Motorola Introduces The Moto G Budget Phone

Motorola hopes that its new $179 Moto G smartphone, unveiled on Wednesday, can restart its struggling business. The new phone will be available for $179 without a wireless service contract, about one third of the price of Apple's "budget" iPhone 5C.

"Everybody deserves to be on the mobile Internet, and price shouldn?t stand in the way of anyone having a truly good smartphone to get them there," Motorola said.

Moto G includes a 4.5-inch 720p LCD TFT display, the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor featuring an 1.2 quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8 or 16GB of storage, a 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 2,070mAh battery and runs Android 4.3 Jellybean, with an upgrade to Android 4.4 KitKat coming at the beginning of 2014.

Here is how the new Moto G compared with the Motorola Moto X:

	Moto G	Moto X
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (MSM8x26) 1.2GHz Quad-Core Cortex A7 + Adreno 305	Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (MSM8960Pro) 1.7 GHz Motorola X8 System (SoC+NLP Processor+Contextual Processor)
Display	4.5-inch 1280x720	4.7-inch AMOLED (RGB) 1280x720
RAM	1GB	2GB LPDDR2
WiFi	802.11b/g/n, BT 4.0	802.11a/b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0
Storage	8 GB/16 GB, 2 years 50 GB Google Drive	16 GB standard, 32 GB online, 2 years 50 GB Google Drive
I/O	microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone	microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone, NFC, Miracast
OS at Launch	Android 4.3	Android 4.2.2
Battery	2070 mAh	2200 mAh, 3.8V, 8.36 Whr
Size / Weight	65.9 x 129.9 x 6.0-11.6 mm, 143 grams	65.3 x 129.3 x 5.6-10.4 mm, 130 grams
Camera	5 MP Rear Facing 1.3 MP Front Facing	10 MP Clear Pixel (RGBC) with 1.4µm pixels Rear Facing 2 MP 1080p Front Facing
Price	$179 (8 GB), $199 (16 GB) off-contract	$199 (16 GB), $249 (32 GB) on 2 year contract

The phone has a curved back and 19 customization options, including interchangeable Motorola Shells and Flip Shells in seven colors as well as Grip Shells in five colors.

The Moto G goes on sale this week in Brazil and parts of Europe and will be available within the next few weeks throughout Latin America, Europe, Canada and parts of Asia. It will be available in the US, India, the Middle East and more of Asia in early January. Motorola plans to sell the phone in more than 30 countries by 2014.

In the US, Moto G will be sold on Motorola.com, with no contract, no SIM lock and an unlockable bootloader for $179 with 8GB of storage and $199 for 16GB. Moto G will also be available through various carriers and retailers.

The new Motorola phone is the second major new product that Motorola has developed since its acquisition by Google in 2012.

However, the Moto G will not be available in China, the world's largest smartphone market by volume. And that's because the phone features Google search, Gmail email and other Google Web services, which are old restricted in China given the current regulatory situation. Google relocated its search engine from mainland China to Hong Kong in 2010, in order to offer uncensored search results.

Specifications

Operating system: Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean)
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU