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Motorola just announced the new Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) officially and as we promised, here’s our detailed review. We already showed you how “the flagship in the mid-range” looks in detail and shared its synthetic benchmark CPU and GPU performance.

But what about battery life, real gaming performance and UI responsiveness, display color reproduction (is it harmful to your eyes?), real camera resolution, temperatures under high load, GPS accuracy…? We managed to check all that and a lot more in the past couple of days with Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015), so it’s time we shared all of that with you.

Some say that since Lenovo acquired Motorola, the latter is just a subsidiary of a Chinese company – why should we invest more in its phones instead of buying one of the many cheaper offers on the Chinese market? Actually, that’s not the case.

To begin with, there’s a big difference between Lenovo and a random Chinese company with next to no experience, Quality Control or budget for Research & Development. Besides, the company is still headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. and hasn’t changed its philosophy – we doubt that Lenovo is preparing to change the iconic brand in any major way.

Actually, Lenovo will try to strengthen the positions of both Motorola and Lenovo in as many markets as they can, creating something akin to internal competition.

But let’s not get distracted from the big star right now – Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015). It’s time to get started with the in-depth tests.

Check the current price of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) here:

http://amzn.to/1LeTA6Y

Contents

Video review

What’s in the box?

We’re in possession of an engineering sample which came here without any boxes or accessories, but we’ll update this part of the review as soon as we get the production unit. We expect just a USB cable and a couple of manuals.

Design and construction

Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) has great build quality, which is pretty standard for the American manufacturer. We make this remark immediately following our first moment holding the new Moto and now, after a serious amount of time spent with it (just a week, but yes, we tested it 24/7) our opinion on the matter has not undergone any change.

The new Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) preserves the design motifs of Moto G2 with some minor tweaks. The two gray plastic stripes covering the earpiece and the microphone are replaced with thin aluminum which surrounds the elements. The whole front side is covered by protective glass, except for the speaker on the bottom and the earpiece on the top. The 5MP camera is placed next to that.

Its easy to spot that the left and right borders of the screen are thicker than in the predecessor, but since the sides of the body are slightly curved and thinned at the edges, the new Moto feels much more compact and elegant.

However, the depth of the phone in its thickest point is the same as in Moto G2 – 11 mm. The other dimensions are almost identical and the weight is 154 grams (compared to G2’s 149 g). We won’t consider that to be a negative trait because of the ~20% higher battery capacity (2070 mAh to 2470 mAh).

This is what the two phones look like next to each other. We’re adding the first generation Moto G (4.5”) just for the sake of this visual comparison.

The new Moto G’s back is engraved with diagonal stripes, instead of the glossy finish found in the previous generation. This time around the panel is matte and provides you with perfect grip. At the top-center you have the 13MP camera, accompanied by two LED flashes for “true tone” night photos (more on it a little later in the review). Both the camera and the LED flash module are placed on a interesting design element which looks like the back button module of the LG G series. There is the traditional concave logo which isn’t a button at all. Your index finger sort of automatically goes there when your talking on the phone and it would have been nice if it had some functionality.

The MicroUSB 2.0 port is placed on the bottom. The left side is clear, while the top features a noise reduction microphone and 3.5mm audio jack. The right side is only populated by volume and power buttons.

Side photos



Here is one more great surprise – Moto G (3rd gen) is IPX7 water resistant. It can be immersed for 30 minutes to a depth of 1 meter.

Our overall impression is great and – the level of build quality is something you typically see in high-end devices.

Display

Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) features a capacitive multi touch IPS display with a 5-inch diagonal, 16:9 aspect ratio and Corning Gorrila Glass 3. The resolution is 1280 x 720 pixels with pixel pitch of 0.0865 x 0.865 mm, or 294ppi (pixels per inch). The screen can be considered “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal to or greater than 30 cm, which matches normal reading distance.

You can see the matrix sub-pixels in the microscope image below.

Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) has comfortable viewing angles. Here you can see what the screen looks like at 45°.

The maximum brightness of the display is 485 cd/m2. Color temperature is 7430K – colder, daylight type (the optimal is 6500K). The contrast ratio is good – 850:1.

