Motorola Moto E Review and Unboxing

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8.2 Great

Motorola Moto E is a stunning smartphone at a steal of a price, If you can manage without a front camera and a LED Flash then there is no better smartphone available in this price range.

  • Design 7
  • Features 9
  • Performance 8
  • Usability 8
  • Value for Money 9

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The Motorola Moto E was launched globally on 13th May 2014 and has since been selling like hot cakes in few parts of the world particularly in India where it has run out of stock in just under 18 hours of its launch. This Moto E review would give you a general idea about what is so special in this smartphone that it ran out of stock on Day 1 of its launch.

Moto E is a perfect handset for those who don’t wish to compromise on the brand value but yet want to retain as much features as possible at a budgeted price and the new smartphone from Motorola certainly offers them more than that. The new Moto E smartphone sports a 4.3 inch qHD Gorilla Glass 3 display with 960 x 540 resolution and 256 ppi density. The device is powered by 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset along with 1GB of RAM and sails on the latest Android 4.4.2 Kitkat OS. The handset is priced at Rs. 6,999 and is available exclusively for purchase via flipkart.com in India.

Moto E Box Contents

The Moto E Comes in a similar white box packaging as its bigger brother Moto G. All the contents are mentioned on the left side of the box.

Moto E Box Contents

Box Contents : 1 Motorola Moto E smartphone with inbuilt battery, 1 charger, 1 wired headset and Manuals.

Design

At first glance its easy to misjudge the Moto E for Moto G as both are strikingly similar in looks But Moto E weighing at 142g is neither on the light nor heavy side but it definitely feels a little chunkier than the Moto G. The White Colored Moto E we received in our office definitely felt premium at first glance for a Rs 7K handset. This 4.3  inch handset is really comfortable to hold and back Panel is also easy to grip and is non slippery.

There are no physical home or back button rather there are 3 on screen capacitive touch buttons. Volume rockers and Power button are placed on the right side of the device. The Speakers are located on front of the device. The micro USB port is placed at the bottom and 3.5mm jack is placed on the top of the device.

Moto E Front

The rear side of Moto E is curved and is made of a soft-touch polycarbonate along with the trademark stylised “M” Logo of Motorola and a 5MP camera. There is accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensor in this handset. However no Gyroscope in this handset.

The handset is 12.3mm thick. The built quality of Moto E is really good and the handset does not feel cheap at all in the hands. Also the device has a scratch resistant glass and is Oleo phobic coated.

Display, OS and Storage

The qHD Gorilla Glass 3 TFT Display is 4.3 inch with 960×540 pixels resolution (256 ppi). The touch is pretty smooth and responsive. Viewing angles are also decent. Auto brightness option is available in this handset but I would suggest to keep brightness level to max as battery life on this device seems long enough to last you a day and since if brightness is not set to optimum viewing in sunlight can be an hindrance to use the smartphone properly.

The handset runs on Android 4.4.2 Kitkat OS. RAM is 1GB of which around 490 MB is Generally free. Of the 4GB internal storage only 2.21 GB is user accessible but you can move some of the apps to SD card on this handset. Well this is a big advantage considering most android phone have been stripped of this much needed feature off late.

Performance and Benchmark Scores

The Moto E is powered by 1.2 Ghz Dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 ARM Cortex-A7 Processor with Adreno 302 Graphics chipset. The performance is Pretty impressive and and no lag is immediately noticeable.

Benchmark scores

  • Quadrant Benchmark: 5358.
  • Antutu Benchmark: 12509.
  • Nenamark2: 49.5 fps.
  • Multi Touch: 5 point.
Camera Performance

The 5MP fixed focus camera performs surprisingly well in outdoor conditions. The image quality is as good and comparable to that of Lumia 520, However Lumia 520 is slightly ahead. The camera can also record videos with 480 x 854-pixel resolution at 30 frames per second. HDR option is also there in camera. In order to bring down the price Motorola had cut the corners on the possibility of a front camera and a LED Flash.

Moto E Rear

Gaming and Entertainment

The handset can play videos upto 720p. Also You can increase the number of video formats supported by this device easily by installing MX Player from the Google Play Store.

I installed the Asphalt 8 on the Moto E and it Ran really well with slight lag here and there which was barely noticeable . Also as I mentioned earlier biggest advantage is that apps cannot be moved to SD card, so there’s some joy for gamers out there.

Sound Quality

The Moto E audio Quality is Good But Volume is low even when Playing through internal speakers, but listening to songs with help of earphones is really a joy especially if you use your favorite in-ear earphones and not the supplied ones. Equalizer works perfectly when earphones are plugged in.

Sensors

Accelerometer, Proximity sensor and Ambient light sensor are all present in this device and works pretty Good.

Also 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS works perfectly fine.

Battery Life

The 1980 mAh Li-ion battery is non-removable and seems enough to keep you going for a full day as the estimated talktime is Upto 14 Hours on 3G and standby time is upto 400 Hours. In our tests, during heavy usage and gaming, the battery lasted  for about 14 hours.

TechImperia Verdict

We Recommend that you buy this handset if you are looking for a smartphone below the Rs. 10,000 price mark and do not want to rely on poor services offered by homegrown brands. Otherwise if your budget can go north of 10K mark then Moto G or Xperia M are much better options. But at this Price of Rs. 6,999, you cannot get a better smartphone than Moto E from a premium brand. Also it is a great option for Users who are not comfortable with a big 5 inch phone. Touch response of this phone is as good as any other phones. The Only Drawback is the absence of LED Flash and a Front Camera.

Please stay tuned for the unboxing video of Motorola Moto E smartphone.

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About Author

A bookkeeper by profession, he is also a tech enthusiast who loves to own new gadgets and experiment with them. He is the founder of technology blog - TechImperia which shares exciting technology news from around the world.

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