There is no dearth of low-cost Android phones in India and there's a new one launching every few days, but then why is the recently launched Moto E, priced at Rs 7,000, the talk of the town? Following up on the first impressions review, here's a more detailed analysis after two weeks of use. Is this the best choice for a low-cost Android smartphone or does it fall short? Read on.
As you take it out of the box, it may appear to you as a slightly smaller version of the Moto G, but on a closer look reveals the differences between the two. While the Moto E borrows the design principles of the Moto G, it has its own set of distinctive features. For instance, the Moto G has a speaker grill at the back, while the speaker on the Moto E is at the front; there is an LED flash that sits on the Moto G at the back, while the Moto E doesn't have a flash.
The Moto E's 4.3-inch display makes it compact to operate with a single hand. The phone has a thickness of 12.3 mm, a figure that could lead you to believe that this is a fat phone but the device has been ergonomically designed with a curved back that makes it look less thicker than what the specs suggest. The Moto E easily nestled into my palm courtesy its rounded edges. Its back though is made of plastic, but has a matt rubber coating atop, which makes it sweat-proof even when used for long durations. Also, the back cover does not catch smudges, so you don't have to worry about rubbing it against a fabric to get rid of daubs. The phone is good looking and has a build quality that we often find missing in many budget phones.
Its 4.3-inch display (960 x 540 pixels) produces vivid colours and results are not washed out - a problem that plagues many phones in this price segment. Even reading mails and other documents on the Moto E's display was quite a pleasant experience. I found the screen reflective in sunlight, but to my surprise, it didn't hamper my reading experience. The touchscreen is responsive and its smooth to navigate on the Moto E. The phone offers good viewing angles.
Even after 15 days of usage, there was no single scratch on its display; the Moto E's screen has a Gorilla Glass layer on top to protect it from scratches. Also, the company claims its display to have a water-resistant splash guard which makes the phone splash proof, but then this has become more of a standard feature nowadays.
The 5 megapixel rear camera on the phone captures quality pictures in both daylight and soft-light conditions, but where it fails to deliver is in low-light. This is where you feel the absence of a flash. I think Motorola should have added an LED flash on the Moto E.
Not only flash, the phone also lacks a front camera - but here you may not be losing on much as the front camera in phones in the price range are very basic. Nevertheless, the absence of a front camera is a minus.
Much to my surprise, the speaker on the phone is loud and produces good audio results. On the loudness front, the Moto E trumped my Nexus 4 by a small margin.
Beating under the hood is a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 with Adreno 302 400MHz single-core GPU. The Moto E, which has 1GB of RAM, easily allowed me to multitask - with around three to four apps running at a time. While there was a slight lag while installing apps on it, but once it was ready with all apps installed, it neither stuttered nor crashed, even once. I have used other low-cost Android phones in the past, and all of them had had their moments of falling back during the review periods, but the Moto E didn't lurch throughout the review period. Even games like Temple Run and Subway Surf, which users are found playing the most, ran smoothly.
The Moto E does not capture 720p videos, but it easily plays them. With not-so-heavy use, the Moto E's 1980mAh battery easily lasted for a little over a day. The phone has good reception and call quality; there wasn't any call drops during the time I used it as my primary phone.
The phone comes bundled with a pair of earphones which didn't fit me right. Don't expect the earphones to be of supreme quality; it's a basic model that offers satisfactory experience.
Like the Moto G, the Moto E also does not come with a modular charger and instead has a basic charger with a non-detachable USB cable. This means you may need to buy a separate USB cable to connect your phone to a PC.
Motorola's cheapest smartphone comes with 4GB of internal storage, of which around 2.2GB is accessible to users. It has a slot for microSD card that supports a card of up to 32GB for additional storage. You will need to shell out some money for a microSD card as the internal storage is too less to suffice even a normal user.
Moto E was the first phone in this price bracket to come with Android 4.4 KitKat OS. Today, however, there are many other phones from homegrown manufacturers, including the Micromax Unite 2, Xolo Q600S, Lava Iris X1, that run Android 4.4 KitKat and are priced under Rs 8000 and they better the Moto E on some specifications, at least on paper. But it should be noted that a spec sheet isn't the final word in mobile phone experience.
Motorola says that the Moto E will get at least one software update, while there is no such guarantee in case of other phones that have been mentioned above. The dual SIM Moto E does not run stock Android as Motorola has included a few proprietary apps in the phone, including Motorola Assist and Motorola Alert, but that does not clutter the UI. The interface is clean and there is no bloatware on the phone to eat up your space.
I have already talked about the Motorola Assist app in my Moto G review. The Motorola Alert is a new app that was introduced with the Moto E. It lets you send location-based alerts to people when you need them. Once the phone has been put on alert, it will send periodic notifications to people - depending on the settings made.
The low-priced Moto E comes in two colours - black and white - with a removable back panel. Motorola, alongside the launch of the Moto E, also announced the colourful shells (back covers) for the phone. Available in a wide range of colours, the back panels for the Moto E are also listed on Flipkart, the online retailer, which holds an exclusive right to sell the Moto E, Moto G and Moto X in India. But would you like to buy a back cover worth Rs 899 for a Rs 7K phone?
Having used the phone for quite sometime, it can be said that it's one of the best Android phones available today for under Rs 10,000. Given its price and the experience it offers, the Moto E is a steal.
Rating: 3.25/5
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