Color reproduction

To put things into perspective, we would like to give you some basics on the sRGB and Adobe RGB color gamuts. The CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram represents the spectrum of colors visible to the human eye, thus giving you a better perception of color gamut coverage and color accuracy. Inside the black triangle you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB), used by millions of people in HDTV and on the Web. As for Adobe RGB, it is used to work with professional cameras and monitors when preparing print. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone, and so reproducing them accurately is key in a quality display.

The yellow triangle indicates the color gamut coverage of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015). It covers 95% of sRGB and 71% of Adobe RGB. Overall, it is sufficient for a fully saturated image. Some of the reds and blues remain uncovered, but the amount is negligible.

The image below shows practically the same thing, but recorded measurements are included. The colored circles represent reference colors (sRGB/rec.709 Standard Color Gamut Reference Colors) and the whites show the actual reproduced colors. The primary and secondary colors are shown with 100% and 50% saturation respectively inside the sRGB gamut. The results are good, though not excellent.

We tested the display with 24 color samples, including commonly used colors and ones the eye easily recognizes – dark and light human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange and so on. The result of this test is important for video playback. The color accuracy of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) is good enough.

The gamma curve representing the distribution of the brightness levels is really close to the optimal. The image will have insignificant loss of details in the dark areas (with low white levels) and the section with high white levels will be slightly brighter.

Pulse-width modulation (PWM, Screen flickering)

We didn’t detect any aggressive light pulsation throughout the entire brightness level progression, thus we consider the display harmless to your eyes.

What is PWM, why is it important and why did we add this test to our reviews?

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

The image below is mostly useful for gamers. It illustrates the response time of the pixels in modes from “Black” to “White”, plus “White” to “Black” for levels from 10% to 90% and back.

We measured Fall Time + Rise Time = 15.9 ms, which is good for an IPS panel.

Display results comparison

Final thoughts on Display

The display of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) has high brightness, good contrast, wide angles of visibility, relatively accurate colors and the light it emits doesn’t flicker. The resolution could be better, but it is good enough to facilitate lack of pixel distinction when reading from natural distances.

Sound

All frequencies sound fine with no distortion. The sound is full, rich and clear.

Battery

The capacity of Moto G’s battery is 2470 mAh, or 19% higher than the one in Moto G2. The new Snapdragon 410 is more energy-efficient, while the Adreno 306 is downclocked by 50 MHz to 400 MHz. We have high expectations for the battery life.

We’re going to conduct our standard battery tests including Surfing the Web (Wi-Fi and 3G), Talk Time, Video playback and 3D gaming at 120-nit brightness, turned on Wi-Fi and turned off 3G (except for the 3G test, of course).

Traditionally, we begin with the Talk Time test where the consumption of the 5-inch IPS screen doesn’t affect battery life because it’s turned off by the proximity sensor. We’ve got 1276 minutes (21 hours and 16 minutes) with one charge which is a great result, leading the last generation almost by a factor of two (707 minutes for the G2). 610 minutes of Web Surfing (10 hours and 10 minutes) is another great result for a mid-ranger. In comparison, G2 got us 479 minutes on one charge. When using 3G connection the endurance fell by 23% to 468 minutes (7 hours and 48 minutes). In 3D gaming endurance G3 leads G2 by quite a bit – 324 minutes for the new model (5 hours and 24 minutes) which is a 38% jump compared to G2’s result of 235 mins. The new G3 got us 671 minutes of HD video playback (11 hours and 11 minutes) or in other words, it won’t be a problem for you to watch a movie or two, even if battery juice is halfway gone.

Specs Sheet



Operating system Android 5.1 Lollipop CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916) (4-core, 1.36GHz, Cortex-A53) RAM 1GB RAM (2GBs of RAM for the 16GB model) Storage 8/16GB + microSD GPU Adreno 306 (400 MHz) Display 5.0-inch IPS LCD, 1280×720 pixels, capacitive Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, GPS (A-GPS, GLONASS), Bluetooth v4.0, A2DP, LE Back Camera 13.0MP, f/2.0, HDR, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, IR filter / [email protected], SlowMotion – 720p Front Camera 5.0MP, f/2.2 (front) Features PX7 certified – water resistant up to 1 meter and 30 minutes

FM radio

MicroUSB 2.0 (On-The-Go support, USB Host)

