A 4.3" as well. Nice size for the target audience. They won't have much competition price wise. I still think moto G with LTE offers better value.
However you can easily snag an Xperia T for <140 unlocked off gumtree/eBay and it has decent camera. It is more akin to the X if you're willing to forgo kitkat.
eMMC is fairly standard for mobile devices. Of course, there are different speeds etc available though.Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
And AFAIK the LTE G uses this SoC, the previous version didn't support it. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7020/q...-and-cat-4-lte
And LTE support means they'll have to have a supporting radio front-end too, i.e. transceiver/amps/switches/antennas may need to be extended/upgraded.
Edit: The new SoC also allows LPDDR3 to be used, so if that happens we might see improved performance/battery life in some areas. A teardown of the new version would be interesting for sure!
From the Hexus article, the SRP on the G was $179, so if it's been available in the UK for < £100 it's been massively subsidised - the Moto G should be £129 once conversion and tax is taken into account. CAT, do you have any references for the G ever being £100? Looks to me like all they've actually done is bring in the Moto E at ~ £35 cheaper than the G, and the 4G G at ~ £25 more than the original G. That's a fairly reasonable market spread....
Or alternatively they used the 4G enabled SOC already. There has not been a proper teardown of the Moto G yet,and at least from past experience is not beyond companies to artifically fuse off stuff. BTW,whats the bet the microSD card slot will be where it is in the "old" version??
The Moto G had no competition at the time,and with the Moto E now they can replace the cheap Moto G 3G 8GB versions with it,re-enable the functionality and increase the price to improve margins.
The thing is Lenovo can do all this,since outside of the limited availability Alcatel there is no real competition. The Moto E and Moto G 4G are still better than almost everything else under £150.
I expect Lenovo will want to do this,as they are a mainly hardware company,whereas Google could try and clawback money from services.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 13-05-2014 at 01:41 PM.
The Moto G 8GB is £110 on Tesco Direct at the moment, and there's a £10 off a £50 spend voucher floating around for new users (easy enough to create a new account if you already have one, the code is TDX-DLCD) So yes, it was and still is available for £100. Ok that's locked to O2/Tesco Mobile, but you can get an unlock code for <£2 on ebay.
The Moto E is currently available for £90 sim free from Phones 4 u.
Last edited by Bagnaj97; 13-05-2014 at 03:23 PM. Reason: Moto E went up a tenner!
scaryjim (13-05-2014)
Well even if the same SoC was used, they'd still need a supporting RF frontend to make the phone LTE-capable. It's possible that was present too, but not all that likely it would support more than a band or two by coincidence IMO, unless LTE was the plan all along but the didn't get it licensed. So we'd have to see teardowns to verify one way or the other, but even so it would need to be licensed as an LTE device to have that functionality enabled which AFAIK it wasn't.
Well alternatively,since there was no real competition at the time,there was no real pressure to enable the features. The only real competition is an Alcatel which has limited availability. With the Nexus 5 unlikely to be replaced by another Nexus device and the Moto E now taking up the low end,Lenovo can afford to increase the price as there is really no alternative for many people and its a popular phone too.
Google was barely making a 5% profit margin with the 16GB Moto G at full RRP. It make sense Lenovo would want a higher ASP anyway.
From a quick Google, "cat /proc/cpuinfo" on a Moto G returned MSM8226, so it used to be the 3G part.
I guess the 8926 4G part is easy enough to swap in for the old SOC that it was worth designing an upgraded board. The microSD card was probably always a build option, but Android has only recently got official support.
Interesting that we are talking about the Moto G still. No-one here tempted by the Moto E?Must admit it probably isn't for me.
So, £110 with a largish network subsidy (Tesco Direct sell the handset sim free for £129), through an etailer large enough to offer discount vouchers to encourage people to buy from them. Which makes a sim-free (i.e. unsubsidised) £90 Moto E still quite a bit cheaper. I imagine that if Tesco get the Moto E with a network lock it'll probably be cheaper still...
edit: I note CPW are doing the E on Orange/T-mobile for £79.95 + £10 top up...
I have a strong preference for physical qwerty keyboards over on-screen keyboards, so it was never going to be for me (I picked up a White Q5 when CPW reduced them to £129 recently). I strongly suspect my stepson would be very interested, if he needed a new phone at the minute (he doesn't as it happens), but I suspect he is somewhat nearer the target market than most of usInteresting that we are talking about the Moto G still. No-one here tempted by the Moto E?
