We get to grips with the Moto G4 & Moto G4 Plus... two handsets the redefine the phrase "value for money"
Acquisitions can be a scary thing. New ownership means change, and while sometimes change is good, it can also be very, very bad. If, for example, otherwise successful strategies are thrown out the window, it can see a once prosperous company fall into a spiral of doom from which it never recovers; Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's smartphone arm is one prime example.
Change for change's sake, in other words, the kind where a new owner is trying to put their imprint on an otherwise healthy product, is best avoided.
Then you also have the other angle in the mobile tech space, which is acquisitions for the purposes of acquiring specific technologies, patents, brand names, and rights; a big company buys a smaller company with highly valuable patents, strips them away, and then sells them on.
It's been speculated by some analysts that this is what Google did to Motorola when it acquired it a few years ago, and it's true, it didn't hang onto the firm for very long, making it look very much like a patent grab.
That said, it was not entirely a one-sided venture, during its short stint at the helm of Motorola, Google implanted some very admirable ideas that seem to have stuck. Practices that completely overhauled Motorola's line-up, re-established its brand, and made it a competitive force in the market today.
When Lenovo acquired Motorola following its short stay at Google, many tech journos, including us, were a bit worried that the Moto formula produced by Google and Motorola's cooperation might break down.
And that would have been unfortunate, as the Moto series was fantastic by this stage, it was essentially a kind of Google Nexus "Lite", packing decent design, very good specs for your money, and importantly an optimised experience between carefully selected hardware and finely tuned stock Android software.
The deal was sweetened by the fact that Motorola managed to keep its devices up-to-date with new software versions almost in tandem with Google's own pushing of new stock Android versions to its Nexus hardware. A final flourish was, for several handsets in the series, unprecedented customisation for the customer to really make their phone unique to them.
Fortunately, things have remained squarely on the rails in terms of maintaining much of the best of this recipe. Lenovo seems to have left Motorola to carry on as it pleases.
The Moto G brand has proven one of the most popular in Motorla's Moto series, and indeed one of the best-selling phones the firm has ever produced. There's a good reason too, for a low cost you get a phenomenal Android experience that is well put together and un-fussy, plus you get a lot of decent hardware for the price, and a good, solid build with some neat aesthetic design.
Understandable then, that refreshing the Moto G every year is a high priority. For the 2016 generation there are two handsets with the Moto G label; the Moto G4 and the Moto G4 Plus.
Contrary to the usual use of that naming convention, the Plus isn't a bigger phablet model, it is in fact the same size, but it features a few extra capabilities and a slightly higher spec. The Motorola and Lenovo names may be nowhere to be found on the handsets but rest assured that Motorola still exists as part of the Lenovo corporation and is still responsible for developing these phones.
The Moto brand, it seems (shown by the "M" logo on the back) is being treated a bit like fellow Chinese firm Huawei's Honor brand, the only words you see are Honor, or in this case Moto, and they want the brand to stand very much on its own, but we known who is actually behind the devices at the end of the day.
Lenovo is now prepping the Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus successor models which are poised to arrive at Mobile World Congress 2017 (MWC) towards the end of February. The duo have leaked in abundance in recent weeks and will surely offer a wealth of improvements over their predecessors for a similarly low price. However, rest assured that the Moto G4 generation will remain a viable option in 2017 and beyond, and with the emergence of the Moto G5 series, they are likely to be reduced to a much lower price!
For this review, we'll mainly be talking about the Moto G4 Plus, because for the most part the two phones are the same, the Moto G4 just has a slighly lower spec in some very specific ways and loses a few features, such as the front-mounted fingerprint scanner.
Moto G4 Review: Design & Display
A straightforward glance at the Moto G4 series and it must be said it is not exactly a spectacular looking phone, but then again anyone expecting it to be is perhaps barking up the wrong tree - this is an affordable handset ranging in its various iterations from the sub-£200 bracket. That said, there is a certain practical charm about it and it's not too surprising given Motorola's past affiliation with Google that there's more than a passing resemblance to the Google Nexus line. In some ways it's as if the previous generation of Moto handsets cross-bred with a Nexus 5 and this is what we got, it still has a distinctive sweeping curved design to the top and bottom ends but is now much larger, and the screen takes up a good proportion of the fascia.
