TechGreatest
Moto E Review: First Look At Moto’s £89 Android KitKat Phone
Think the Moto G, just cheaper – and then deduct a bit more. Hands on with the Moto E
Motorola went from industry underdog to one of the most promising brands inside the mobile space in the space of 12 short months. Google had a lot to do with this, of course, helping refine and, ultimately, evolve the Motorola brand into what it is today: something that looks like a contender in the Android space.
But now Motorola is no longer part of Google (it’s now owned by Lenovo) was all this in vain? Or, is Motorola just getting started? The Moto E is the first handset released by Motorola since the Lenovo acquisition, and like the Moto G before it, the Moto E intends to do one thing, and one thing only: offer a great smartphone experience to everyone for hardly any outlay at all.
At just £89, the Moto E is insanely cheap. It has a similar overall look and finish to the Moto G, with a curved back panel and minuscule bezel around the sides of its 4.3in 854 x 480 pixels display. The chassis, although plastic, is creak-free and well put together, and is fully customisable with Motorola’s myriad of colourful backpanel accessories.
Inside you’ll find a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 chipset alongside 1GB of RAM and a rather paltry 4GB of storage, or 2.21GB once Android and Moto’s core apps have had their share of the phone’s memory. MicroSD-support is included for things like pictures, music and video, and this is a good thing – because with only 2GB onboard, you’re going to need it more than ever!
How is performance? Not too shabby as it goes, especially compared to similarly priced offerings from the competition. In a brief period of time with the Moto E I noted the following things which, in our book, are all very positive: 1) apps and games loaded promptly, 2) there was zero lag or hang while navigating the UX, and 3) basic multitasking (running a few apps at once) didn’t seem to cause the handset too much trouble.
As noted in the title the Moto E runs the latest build of Google’s Android platform. Yep, that’s right, KitKat. And it’s not skinned with some pointless, CPU/GPU-sapping custom overlay, either. No – here, as it was aboard the Moto G and Moto X, Android is employed in the best possible manner: pure and unfettered, just as Google intended.
We loved this about the Moto X and Moto G and we’re glad the trend has remained now that Motorola is no longer part of Google. Also, the Moto E is already confirmed for the next big update to Google’s Android platform, so if you’re buying now, you can expect to be running the latest build of Android until well into 2015. Again, not too shabby for £89!
The battery is a non-removable 1980mAh setup, which Motorola claims will go a full day from a single charge. As usual, it’s impossible to say whether this is the case or not at this stage of the game. As is the case with general performance, we’ll only really know what its limitations are once we’ve thoroughly road-tested it.
Initial impressions, however, are very good. Motorola has, once again, come to the table with something smart, highly competitive and, potentially, rather disruptive.
All it has to do now is prove itself in testing…