emphasized text There wasn’t much broken about the Moto G’s design, so Motorola didn’t bother fixing much. We’re still looking at the same curves, and the same chrome accents that actually look like dual front-facing speakers.(In fact, only the bottom one pumps out the jams.) Wedged between those grilles sits a 5-inch, 720p screen(the same size and resolution as last year), with a sheet of Gorilla Glass 3 providing some extra protection. So far, it seems to be doing the trick; I’m already seeing little pockmarks and dents in the plastic frame, but there’s nary a scratch on the panel itself. Alas, the introduction of Moto Display to the G line this year means that you’ll get all your notifications from fancy little onscreen icons, so the notification LED that used to be something of a Moto G hallmark is no more.
The design team clearly took some cues from this year’s version of the entry-level Moto E, which has optional colored bumpers that gave the phone a nice, grippy feel. This time, though, Motorola took that textured finish and applied it to the entirety of the G’s removable backplate. The sides are still as sparse as ever - there’s a textured power button and a volume rocker on the right edge - so the phone isn’t actually much easier to grasp than earlier models. C’est la vie. It’s a bit of a clunker too, in that sort of streamlined, Motorola way. And while the 11.6mm waistline makes it heftier than its rivals, it’s not what I’d call uncomfortable to use.
Meanwhile, under that backplate lurks a locked-down 2, 470mAh battery, joined by a micro-SIM tray and a microSD reader that accepts cards as large as 32GB. That last detail is crucial, since the Moto G is only available with 8GB or 16GB of built-in storage(the 16GB variant also includes 2GB of RAM, as opposed to 1GB in the base model). Beyond all that lies the quad-core Snapdragon 410 running at 1.4GHz, and while it’s plenty powerful for most day-to-day stuff, I was secretly hoping Motorola would graduate to one of Qualcomm’s 600-series chips this time around. Turns out, my fervent calls were answered, just for a completely different device; Motorola’s Moto X Play happens to run a Snapdragon 615, but that’s little comfort to our American readers since it’s not currently slated to ship in the States.
This is the first year you’ll be able to customize the Moto G through Moto Maker to make it more definitively yours. The review unit I received at the company’s press event last week was white with a navy blue backplate, but that seemed a little too boring for a week of full-on, real-world testing. Thankfully, our own Terrence O’Brien got a delightful black-and-purple model with a metallic pink accent running around the 13-megapixel camera. We swapped almost immediately. Regardless of the parts and configuration you choose, the new Moto G’s body is waterproof for up to 30 minutes as long as it’s in less than a meter of water - a rarity for a phone at this price point. I didn’t have a body of water to submerge myself and the phone in during my week of testing, so I settled for taking showers with it and dunking the thing in my drinks(still a crowd-pleaser!). Surprise, surprise: It still worked like a charm.
Oh, and perhaps the most important addition to the mix: LTE support! For the longest time, Motorola’s best-selling phone only came with HSPA+ radios, but the US version plays nice with LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 7 and 17, meaning it should work on just about any GSM carrier in the United States. Curiously, early spec sheets — including the ones given to us at the event — said the G supported LTE band 12, but that no longer seems to be the case. Sorry, T-Mobile customers, there goes any chance you had of using VoLTE calling on this thing.