3-axis Accelerometer – Kionix

3-axis Calibrated Magnetic field sensor – Asahi Kasei Microdevices

Orientation sensor – Asahi Kasei Microdevices

Ambient Light sensor – TAOS (1.0 lux resolution)

Proximity sensor – TAOS Battery 2470 mAh Dimensions (W/H/D) 141.9 x 72.3 x 11.2 mm Weight 154 g (5.43 oz)

Software – Android 5.1 Lollipop

Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015)’s UI has all the beautiful goodies that Lollipop 5.1 brought out and even some more, all made by Motorola. That doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has filled the new G with bloatware. Actually, Moto G has just one custom app named, well …Moto. Here is what your new G will look like when you first boot it up.

The model we have with us is the 8GB version, which only has 3.16GB of free space. Fortunately, Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) has a MicroSD slot, so you won’t be forced to listen to nothing but the integrated FM Radio (instead of your own music collection, for example). The presence of the Radio is a plus, though. In addition, you have the usual Chrome browser, Phone, Camera, Calculator, Messaging, Gallery and Photos apps, mixed with a handful of Google services like Gmail, Docs (for creating and editing text documents), Drive (cloud service), Google+ (social network), Hangouts (communication service), Maps and YouTube.

Back on the Moto app. It’s divided into 3 modules – Assist, Actions and Display. Assist tries to help you get rid of interruptions when you’re sleeping or driving. Actions has two features – “Twist for Quick Capture” and “Chop twice for flashlight”. The first one opens the camera app when you twist your wrist twice. The latter turns the flashlight on when you make a fast chopping motion (the good grip is important here because otherwise you could end up searching for your broken phone in the dark).

The “Display” menu explains the “Notifications at a glance” feature which gives you the option of seeing your notifications without even waking up your phone. But that’s not all, they also appear automatically when the phone detects that you’re taking it from your desk or out of your pocket.

Notifications at a glance



GPS Accuracy

We put the GPS module through a quick test, taking a 2 km walk in a narrow alley which is present in Google Maps. Initially, the location was spotted pretty fast. The generated route was fairly accurate with some slight deviations, as you can see in the photo below (no, we didn’t swim before getting on the bridge in the lower right corner).

Performance

Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916)

At first we were rather disappointed to see Snapdragon 410 in the new Moto G. It was a nice surprise for the second generation Moto E, but the “G-class” shouldn’t share components like this with the most budget model. However, things aren’t that bad – actually, it turned out that it doesn’t matter much and could even be seen as a positive characteristic. The lower frequency of the Adreno 306 GPU (it’s features in Snapdragon 415, 425 as well) is a great battery saver, and as you’re going to see below, that doesn’t affect gameplay negatively. It supports OpenGL ES 1.x, 2.0, 3.0; Open CL 1.1e; RenderScript; Direct X 9.3.

Snapdragon 410 is built trough a 28 nm process, just like its predecessor. You can find a detailed comparison between Snapdragon 410 and Snapdragon 400 in this article.

CPU performance

Storage Speeds

A nice surprise is the storage speed jump, compared to Moto G2. Motorola Moto G3 (3rd gen) reached 92.1 and 92.6MB/sec in our sequential read and random read tests, respectively.

WS – Sequential Write; RS – Sequential Read; WR – Random Write; RR – Random Read;

GPU performance

FPS Performance in real games

Along with the synthetic benchmarks, we test our devices with some of the most demanding games in Google Play and measure the frames per second we get. For Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) we chose Dead Trigger 2, GT Racing 2, Modern Combat 5 and EA SPORTS UFC.

Initially Dead Trigger 2 automatically set the graphics settings to Low but we had the chance to bring it up to Medium. The game is capped at 30 frames per second and that’s the FPS value we got nearly the whole time. In some rare moments we noticed frame drops to 23 fps, but that didn’t negatively impact on our gameplay.

GT Racing 2 also runs pretty well. The 30 FPS cap is present here as well and we measured two momentary drops to 21-22 FPS, but overall we have smooth gameplay and 27-28 frames per second.

Modern Combat 5 runs okay but we can say that it’s on the limit below which the gameplay won’t be that enjoyable. The average frames per second we got were 23, without significant drops.

