Moto G: Why the New Smartphone May Be Motorola’s $179 Homerun

by Michelle Maisto

At a Nov. 13 event in New York City, Motorola introduced the Moto G, a seriously inexpensive (by U.S. standards) smartphone with more than respectable specs. Motorola hasn’t announced carrier partners yet, but on T-Mobile, a user could theoretically pay $179 and not be tied to a contract or two years’ worth of payments. In the wireless industry, that’s called having it all.

The Moto G has a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 1280 by 720, for 329 pixels per inch. The Apple iPhone 5S, by contrast, has a 4-inch, 1136 by 640 display with 326 ppi. It also strongly resembles the Moto X, including the curved, hand-fitting back.

The Moto G has a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, slow-motion video, burst mode, tap to focus, a Panorama mode and a minimalistic user interface—there’s no shutter button, just tap the screen. “The Moto G camera takes incredible photos in every setting,” Punit Soni, with Motorola’s software product management team, said at the event. It’s a claim few would make about the Moto X.

While the Moto G isn’t as customizable as the Moto X, it can be fitted with back cases and covers what Motorola calls Shells. The Shells, Flip Shells and Grip Shells come in a number of colors and textures.

Motorola introduced the Moto G along with Sol Republic Jax headphones that can be matched to a Shell. Another accessory is a Power Pack Slim 2000. While the Moto G can last 24 hours, the Power Pack helps extend that to two days.

Another new accessory (coming soon) is the JBL Micro Wireless Speaker. Users can pair it with the Moto G for wireless audio streaming. For those with active lifestyles, Motorola suggests pairing the Speaker with a rubberized Grip Shell (as seen here).

The Moto G will ship with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) but upgrade to KitKat (4.4) in January, when it arrives in the U.S. There’s a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor on board—Moto says it can do things like make calls and load the browser more quickly than Samsung’s Galaxy S 4. Users get two years of 50GB storage free on Google Drive, and on-board storage options are 8 or 16GB.

The Moto Go will go on sale the week of Nov. 13 in Brazil and parts of Europe, and weeks later arrive in Latin America, Canada, more of Europe and parts of Asia. In early January it will arrive in the United States, the Middle East, India and more of Asia. In 2014, it will be available from more than 60 partners in more than 30 countries.

Days before the Moto G’s introduction, Motorola announced that the Moto X is now available from all major U.S. carriers, and it lowered its price (temporarily, it said) to $99.99 with a two-year contract. Strategy Analytics estimates that Google sold only 500,000 Moto X units during the third quarter. Will the Moto G be the homerun the new Google-backed Motorola has been swinging for?