Dual-SIM phones are
few and far between, especially in telco-dominant markets, like the US and
Australia. Luckily Motorola has snuck one past the carrier guard dogs and
released the dual-SIM Moto E for anyone who can make use of the extra
connectivity.
The look and feel of
the Motorola Moto E is so familiar, you’ll swear you’ve seen it before.. The
feature-less black plastic shell and the heavily rounded corners not only look
like the Moto G, but a number of other low-cost smartphones that have been
released over the past few years.
This is not
necessarily a bad thing, especially in a phone which retails for under $200. In
fact, there’s a mysterious kind of pleasure in knowing that the reason the Moto
E looks so nondescript is be because you’ve saved hundreds of dollars not
buying a more impressive looking model.
It still might be a
bit thicker and heavier than you’ll like, but again this is another of those
value-for-money trade-offs. We didn’t find this impacted on using the handset
at all, in fact, the Moto E has a great, solid feel to it, and more grip than
an iPhone, thanks to its plastic construction.
The battery cover is
removable, but annoyingly the battery itself is locked into position, so you’ll
only remove the cover to install SIM cards or a microSD memory card.
When assessing the
quality of the screen in a low-cost phone isn’t about whether it is good or
bad, but more about how bad it is. The display is consistently one of the major
factors which separates the different cost classes of smartphones, and when you
buy a phone for under $200, you can’t expect much.
The 4.3-inch screen
in the Moto E is one of the better ones. The touchscreen is suitably responsive
(not always a given in this price range) and colours represented on-screen are
good.
Viewing angles are pretty awful though, with
the screen being almost unreadable from certain angles. For example, you have
have this phone sitting on the desk while you work and you receive a message,
you will need to pick up the phone and hold it towards your face to read the
message. The more acute the angle is to your eyes, the darker the screen
appears.
Ordinarily, the
camera is another major focus of cost-cutting in a low-cost smartphone, and
while the Moto E might look like proof of this concept on paper, it is actually
quite a good camera if you can overcome its limitations.
Chiefly, the lack of a flash and
auto-focus are these limitations. Motorola opt for a 5-megapixel fixed-focus
module for the Moto E, which means it is suitable for general photography, but
it will frustrate the photographically minded who may want to take macro-style
close-ups.
Photos taken within the limits of
this camera come out surprisingly well, with great colour reproduction and
decent handling of light. The fixed-focus lens means the camera is always ready
to fire and what you see on screen is typically what you get.
Our hats are off to the recently
updated Google Camera app (available for most Android phones on the Play
Store). This app has a simple suite of tools and settings, but includes one of
the best HDR modes in the business. If you’re not familiar with the technique,
High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is achieved by algorithmically combining
several photos across the dynamic range — dark shots with lighter shots, simply
put.
Having Dual-SIM card
slots and a low-price tag sets the Moto E apart from a number of its
competitors in this category. From our experience using the phone with two SIM
cards installed, the feature works well, but has a common limitation. If you
have cards installed in the two SIM slots at the same time, only one can have
an active data connection. You can select which SIM this is, and you can switch
the data connection from one SIM to the other, but you can’t use both at once.
Managing how these SIM cards works is
relatively straight forward, but you will need to dig around in the menus to
make adjustments. Given this is a major feature of the Moto E, it would have
been nice for Motorola to shortcut this process with an app of some sort.
It is also important to note that this
is not a 4G LTE phone; the maximum download speed the Moto E can achieve is
21Mbps. This may sound like a major drawback, but we really haven’t noticed any
downsides to this. Internet access is sufficiently speedy and major apps, like
Facebook and Twitter, work as expected. If anything, the lack of 4G is a
blessing for battery life, but more on this later.
Besides these considerations, other
connectivity options in the Moto are pretty much as standard. There is 802.11
b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a standard micro USB 2.0 port for connecting to a
computer.
As we mentioned earlier, the lack of 4G
options in the Moto E appears to have a positive effect on how long the battery
lasts between charges. As much as we love fast 4G speeds, a connection to a 3G
network is often more stable, so the phone spends less energy maintaining its
connection to the network. This is true for all phones, and is worth
remembering if you’re unhappy with the battery life in your current handset.
We consistently
enjoyed two full days of battery life between charges with our Moto E test
unit. Even on days with higher use, we still saw a day and a half of use — or
enough power for a full day and the eight-hours of the following work day.
General software
performance on the Moto E is also good, with fast app loading and smooth
animations and transitions across the user interface. There really is very
little difference between using a Moto E and using a more expensive model.
Only major complaint
is in the quality of the audio coming from the earpiece speaker. All calls made
using the Moto E during our tests sounded crackly and shallow. We could still
hear well enough to hold a conversation, but this is well below what we would
expect from any phone.
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