, is not really a pure budget smartphone because it is more expensive than regular budget smartphones. And the design of the Moto G3 is quite exquisite and its features and applications are really superb which make it worth more than its price.
Comparison with its predecessor
Compared to the Moto G2, the Moto G3 shares the same plain and unassuming look. It has modeled glass looks around the façade of the device and plastic backing. The only difference is that the Moto G3 has a new metal oval strip at the back with an advanced camera lens.
In terms of display, the Moto G2 and the Moto G3 are practically the same as both have 5-inch display screens and 720 x 1280 screen resolution.
The major difference is the battery power of the two devices. The 2014 version of the Moto G comes with a 2,070 mAH battery while the Moto G3 features a more respectable 2,470 mAH battery.
Compared to its chunky predecessor, the Moto G3 is quite refined. While its specifications are not much of a leap forward, but its build quality is quite excellent and the number of features has also been enhanced.
The Motorola Moto G3 also comes with two storage and RAM options. It has a model that comes with a 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage and a variant that features a RAM of 2GB and a 16GB of internal storage. But as expected, the bigger version is more expensive.
The Motorola Moto G3 is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset, which clocks at 1.4 GHz. It is fast in both RAM versions. Web pages are loaded fast, and there is a minimal stutter. However, multi-tasking takes a hit as games and applications are loaded much slower on the 1GB version, compared to the 2GB variant. Both the phones are easily able to handle the games on the Google Playstore.
The 3rd generation of the Moto G also runs with stock Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box. It also comes with a clean and simple UI to make Motorola’s features unique.
No one does it better
Motorola has been known to excel in producing budget smartphones because no one does it better. However, a lot has changed since the Moto G2 was launched last year and the Moto G3 now has to contend with the likes of the Vodafone Smart Ultra 6, whose budget-defying specs completely redefined what people have come to expect from a handset that is worth below $200, notes Neurogadget.
But the Moto G3 can certainly hold its own against the Smart Ultra 6, which makes it obvious that it is not a straightforward budget bargain like its predecessor.
Some critics say that the Moto G3 is actually a better handset than the Apple iPhone 6S because the budget smartphone can be used for a lot of things other than make a call or send SMS messages. It can be used to listen to music, watch videos, a navigation tool when on the road, read PDF files and e-books, download files, read e-mails, make file attachments to e-mails, editing, merging documents, and other functions.