We didn’t have any problems with EA SPORTS UFC as well – the fighting game runs great at constant 30 FPS.

Temperatures and Comfort

In order to test the temperature comfort during heavy usage we played demanding games for around an hour and checked the surface temperatures at the back of the phone. Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) got a little warm but not to the point of feeling uncomfortable. The warmest point was at the middle, reaching 43.3°C degrees. The upper side stopped our thermometer at 41.7°C, and the bottom – at 41.0°C.

Usually we take these measurements only after continuous 4K video shooting as well, but the new Moto G can record clips at resolutions up to Full HD (1080p) which doesn’t affect its surface temperatures.

We also conduct a temperature test on the internals when using the phone for everyday tasks like browsing the web or watching movies. Take a look at the graph below in which the red line represents battery temperature, the blue indicates CPU clock frequency, while the purple shows load percentage for the CPU.

Put simply, Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) doesn’t have any problems and doesn’t get uncomfortable due to high temperatures, no matter what you use it for.

Camera

Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) features a 13MP, 3120 x 4160 pixels rear camera with LED flash facilitated by LEDs with different color temperature. The flash is indeed LED based, but it differs from typical units in that it wide-spectrum. It’s referred to as a ‘True Tone flash’ and automatically sets illumination intensity from its pair of LEDs, both of which, as we said, have different color temperatures. The specific pattern in action is determined based on lighting conditions.

Resolution

We measure the resolution of the camera with the ISO 12233 table you can see below, the results are recorded in LPH (Lines per Picture Height).

At the center of the table, the new Moto G reached a maximum of 2500 LPH providing highly detailed photos.

Using our test composition, we can gain a subjective but fairly accurate view of the resolution, sharpness, color noise and chromatic aberrations.

The text is legible and there are no significant JPG compression traces.

The image is clear. There are no chromatic aberrations.

The option for accurately setting the exposure in a certain point of the frame allows for good emphasis on the dimmed areas, regardless of the relatively small dynamic range and the increased color noise in this type of camera. And while we’re on that, at least in good lighting conditions, color noise is absent.

Correct color reproduction

The analysis of the color table we shot showed relatively accurate colors. Some of them will be over-saturated but that is done on purpose to “sell” the photo. In the frame which we used for the test, colors close to light human skin are rendered almost perfectly, but the darker human skin and the blue sky will be over-saturated (the skin will be darker and the sky will be more blue).

Blue Satisfactory Green Very good Red Good Yellow Very good Magenta Very good Cyan Very good White Very good Grey Good

Our score is 6.7/10.

You can see the results in the color map below.

Sample photos in brightly lit conditions

Sample photos in reduced light conditions or indoors

Sample night photos

Sample videos

To see the videos in their actual quality, click on the gear (lower right) and choose the highest resolution.

Full HD sample video

720p Slow Motion video



Camera results comparison

Final thoughts on Camera

The camera of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) is good for a mid-range device. The photos are clear and detailed with sufficiently accurate or somewhat over-saturated colors.

Conclusion

We can’t go without praising Motorola for the work they’ve done. They certainly seem to be headed in the right direction. Instead of going after higher resolutions and unnecessary performance bumps which aren’t that important, Motorola has put some thinking into essential things like much longer battery life and better user experience. The lack of a Full HD resolution is not a disaster given the fact that even with the HD resolution the 5-inch screen becomes “Retina” when viewed from a distance of over 30 cm. The main thing here is that the screen doesn’t suffer from Pulse-Width Modulation, so you won’t feel eye fatigue even after continuous use (find out more).

Another feature that everyone wants to have, regardless of what price range their desired device belongs to, is a good camera. The new Moto G is a nice step forward, and we think that its users will be pleased with the photo quality.

Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015)’s construction is stylish, elegant and has water protection with an IPX7 rating.

There is one more thing that is “invisible” when you’re looking at the specs sheet but definitely matters – storage speeds. The new G3 has a huge advantage over its predecessor, which is of great importance for the user experience.

All of that makes us forgive Moto for not giving us a jump in GPU performance, especially since we didn’t stumble upon lag or low FPS in the popular games.

Check the current price of Motorola Moto G (3rd Gen, 2015) here:

http://amzn.to/1LeTA6Y