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Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

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Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#51
From the article: "The 4.5-inch display, with 720p, 329 PPI resolution is the “hero feature” of the phone, and it outperforms the iPhone 5s according to Motorola."

I'm assuming they're talking about the display outperforming (bizarre wording) the iPhone5S? Because the stats don't seem to make it comparable much less leading the current performance champ...

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#52
post #33

This phone looks like a game changer to me, because it has the specs of a high-end smartphone but is priced like a crappy low-end one. The cost of an unlocked unit is $300 to $600 LESS than that of other devices with comparable specs, so mobile carriers should be able to offer the Moto G to the masses for hundreds of dollars less than any iPhone or high-end Android device by Samsung, LG, etc. Mobile carriers could of…

It seems capable, but calling it "high end" is quite... generous. No LTE, 1.2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage - they made some obvious compromises to hit this price point. I think it's probably a smart play for Moto/Goog to target this space, but "high end" it ain't.

Note that the iPhone 5s also has 1GB of RAM and has a similar CPU speed (1.3GHz). I feel you on the LTE portion, but much of the targeted market has no opportunity to use LTE. Maybe they could have a Moto G+ that costs $50-75 more and includes LTE.

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#53

I wonder how much Motorola makes per handset at that price point, which could be slightly concerning for the business overall. Google can get away with tiny margins on their physical devices as they're about pushing traffic back to their services, making more money residually, but Motorola makes money by selling hardware for a profit. It's great for consumers when price comes down, but that could leave businesses fig…

Motorola Mobility is now a Google (R) subsidiary...

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#54
post #33

This phone looks like a game changer to me, because it has the specs of a high-end smartphone but is priced like a crappy low-end one. The cost of an unlocked unit is $300 to $600 LESS than that of other devices with comparable specs, so mobile carriers should be able to offer the Moto G to the masses for hundreds of dollars less than any iPhone or high-end Android device by Samsung, LG, etc. Mobile carriers could of…

If this is high-end what is the HTC One I bought 6 months ago?

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems capable, but calling it "high end" is quite... generous. No LTE, 1.2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage - they made some obvious compromises to hit this price point. I think it's probably a smart play for Moto/Goog to target this space, but "high end" it ain't.

Note that the iPhone 5s also has 1GB of RAM and has a similar CPU speed (1.3GHz). I feel you on the LTE portion, but much of the targeted market has no opportunity to use LTE. Maybe they could have a Moto G+ that costs $50-75 more and includes LTE.

High-end Android is way past those specs.

For instance, my HTC One has a 1080p screen vs 720p, twice the RAM, four times the storage, and a 1.7Ghz quad with twice as much on-die cache as the 1.2GHz Quad in this thing.

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#56
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow Android that closely. How is the performance of this phone? Cheap phones like this will help get Android into the hands of another billion people. It's probably more important to have a more recent version of Android than the fastest CPU.

It's quad core. Looks like an excellent phone for the price. Interesting that Motorola is one-uping the Nexus to some degree here (the Nexus is closer to being a flagship, but this is significantly cheaper). This might be my next. What's for sure is I'm never buying another $600 phone again.

It's quad core cortex A7 @1.2 Ghz, that's not even in the same league as the 2 year old Galaxy Nexus (dual cortex A9 @ 1.2). This is in no way comparable to any modern flagship smartphone performance wise.

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#57
got an unlocked LG L9 months ago for $179 with a 4.5 inch screen and LTE. It has been discontinued now, but I have been wondering why LG seemed to be the only company capable of coming out with decent spec phones at decent prices.

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#58
post #33

This phone looks like a game changer to me, because it has the specs of a high-end smartphone but is priced like a crappy low-end one. The cost of an unlocked unit is $300 to $600 LESS than that of other devices with comparable specs, so mobile carriers should be able to offer the Moto G to the masses for hundreds of dollars less than any iPhone or high-end Android device by Samsung, LG, etc. Mobile carriers could of…

>Mobile carriers could offer the Moto G profitably at a negative price

Doubt US carriers are going to let that happen, I haven't seen many negative prices except on feature phones.

Only Tmobile seems to be willing to let the consumer take advantage of lower handset prices. Also, wonder how much Motorola makes(or loses) per Moto G at these prices.

Anyway I hope the Moto G does better than the Moto X. Even with the massive hype and the continuing ad blitz on TV(I see around 3 to 4 Moto X ads in about 2 hours TV viewing) about customization and the always-on voice features, it doesn't seem to be selling well[1].

Starting from the 500K sales figure in the 3rd quarter and generously adding, say, a million more in Q4, the rumored ad budget of $500M [2] would mean Google is spending ~$333 per handset in advertisements.

That would probably add more to the already heavy Motorola losses[3] and Google shareholders would soon be questioning the merits of subsidizing Motorola's losses.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/11/motorola-plans-low-co...

[2] http://androidandme.com/2013/07/news/wsj-google-to-promote-m...

[3] http://mobilenewsblog.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Sc...

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems capable, but calling it "high end" is quite... generous. No LTE, 1.2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage - they made some obvious compromises to hit this price point. I think it's probably a smart play for Moto/Goog to target this space, but "high end" it ain't.

Note that the iPhone 5s also has 1GB of RAM and has a similar CPU speed (1.3GHz). I feel you on the LTE portion, but much of the targeted market has no opportunity to use LTE. Maybe they could have a Moto G+ that costs $50-75 more and includes LTE.

But the iPhone 5s has a much more capable CPU, you can't compare both based purely on clock speeds. Each Cortex-A7 should be slower clock for clock than an Cortex-A9, so it should put the single threaded CPU performance between the iphone 4s and the iPhone 5, although it can maybe outperfom an iphone 5 in highly threaded tasks.

Re: Motorola Makes The Moto G Official, A “Premium” Phone Starting At $179 Unlocked

#60
post #51

From the article: "The 4.5-inch display, with 720p, 329 PPI resolution is the “hero feature” of the phone, and it outperforms the iPhone 5s according to Motorola." I'm assuming they're talking about the display outperforming (bizarre wording) the iPhone5S? Because the stats don't seem to make it comparable much less leading the current performance champ...

Try re-reading it without the parenthetical: "The 4.5-inch display outperforms the iPhone 5s according to Motorola."
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