Late last week, the unlocked Moto G finally went on sale in the United States via Motorola. Already on sale in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, UK, Germany, France, and Canada, Motorola last week revealed that the GSM version of the device is now available to American shoppers. The CDMA model will arrive in January. However, the device is now also available through Amazon.
The Moto G was announced last month in Brazil and wasn't supposed to launch in the USA until January. Amazon and Motorola are now both selling the GSM version. The 8 GB model is going for $179 while the 16 GB model is priced at $199. Amazon currently has the device down to ship on December 4, which is a couple of days later than Motorola's December 2 ship date, but the pricing is identical.
The Moto G packs a 4.5 inch screen with a 1280 x 720 resolution and a 326 ppi pixel density. This screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and backed by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip clocked at 1.2 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB or 16 GB of internal storage (no microSD card slot). There's a 1.3MP camera on the front and a 5MP camera on the back. Other features include an FM radio, an accelerometer, a proximity sensor, a compass, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, a microUSB 2.0 port, GPS and more. All of this is powered by a 2070 mAh battery promising up to 24 hours of talk time. The whole show is running on Google's Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean," but Motorola promises an upgrade to Android 4.4 "KitKat" in the beginning of 2014.
The new Moto G will be in more than 30 countries with 60 partners by early 2014.
Check out all our Moto G coverage, video and hands on below:
For more:
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
The phone isn't as good as last years Nexus 4. The price is a little lower though. I was disappointed to see the Nexus 5 being quite a bit more expensive than the Nexus 4. It seems that Google backed off of the idea of offering a high quality product for less than $300 dollars.
A) This phone isn't suppose to be as good as the N4, that is not its purpose. (Overlooking performance wise it actually benchmarks nearly the same with better battery life)
B) The price is a lot lower than N4/N5. $200 versus $350? Almost 2 for 1...
C) N5 is in no way more expensive than the N4 when comparing apples to apples... N4 16gig = $350 which is the same as N5 at 16gig. If Google released an 8gig people would bitch that that wasn't acceptable.
D) The moto G is a fantastic phone at $180 - $200 bucks and N5 is awesome at $350 to $400.
Motorola is owned by Google. Of course it's going to lack a microSD slot. Google doesn't believe in expandable storage. They want everyone using "the cloud"...
Why not use cloud storage, I still have an original nexus 7 running kitkat which really brought life back into the device btw.
google music is storing some 20k flac files for me to listen to wherever i am at and not on a restricted SDcard.
google docs keeps all of my documents for reading later.
I have USB flash drive on my keychain (USB OTG cable) for some kids movies but I mostly just use hulu or netflix (I personnally do not like watching movies on a handheld and certainly not on a phone)
I also have 125 apps installed on that 8 GB's of internal space with one GB left over.
the only apps that take up allot of space are the "AAA" games out there and who wants to play anything other casual games and card games on a cellphone.
All I want is to be able to put a double size battery in them so I can use it for a hotspot for prolonged periods when needed.
These are great phones but I will pick up a used HTC one or one maxx after the new year from uneducated people that think their phone does not work. You would not beleive how many people think things are broken when they just do not know how to use them.
