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

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81–90 of 126 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $0 subsidized you would be getting ripped off. You'd be better off buying a subsidized iPhone, selling it, then buying the G at full price (plus pocketing a bunch of $$ at the same time).

I would bet cash flow is more important to which phone someone buys than absolute value.

Sure, but there's so much differential that it would make sense to buy a 5S on a contract using a payday loan, put it on eBay, and then use the proceeds to pay off the expensive loan, buy the Moto G, and go buy a bunch of groceries for your family with the difference.

The Moto G would be a straight-up ripoff on a traditional contract. I expect it to be a hit in the prepaid market, however.

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

#82

This is terriffic news! Smartphones are things that drop, that break, that fall into water and that get lost. Shelling out $500 for something this... ephemeral... always seemed absurd to me. Or maybe I am just clumsy.

They make cases that are pretty good with shock resistance, and some phones are actually water resistant -- my last Motorola was.

Other than "find my phone" features, I can't help you with losing it, however.

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

#83
post #66

I guess it's not CMDA (Verizon) compatible. It sure looks nice otherwise, AND it has an FM radio. I hate that most new models have dropped that. EDIT: Reformatting

I suspect the FM radio has been added to help them to convert feature phone users. It's the sort of feature that's highly prized in countries outside of North America.

>highly prized in countries outside of North America

not in some european countries, FM radio means you have to pay ~20 euro/year per device for radio receiving license in some countries. Stupid, but it means this phone is useless for us as a corporate phone.

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

#84
post #19

This is great, I was ready to buy a MotoX until I saw it was $750 unlocked, when at the same time the Nexus 4 was only $350. I'm not surprised that they didn't sell that many of them.

I was in the market for a phone at that time. Google then dropped the price of the Nexus 4 to $200 (8GB storage) and $250 (16GB). That was way too good a deal for me to pass up.

It was kind of unfortunate since just 2 weeks before the price drop I had paid about $350 for the Nexus 4.

Well that's life I guess.

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

#85
post #62

No way this competes with real high end phones like S4, HTC One, iPhone5 or later. What it does is compete very well against the iPhone4, 4S, S3, and older premium phones. If you're adding a line to a family plan and want a phone that isn't basic, then this becomes very appealing as the iOS/Samsung/HTC/Nokia alternative will cost you either a 2 year subscription, or be $300 or more unlocked. Considering people will s…

I actually think that Moto G offers bigger value for the avg consumer than S4 or HTC One while costing half as much. It doesn't have shitty software addons, it will have quicker updates, the design is better (and the color options is a nice bonus), it looks more comfortable to hold. (And for me, the not-huge size is big plus. I have relativeli large hands but I'm baffled by the appetite for 5" or even more massive phones.)

If I had to choose between G a S4 and both costed $200, I would immediately go for the G.

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

#86
post #79
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Specs lie. The HTC One does have a super high-res screen though! http://www.macworld.com/article/2049270/benchmarks-iphone-5s...

That's literally Apples and oranges.

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

#87
post #83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the FM radio has been added to help them to convert feature phone users. It's the sort of feature that's highly prized in countries outside of North America.

>highly prized in countries outside of North America not in some european countries, FM radio means you have to pay ~20 euro/year per device for radio receiving license in some countries. Stupid, but it means this phone is useless for us as a corporate phone.

Certainly they could disable the feature in firmware if it was a real inhibitor in their target market.

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

#88

I was talking to representatives from Lyft at a festival here in Baltimore, and I asked them if they had any plans to support non-smartphones like mine, or any other way to use their service. "No" was the answer. I realized, this was genius! They could ensure only wealthy customers used their service, creating a vacuum in which the upper class could use transportation in style and comfort, without having to interface…

Or perhaps maybe they realised that most people, especially those that might use their app, are likely to have a smartphone or get one soon. That investing on making a service targeting other platforms is a waste of time and money? That sounds much more likely than some digital class nonsense. Edit: Also the assumption that people with smartphones are going to be better behaved than normal is... not based in reality.…

You're saying basically that investing money in developing your product to gain more customers is a waste. You're also saying it somehow makes more sense to develop two different applications for two different platforms and depend on a THIRD service's platform (Facebook).

Instead of just making one simple web 1.0 mobile site that works everywhere, doesn't limit your customer base, and takes less time and money to develop.

And it's not nonsense. I'll bet you that some basic research on demographics of the user base would show a clear separation in the economic disparity of cab users vs lyft users.

Why the separation? Easier access to cabs. Poor people will find it more difficult to access the internet or a smartphone, but they can get easy access to a plain-old telephone or desktop internet access.

The assumption is based on socioeconomic class differences, and is perceived rather than actually noticeable in difference, but i'm not going to repeat what you can find on wikipedia. The other aspect is that rich people may be perceived to tip better.

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

#89
The $179 price is total bullshit. In Brazil, where the phone was actually launched (and being produced), the price is US$279 (8GB) and US$343 (16GB).

Not that I, as a Brazilian consumer, am not used to getting dicked on hardware prices for everything. But reading $179 over and over again is kind of making me want to punch my screen.

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

#90
post #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?

Especially considering Moto G won't be out until 2014, about 10 months after HTC One's release.
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