The Motorola G: A phone after my own heart

Garikai Dzoma Avatar

Motorola G

When it comes to the Android market there are two worlds: the give me your hand and foot Galaxy world with Samsung as the mascot where you are charged a fortune to get a phone or device that has decent to awesome features; and the the low priced bottom of the barrel stuff that is typically hurled from China. Well the good news is that the Motorola G is on a mission to change that.

It seems you only have two choices either you buy a cheap phone with no brand or support and terrible specifications. I know a good number of Chinese Android phones that will struggle to run Google Chrome and not run XBMC (my favourite player.) The other option would be to spend a fortune on one of the top brand phones. It seems Google has finally decided to enter the Android fray with its own offering that, it claims, was made with us poor folks in mind.

Why the Motorola phone is good news for you and me?

  • It is made with the developing world in mind. Unlike Tim Cook’s rich man’s toy this device is made with you and me in mind-yeah this one is for the junk market!

  • It is affordable at around $170 without any of that contract nonsense that is so American centric.

  • It will be widely available on release which means it will (hopefully) get into Zimbabwe without that 100%+ profit retailers want to charge me to get one of those “unlocked” iPhones. Why do they lock them in the first place?

  • It runs Android Jelly bean (4.3) with a promised guaranteed update to Kit Kat(4.4). This is where most cheap phones lag behind: It is so hard to get official Operating System updates on them and after a year you would have to flash them with a Custom ROM like Cyanogenmod just to get the latest features. Motorola is part of the Google family so you can expect lots of support and easy timely updates just like the Nexus people get.

  • Awesome specifications: HD display, 4.5” screen, 1280×720 resolution, 1.2GHZ Quadcore Snapdragon 400 processor, 5 MP back camera and 1.3 MP in front ( you are not going to win photographic contests with these but then again you have always taken crappy selfies), Dual SIM capabilities ( I know most of us are still not able to decide between Econet’s brutal efficiency and Telecel’s awesome deals so why do you even have to choose) and a battery “that will last all day” no matter what ZESA does.

  • 8 GB on board memory to put your pirated (yes we know what you did) music on.

  • It has 3G of course. No LTE but who cares about that here?
  • 19 customization options including a plethora of colours you can choose from to match your dress, handbag, shirt or eye liner.

  • If you are a purists like me you should be glad to know this phone runs a pure unadulterated Android OS.

  • Even Civil servants and Hwindis can afford this one without going bankrupt.

  • Still not impressed! Dude it’s a Motorrola the same guys who made the sexy RAZR series.

In short the Motorola G offers the same good specifications found in the cheap versions of Lumia 520 with the added advantage of a well established ecosystem of apps a better display. It does not make you sacrifice currency for price. As we wait for Motorola to release it and for someone to go to Dubai and order them I will leave you to drool at the phone on its official page here.

Image via: Motorola

8 comments

  1. Illuminati

    And all along, i thought it was CyanogenMod? Silly me.

    1. Garikai

      ; silly you! I can you think that. Thanx for the note I thought the coke I drank before writing this tasted funny.

    2. Garikai Dzoma

      Thanx for the note

  2. nullset

    Looking forward to this thing too. Got my Moto X while in the states and it’s the first phone I’ve had where I didn’t miss my iPhone… At all.

    Oh, and don’t forget the Moto G hss a waterproof nano coating too, so should be fairly splash proof.

  3. Ash

    Very good phone indeed great move by Motorolla, its good to devices that are built with developing economies in mind. On the tablets front, you can look at the sub 200 tablets including the Asus MemoPad HD7, its quite a solid build, $129 on Amazon right now.
    I long for the day Google play devices is available in out region, considering Google slashed the nexus 4 by 100, to debut at $149 for the 8gb model.

  4. James Ritala

    That phone is a game changer. I watched the announcement event and I think they are in the right direction regarding android upgrades and the fact that they don’t like the bloatware that comes with samsung and htc’s and others…

  5. tinonetic

    Wow! The last truly good offering like this was the Huawei Ideos U8150 when it defied smartphone norms by selling at $100,retail.

    Now coming from Google,you know they will keep it clean and pure. I want one!

  6. re-a-list

    when i got my Huawei ideos last year i intended to change it after saving enough for the premium brands but its perfomance exceeded my expectations so much it didn’t remind me y i should change it . Moto has been in the mobile game longer so i think we wont be disappointed. imma give it a try (only because my screen is cracked i still love ideos that lil worker)

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