Moto E 2015: The builder's cheapie gets a serious upgrade Why can't everybody make a bargain basement phone as well as Motorola? They're as fashionable as egg and chips in a 1970s Wimpy Bar, but the popularity of the small, robust, no-nonsense Moto E and G models has helped revived the brand. The Chinese-owned phone operation yesterday upgraded the Moto E yesterday, adding some quality …
Typically I bought a Moto E for my daughter at Christmas. She love it, and has not felt constrained in any way on the present lack of front camera or processing power. So I am sure the new camera would improve a already great little phone. Not sure about whether LTE is important at this price point, although I guess it makes it more future proof.
My only real complaint about the Moto E is the lack of a decent flip case. I love my case on the Moto G, which also switches the phone from standby to online when I open it. I am guessing the Moto E does not have the proper magnetic switches to support that, which is a curious omission considering how much money Motorola must make from accessories markup
The first gen E at least doesn't have the magnetic sensors - there's a delightful and useful 'educational' app called 'Sense It (sensors)' which shows data from all the ones your phone has. Highly recommended for all sorts of uses.
I am not convinced by this update. For £50 (what I paid Virgin for one for my daughter) or £60 (what I paid Amazon for a second one when the Virgin offer expired, having seen how good it was), the first gen E was an utter bargain. (Yes, it only had one camera and that wasn't a particularly good one, but I have a compact camera better than any phone's.)
I did get seduced into getting a second gen Moto G by listening to people - including here - saying how much better it is. I paid £120 for it, and I'm not convinced it was worth paying twice the price. (Yes, the G's camera is better, and it has two. Yes, the screen is significantly larger in size and in terms of the number of pixels, but I can't really tell the difference in terms of the resolution. But its battery life isn't as good because of that screen.)
Now the price for the second gen E is much closer to the price of a G, it becomes a much easier decision: get the G!
UXers are out of control, I don't know what planet they live on (California?) but they've managed to screw up practically every phone/tablet OS out there, Windows 8, Yosemite, Firefox, and websites which are being tabletised for no good reason... for screwed up tabletised websites don't need to look very far for an example, do we El Reg?
Is there anything which can stop them, or at very least stop making them so bloody arrogant?
I'm surprised AO didn't mention that Blackberry the exception which proves the rule by the way.
FWIW, it's not the UXers. Many of the UXers I know (which is a large number) complain that the problem is that the art designers are running the asylum and that real UX is being sidelined in favor of "aesthetics", which is why we are getting the phone OS equivalent of "black buttons on a black background labeled in black".
As an aside, is there anything awful about the 21st century that wasn't foreseen by D. Adams? Time for the B Ark...
It would be interesting to see what OnePlus could produce for the same sort of price.
They'd have no real advantage at the cheap end of the market - on the model One they're competing against high end models with 50% profit margins, and doing something similar for a lot less isn't really a challenge.
But at the low end nobody makes much (if any) money, and the only cost that OnePlus might save is generic brand marketing that's probably 4% if that of the final price.
If this gets a Cyanogenmod release then it could be worth a look when my Moto G eventually dies.
Also kudos to Motorola for adversing their thin, rubber protective covers with the tag line "Total Protection. Total Fun." fnar fnar
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