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Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#91

Post by skelsey »

kombine wrote: post #47
btian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your phone support LTE? Does it run a modern version of Android? Does it have a modern SoC? Does it sync with my Fitbit? Is it widely available in the US? Can I get after sales support?

Does your phone support LTE? I don't know if it does, but I live in Europe so that is not an issue for me. Does it run a modern version of Android? 4.2.1 Does it have a modern SoC It has more than enough horsepowers for what I do on a smartphone. It's quad-core, as for details - I never bothered. Is it widely available in the US? Can I get after sales support? Again, I don't know much about US, but I would imagine th…

This is one reason I'm always surprised people buy anything other than a Nexus device. You have a new phone, and it's running an OS that's already a year old.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#92

Post by kunai »

I'd extend this statement and say that the Moto G puts every single cheap phone to shame. Not just Android. It becomes very hard to justify a Lumia at $400 or an iPhone 4S at a ludicrous $450 when we have a flagship Nexus at $350 and now the Moto G at $179.

Combine that with the defiant cries against consumerism and wastefulness with Project Ara, and Google has really raised the bar by quite a bit for what a mobile phone OEM is capable of. It will be interesting to see what happens 3, 4 years down the line when the market fully resaturates with more price-friendly and DIY-friendly phones.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#93

Post by gcb1 »

glesica wrote: post #69
cabbeer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The divide between "High end" and "Low end" devices is beginning to blur. The improvements to high end devices are providing diminishing returns, while all the "essentials" have trickled down to low end devices.

This is actually why I've got a Moto G on order. This will be my first smart phone. Before I heard about the Moto G I always assumed my first smart phone would be a Nexus device, because I refuse to sign a carrier contract and I would rather have a dumb phone than carry around something that cost $600 in my pocket every day. But with the Moto G, I get a cheap-ish device with all the features that actually matter to m…

hope you don't plan to travel. nexus 5 would work on most network. also get ready to be disappointed with the camera. even the motoX gets owned by old nokia phones.

the sad thing about google/moto only churning out low end phones, is that we now will have to give in to weird rooting/unlocking if we want basic features, like a simple sd card or removable battery.

i dread the day i have to abandon my old nexus and start fiddling with Odin and whatnot to unlock a high end phone. (odin is code you have to use to unlock samsung phones. nobody has the source, and it is allegedly stolen property from samsung... shady stuff, and that is what will update you phone bootloader. no thanks)

anyway, really wanted to have a high-end option that was free as the nexus claim to be (claim because the radio, camera driver, etc are never open source. but thats the best we can get, well, could.)

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#94

Post by blinkingled »

av500 wrote: post #67
blinkingled wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah barring the storage part - it is definitely a great iPod Touch replacement. You might be able to live with the 16GB if you stream stuff instead of playing it locally. There are many media player apps (Archos one that I use is great - even the free version) that can play videos from SMB shares etc.

Archos developer here, glad that you like the app :)

Any plans for Chromecasting/AirPlay support? I know it's not that simple but would not mind paying $4.99 if the paid version supported it. Thanks!

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#95

Post by Zigurd »

Moto G is a great balance of price and performance. It is also much more sensible for a Google-owned OEM to pursue a distinctive niche in the market than to compete with Google's partners across their whole product line.

BUT that's just one handset. Nobody knows what Motorola will do next. Is Google shining it up to sell? That would be sensible.

Motorola is a huge addition to Google's headcount that produces far less than the typical Google product group. Motorola competes with Google's partners. Google would be better off with Motorola as an OEM partner than as a subsidiary.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#96

Post by rayiner »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #79
rayiner wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo has no presence in the U.S. for cell phones. The P780 doesn't support LTE, which is a big problem in the U.S. Because American carriers never built out well-developed HSPA+ networks. They put most of their energy into skipping ahead to LTE. So the differential between HSPA and LTE is a lot bigger than in Europe. Finally, most international phones don't support all the bands U.S. carriers use for HSPA. This mak…

Non-LTE works just fine in the US for a lot of folks. T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, where quite of few Moto Gs will end up, is solid. Heck T-Mobile's non-LTE network is faster than some other carrier's LTE networks in a lot of areas.

