News - Motorola Moto G quad-core smartphone launched at £119

[LeetyMcLeet]

I think they're onto a winner there. Very reasonable specs, vanilla Android, decent size, good price.

[DanceswithUnix]

7.)Too thick
8.)Too wide

That's funny, my gripe on most current phones is they are too *tall*.

If I sit down to tie my shoe laces, I have to take the phone out of my pocket, else it gets squeezed and if I take more than 10s to tie my laces and stand up it resets

[Gerrard]

Since I'm looking at getting a new phone some time soon, I think this is a serious contender. Not bothered by the lack of a micro-SD card slot and will probably go for the 16Gb version; it's more of a "nice-to-have" feature for me.

However, stupid question regarding the non-removable battery; if the phone crashes and you can't switch it off to restart, do you have to wait for the phone to run out of power before you can do anything?

[DanceswithUnix]

Usually a press of the power button for 10 seconds will reboot an Android device. Kind of like holding the power button on a PC long enough turns power off even when it has crashed.

[kalniel]

However, stupid question regarding the non-removable battery; if the phone crashes and you can't switch it off to restart, do you have to wait for the phone to run out of power before you can do anything?

There's usually a hard off if you hold down power button for a length of time, or plugging into a computer often allows restart even if phone has crashed.

[DavidM]

Out of interest - what's the closest phone to this, in the same bracket, with SD support?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Out of interest - what's the closest phone to this, in the same bracket, with SD support?

The Galaxy S3 I suppose. The Acer has a lower resolution screen.

[watercooled]

It could be interesting to see how the quad Cortex A7 cores perform, as AFAIK there aren't many well-known devices using them, in isolation at least.

[Apex]

Xperia M (roundabout)

No SD card support is not really a biggie if the have not stuffed the internal storage full of junk.

Current issue i have with my XperiaM and any andriod tbh is that you can not easy set the external storage to be used for internal. [ and no am not ignoring the apps and other tricks that allow you they are not 100% fool proof and so won't consider them. ]

[DavidM]

The Galaxy S3 I suppose. The Acer has a lower resolution screen.

Thanks - I was thinking of one of the Samsung's, although the Moto G would have been tempting with an SD Port

Xperia M (roundabout)

No SD card support is not really a biggie if the have not stuffed the internal storage full of junk.

Current issue i have with my XperiaM and any andriod tbh is that you can not easy set the external storage to be used for internal. [ and no am not ignoring the apps and other tricks that allow you they are not 100% fool proof and so won't consider them. ]

I think the memory situation was related to one of the Android versions... but could be wrong on this?

Sony - used to like their kit a lot, but a little annoyed with them after they dropped the MiniDisc


Out of interest - wonder if the Moto G supports expansion by the usb port? Wireless hard drives are another idea of course, although a little bulky.

[Apex]

In the older versions you could easy move the apps to the SD card where as in the newer versions this option seems to have been removed.

While there are some niggles with this Xperia M i am actually liking it

[HSK]

I like it. I'm going to get one for my friend when she visits me from overseas so she can use in london on a UK sim.

[DavidM]

In the older versions you could easy move the apps to the SD card where as in the newer versions this option seems to have been removed.

Yes - that features on my Gingerbread based phone...but I believe (could be wrong however) that some Jellybean versions don't support it. Hope Kitkat has this fixed.

While there are some niggles with this Xperia M i am actually liking it

That's the important thing!

[Noxvayl]

Indeed, but as I said, it depends what you use it for, and what data you put on it.

Limiting what I do means there's a lot of apps I wouldn't use, but if I was concerned about running loads of apps, I'd be more concerned if RAM was limited than about SD slots. But I'm not. I agree about the camera, too. About the only thing I'd use the camera for is "emergency" use, like taking photos if I have a car crash. So, I don't care about storage of photos.

What I would use it for is easy access to a variety of documents, much of which are PDF. That, and making and receiving the odd phone call.

Essentially, at the moment, I use an old HP iPaq, with an SD slot, and a cheap phone, which is about due for renewal. Replacing both with a single device would be an option. But frankly, if I could replace my iPaq with an identical (new) device, I would.

Perhaps your iPaq could be replaced by a tablet that only connects via wifi, that way you can retain an airgap on it if you wanted to which would be more difficult with a phone. I probably should of gotten myself the Samsung Note instead of the Nexus 7 but I couldn't justify the price to myself at that time.

[watercooled]

It you mean something with a stylus, the Tegra tablet, sold under the Advent brand in the UK, has one. I'm not sure what it's like overall (only quickly skimmed a review of it) but it's one of the cheaper stylus-enabled tabs.

[Saracen]

Generally the majority of people who need large amounts of storage(as opposed to what I gather you want is for security purposes),is to store hundreds of CDs or 720P movies(which are over a 1GB in size each) and TV shows to watch on their phone. Funnily,enough I don't see that very often even among geeks and considering that I play Ingress I certainly bump into enough smartphone toting ones.

So given the market,I suspect Google think that is why they were OK with cost cutting by removing the SD card slot.

Well TBH,Google has started to make Android more efficient anyway. I use an older smartphone too,but Android 4 is faster than older versions from my own experience,and the latest version is even meant to work better with older phones since it is optimised to work with 512MB of RAM.

The G300 probably would be fine.

I wouldn't doubt that you're right about the general market, and if I had been suggesting that the spec was somehow wrong, you'd have a point. But again, I refer you to my original one line post .... good spec and price, but for me, no SD slot = no interest.

I was not criticising the spec or suggesting Google should include a slit. Merely pointing out, as someone that might otherwise have been very interested, that omission ends my interest. I will not be the only one to take that stance, but we may well be a minority, and possibly a small enough minority that Google would gladly lose any chance of those sales to keep other features in and still hit their price point.

So be it. It's their call.

But absent that feature, it's no use to me, no matter how good the other spec or price.