Hands-on: Motorola Moto E

Motorola has a long history in the mobile industry and with the rise of Android smart phones, they had brought sexy back with its ultra-thin RAZR smart phone back in 2011. Shortly after that, Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google and under their ownership, they had introduced the very customisable Moto X and its cheap and cheerful Moto G. The Moto G turns out to be their best selling Motorola smart phone in history.

Then early this year, Motorola Mobility was acquired by Lenovo, a Chinese company that has been coming out strong as a smart phone manufacturer. Despite the change of hands, the Motorola is still focusing on making cheap and cheerful devices that’s futureproof thanks to its pure Android experience.

To target the masses, they’ve recently introduced the Moto E, which brings latest of Android at an even lower price. Read on to find out what we think.

The first time we picked up the device, it looks and feels like a smaller version of its bigger Moto G. It gets a soft touch rubbery back with a slight curve for a comfortable feel. Like the Moto G and Moto X, there’s a slight dimple right below the camera to rest your index finger. Over at the front, it retains the similar all black look as the Moto G with no physical buttons.

Even at a low price, Moto has done clever little things like placing its loud speaker at the front underneath the bottom grill where the microphone located. The volume from the speaker is decently loud too and you won’t need to cup your hands at the back of the phone like you would on other devices.

Moving on to the display, the Moto E gets a 4.3″ screen which pushes a qHD resolution of 960×540. The result is a decent display which is even bearable to view full width web pages. Viewing angles are good and the screen resolution is high for this price range where most phones are rocking on a pixelated 480×320 or 800×480 resolution at most.

To protect its screen from day to day abuses, it is toughen with Gorilla Glass 3 and it is also splash resistant against accidental spills. The power and volume rocker buttons are placed conveniently at the right and Motorola has also included a notification light at the front which is nice touch.

With a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 processor and 1GB of RAM on board, we didn’t expect much in terms of performance. However thanks to its pure vanilla Android experience with the latest version 4.4.4, it feels delightfully smooth though isn’t as blazing fast as the new flagship smart phones. In a nutshell, it is powerful enough to run your usual apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and even Waze. If you need to run some games, it manages to run Real Racing 3 without much hesitation.

On-board, the Moto E gets just 4GB of storage but you can expand storage with its microSD card. For taking pictures, there’s a 5MP camera without LED flash and it can be launched quickly from the home screen. Unfortunately the quality is below average especially when taking close shots. There’s no tap to focus but you do get the option to enable the bracket to adjust its exposure. If you plan on taking videos, it shoots at a maximum of 480p. Sorry selfie fans, there’s no camera at the front.

The Moto E for Malaysia is the Dual-SIM version which is currently popular among entry-level users. Keeping the lights on is a modest 1,980mAh capacity battery which is rated to last a full day in a single charge with average use. In its original retail box, the Moto E comes with a pair of head phones and a 0.5A charger with a fixed microUSB cable. So if you wish to transfer files to your device, you would need to buy the cable separately. If we could have things our way, we would prefer a data transfer cable than an head phone.

For a RM369 device, the Moto E is a bargain for those looking to buy a smart phone for as little money as possible. The screen is the best we’ve seen for this price range although we can’t say the same for its camera. The imaging capability is the Moto E’s achilles heel considering photography making up an important part of smart phone usage.

Its closest Android competitor would be the ASUS ZenFone 4 (4″) at RM299 and its slightly bigger 4.5″ variant that’s priced at RM369, and these 2 have better cameras but loses out in the display (800×480) department. If you can live with a lower than average camera, the Moto E is a worth considering for an entry level Android smart phone which is guaranteed to get the latest Android updates. It is available now exclusively through Lazada and you can click on the banner link below:

Moto E Hands-on Photos