Right, but t-mobile is pretty much the only carrier with a really solid HSPA+ network, and has a tiny minority of the overall market. I've got a Lumia 620, which doesn't do LTE, and it's really not great on ATT.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#97

Post by interpol_p »

mmahemoff wrote: post #8
martinald wrote: post #3

This is getting really interesting. Between this, the Nexus 5 and the various Lumia's a $649 iPhone is starting to look very, very expensive. Smartphones at the moment seem to have got 'good enough'.

Apple used to cover all bases. There was iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, all the way up to the biggest iPod. So in the early 2000s, people at every level of the MP3 player market could be part of Apple's universe (which led to more PC sales and further MP3 sales and upgrading). They've still not done this with phones, so they've left a giant hole for Android to fill, which in turn makes the platform more attractive to devel…

Apple wasn't really covering all price ranges with those products — they were covering all use-cases.

For example, the shuffle seemed more aimed at people who wanted something easy and light to clip on while exercising.

The nano seemed to cross-over slightly with that market, and also attract people who wanted something tiny but full-featured. (I.e., it was the size that differentiated it, not price.)

I don't think many people thought "Oh, I'll get a shuffle because I can't afford a regular iPod."

The fact that Apple continues to offer the previous years' iPhones is actually kind of unusual with regards to the structure of their past product lines. It's how they are trying to cater to different price brackets rather than use-cases.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#98

Post by dangrossman »

mhb wrote: post #58
localuser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought 3 moto g's and on the day they arrived switched the entire family to tmobile. I had enough of Verizon and now my bill is $100 a month. Can't beat that.

I'd like to do that. Which plan?

There's only one family plan on the T-Mobile site now, called Simple Choice. It's $80/mo for 2 lines with unlimited talk + text + web (500MB at 4G per phone then slower speed), and $10/mo for each line after that. There's no contract or credit check, and you either bring your phone or buy one from them -- unsubsidized but payment plans available.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#99

Post by JohnTHaller »

rayiner wrote: post #96
JohnTHaller wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-LTE works just fine in the US for a lot of folks. T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, where quite of few Moto Gs will end up, is solid. Heck T-Mobile's non-LTE network is faster than some other carrier's LTE networks in a lot of areas.

Right, but t-mobile is pretty much the only carrier with a really solid HSPA+ network, and has a tiny minority of the overall market. I've got a Lumia 620, which doesn't do LTE, and it's really not great on ATT.

It depends entirely where you are. I've had T-Mobile since the original G1 (first commercial Android phone) came out in NYC and have had no issues. Service is a bit spotty on the train up to Albany/Rochestor, but it is with all the carriers. The only places you have trouble with T-Mobile is when you get in rural areas, which I usually don't. The one exception is part of my family we visit and only Verizon has coverage by them. In that case, I just switch to wifi calling at their house. Or turn it off for a while.

In the states, if you're obsessive about your phone being on every minute of every day (and, realistically, anyone actually that important... as opposed to thinking they are for their startup... is still forced to carry a pager), you basically have to go with Verizon. That's why I have a Verizon hotspot as a backup. Not as a backup for T-Mobile, but as a backup for Time Warner, since it goes down at least once a month for a little while and down for a full day every few months.

Re: Google’s $179 Moto G puts every single cheap Android phone to shame

#100

Post by zobzu »

nly wrote: post #87
nnnnni wrote: post #10

$179 is way too much for a phone that sends all of your login information for different pages and services to Motorola's servers in plaintext...

It's completely unlockable and reflashable from what I can tell

just like nexuses. still sends all the info to google by default, that's not something we can deny.

in fact, even if you flash it, you'll want google play services, and it then still sends all the info to google again.

So unless you can live without gapps (some apps won't even work without it nowadays, due to calls to the proprietary API), you're a little screwed.. well thats unless you wanna port FirefoxOS to it or something.

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