Of course the entire build is plastic, but it seems to be of decent quality with a pleasing finish, and the phone has a solid feel in the hand. I was quite impressed at how thin and lightweight the handset seemed compared to previous Moto G models, which have always leaned on the chunkier side. The back panel has a textured finish which aids grip and it is removable to access the battery cell and card slots.
There's a punched mesh speaker grille at the top of the handset's face and on the back we see a return of the familiar pill-shaped camera and flash port array protruding slightly with the Moto "M" in a circle just below. It's all very neat and tidy.
True to previous Moto launches the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus will be available via the Moto Maker webstore where users can customise their device; there are eight back panel colours to choose from and five metallic accent colours, while the front panel is either black or white. Our hands-on time was with the regular non-customised black edition but we've seen images of a white and red handset and it does look far more eyecatching.
Both handsets feature the same 5.5in 1080p LCD display at 401 pixels-per-inch which is nice and sharp with impressive colour, viewing angles also seem very wide and the brightness levels are decent. This isn't the first time this series has had me wondering whether it was AMOLED until I looked at the spec sheet.
Moto G4 Review: Hardware, Processor & Battery
Both handsets are equipped with the exact same processor and battery hardware - Qualcomm's Snapdragon 617 octa-core CPU (MSM8952) based around eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, with an Adreno 405 GPU clocked at 550MHz, which is quite a lot of grunt for a budget-leaning model and twice as many cores as the previous generation. The battery is a sizeable 3,000mAh cell and supports rapid charging, while every model has microSD support for cards up to 128GB. The stock Android 6.0.1 sofware isn't bogged down by bloatware and it felt very smooth and responsive on both models. The Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus have different RAM setups depending on the storage model, but I'll cover that in a moment.
In terms of connectivity you've got a 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB, micro-SIM with full 4G LTE support, 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth 4.1 LE.
Moto G4 Review: Software
As mentioned, the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow in a stock setup which is great for running speeds, but also as the UI is so attractive and intuitive it's very pleasing to have it in this "vanilla" flavour. Plus it packs all the built-in features Google has squeezed into its latest builds, like a fantastic little drop-down settings menu, a great multitasking suite, battery optimisations via Doze, and much more besides.
Also, being a Moto series device you can expect the support to be pretty good for some time to come as the family regularly gets updated to new Android builds in a similar time-frame to Google's Nexus range - as it's stock there's really not a lot to do other than roll it out the door!
Moto G4 Review: Camera
The camera on the lead Moto G4 Plus model is a significant upgrade on older Moto G handsets and quite far removed from what we've come to expect of "budget" hardware. We're looking at a 16MP sensor with phase detect autofocus and laser focus, an f/2.0 aperture (the kind that was aboard flagships only about a year ago), dual-LED flash, manual "Professional" mode and 1080p video capture. I was impressed by he clarity and richness of colour this camera produces. The Moto G4 model has a 13MP camera instead and with a shorter list of features, so understandably imaging quality isn't going to be quite as impressive. Both handsets have a 5MP front-facing secondary with an f/2.2 aperture and an 84-degree wide-angle lens for group shots.
Moto G4 Review: Price, Availability & Storage Options
The Moto G4 is available Sim-free from the Moto Maker webstore where it can be customised, or via Amazon, Argos, and Tesco in a selection of colour options. The Moto 4G is only available in a 16GB storage model with 2GB of RAM with a price tag of £169.
The Moto G4 Plus starts at £199. There are three variants with 16GB storage/2GB RAM, 32GB storage/3GB RAM, and 64GB storage/4GB RAM, however, we heard from Lenovo/Moto reps that the 64GB edition will not be coming to the UK.
Moto G4 Review: Who Are These Handsets For?
Anyone. Literally, anybody. What Moto has achieved here is stunning: it’s built an ultra-cheap handset that packs in excellent design and utility as well as excellent specs and good hardware.
This is not a flagship handset, so you cannot expect it to move mountains. But what it can do is provide you with excellent across the board performance and great practically for well under £200.
Motorola is fast with updates; Android Nougat arrived on Moto phones before any other OEM. I also like the customisation options you have at your disposal. I am very smitten with the design of these handsets as well.
If you’re looking for a great value phone, either for yourself, one of your kids or an in law, the Moto G4 should be one of the first options on your list. I cannot stress just how good these phones are.
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