Last edited by scaryjim; 13-05-2014 at 02:59 PM.
Some cryptic comments about LTE support in the 3G version of the Moto G:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8012/m...oto-g-with-lte
It appears the dual SIM version did not have it but the normal one did,but the software support was not there!
Edit!!
Only 8GB of onboard storage too.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 13-05-2014 at 05:11 PM.
They talked about feature phone users and moving them over to this.
Interesting that we are talking about the Moto G still. No-one here tempted by the Moto E?
I read that but I'm not convinced; as DanceswithUnix says the G models I know of use the 8226 SoC, not the 8296 LTE-capable one. It's possible there were different versions in circulation though.
The thing is the microSD card reader was already present in the current model,and it appears to be that the 4G model only comes with 8GB of NAND onboard at a higher RRP that the 8GB Moto G 3G.
It would not surprise me if recent Moto G phones have the 4G LTE SOC already. Look at the Defy and Defy+ for example. Late model Defy phones had exactly the same hardware as the Defy+ but it was kibbled on purpose.
It means there will be no lower priced Moto G now if the 3G 8GB version is made EOL,meaning the Moto E is taking over that position in the Motorola price stack.
With the Nexus 5 unlikely to get a sucessor,I am worried there is going to be stagnation in the sub £250 market now.
Presumably there's some kind of license cost to having an activated LTE chip, but even if not, having a model where you pay more for more features, regardless of hardware/physical media is hardly new - we've been paying more for retail Windows vs OEM for years for example.
Yup, for new phones there's now an even cheaper option with the Moto E. Smart phone of that quality for that price? Amazing. Step up an you get even more for the Moto G, at a price that's still pretty special compared to the competition.It means there will be no lower priced Moto G now if the 3G 8GB version is made EOL,meaning the Moto E is taking over that position in the Motorola price stack.
Really? What's happened to the Android 4.5 Nexus 6 based on the LG G3?With the Nexus 5 unlikely to get a sucessor
Unlikely that significant. The Alcatel One Touch Idol S is £100 from many EE stores and has a 720P screen,microSD card slot and LTE. That is under a £20 difference if you look at the Moto G,and as small as £10,considering it costs £2 to unlock a Moto G.
I also expect that once the Moto G 3G 8GB models are EOL,the Moto E will stay at £80 to £90.
If someone wants a decent sub £100 phone,they better get a Moto G 3G 8GB now.
The 4G LTE version with 8GB of storage will probably be the same price as the current 16GB version,meaning around £130 to £140.
Not amazing considering how much the Moto G TBH. I appear to have more experience of budget phones it seems.
The Moto G is amazing. The Moto E is not. It looks like an upmarket Huawei Y300 which has been out for yonks now.
Its due for an update soon,and it probably will hit the lower a lower price point than the Moto E,especially with the new Mediatek SOCs being introduced. The Moto E is going to look average very quickly unless it drops to a lower price point.
The Moto G is nearly as quick as my mates Nexus 4,and the screen is as good or even better.
OTH,the Moto E looks like it will be noticeably worse. Even the much touted weatherproof features are not that big a deal.
The Moto G is splashproof and I have used it in heavy rain fine.
Meh screen,and a slower SOC,especially on the graphics side. The 960X540 resolution is rather average now,and it will be interesting to see whether it uses a cheaper type of panel,which I suspect it does to keep BOM down.
Plus the Alcatel One Touch Idol S can be still had for around £100 from certain EE stores with LTE,720P screen and a microSD card slot.
With the Moto G massively going up in price,it will too as it was price to compete with the Moto G 3G 8GB,so the Moto E is nothing but a disaster for the lower end market.
Google is replacing the Nexus brand with Android Silver. Even if the Nexus 6 ends up happening it will be the last Nexus smartphone.
Its unlikely we are going to see any more low cost phones initiated from Google now.
Companies like Oppa and One2 don't appear to have great market penetration here ATM,so it will be interesting to see how much things progress this year.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 13-05-2014 at 08:24 PM.
This could be an interesting higher-end phone: http://oneplus.net/one
If Google do ease off the Nexus models, or whatever might replace them, I'm sure there are companies willing to take that 'enthusiast' slice of the market. Or perhaps that's where the Ara concept is going?
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