TR Forums

Yeah. I did it.
Basicly the same phone.
Just connecting @ 4G, seems a tad quicker doing things.
Smaller by a flea's leg.
Not worth the cost to upgrade.
But...I'll keep it.
Going to keep this as my main phone.
Has some neat features.
The G is a great phone and much better for the money.
EDIT: Added pictures
.

I love my Moto X, and have recommended the G to others in the market for those that don't need LTE. For the price, $100 is very hard to beat.

Dizik wrote:

I love my Moto X, and have recommended the G to others in the market for those that don't need LTE. For the price, $100 is very hard to beat.

.
Both are nice, really liked G. The X seems just a mite quicker....With dual cores, go figure.

Do you have a stock rom?
doing some research in the forums; apparently some have issues with battery drain?
blaming it on KitKat.

The differences in core architecture make a much bigger difference than having the two extra cores that spend the vast, vast majority of their time plugged in. The Moto G uses Cortex A7 cores, which are not as fast on a per-clock basis as even the Cortex A9, let alone the Krait 300 cores in the Moto X. Plus the GPU in the X is quite a bit better than that in the G. The G is all the phone anybody needs, the X is all the performance you could really want right now (with theoretical benchmarks excepted). Since they dropped the off-contract price at the start of the year to $399 full-time, I'd say they're both excellent for the money. If I lived in an LTE market (and I do for Verizon, not so much for any other carrier at the moment) the X's better networks make up for a lot of the extra cost. I bet the always-listening feature is great for Bluetooth.

I have a GS4. Part of me wants to throw it up on Swappa and get a Moto X. A bit smaller than what I have, and without Touchwiz the X is probably actually faster, somehow.

How do you like the wood back?

oldDummy wrote:

The G is a great phone and much better for the money.

How's the battery life in comparison? I'm wondering if those A7's help save some juice on the G...

NeelyCam wrote:

oldDummy wrote:

The G is a great phone and much better for the money.

How's the battery life in comparison? I'm wondering if those A7's help save some juice on the G...

http://anandtech.com/show/7586/motorola-moto-g-review/3

Not sure what it's like with KitKat.

derFunkenstein wrote:

The differences in core architecture make a much bigger difference than having the two extra cores that spend the vast, vast majority of their time plugged in. The Moto G uses Cortex A7 cores, which are not as fast on a per-clock basis as even the Cortex A9, let alone the Krait 300 cores in the Moto X. Plus the GPU in the X is quite a bit better than that in the G. The G is all the phone anybody needs, the X is all the performance you could really want right now (with theoretical benchmarks excepted). Since they dropped the off-contract price at the start of the year to $399 full-time, I'd say they're both excellent for the money. If I lived in an LTE market (and I do for Verizon, not so much for any other carrier at the moment) the X's better networks make up for a lot of the extra cost. I bet the always-listening feature is great for Bluetooth.

I have a GS4. Part of me wants to throw it up on Swappa and get a Moto X. A bit smaller than what I have, and without Touchwiz the X is probably actually faster, somehow.

How do you like the wood back?

My wife is utilizing a G4 mini Duos.
She likes it but says the sound was too low.
When I checked it the volume was set to 50%....

Think the X is a better phone.
But that is just my initial take, time will tell.
All the bloatware on the S4 leaves a bad first impression.
Both the X and G are almost pristine Android, minimalist Motorola touch.

bamboo back is nice; just don't expect symmetry perfection.
It has imperfections, as well as my initials.
Ha, that itself is symmetry.

NeelyCam wrote:

oldDummy wrote:

The G is a great phone and much better for the money.

How's the battery life in comparison? I'm wondering if those A7's help save some juice on the G...

Just switched over to ART.
Prior it was hmmm...OK, nothing exciting.
Still finding my way.
Thought the G was better; but that was running ART so giving it a try.
Need to play with the settings a bit.
Then we shall see.

DancinJack wrote:

NeelyCam wrote:

oldDummy wrote:

The G is a great phone and much better for the money.

How's the battery life in comparison? I'm wondering if those A7's help save some juice on the G...

http://anandtech.com/show/7586/motorola-moto-g-review/3

Not sure what it's like with KitKat.

Thanks,
Doesn't surprise me.
All those features are great and work fairly well.
As with most things they come at a price.
Brian prefers the LCD screen because of power considerations.
That's all well and good but you can't have active features that are worth anything with an LCD screen.
It would chew up the battery....and it still does, just not as much.
Same with the voice core, maybe it's the best there is for power consumption, it still uses some.
Guess theirs no free lunch.
Think I could get a day of use with the X's battery.
I could live with that.
We shall see.

IMO the G and X are a perfect size.
Lets see how they hold up.
So far:
I'm impressed.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I bet the always-listening feature is great for Bluetooth.

Not as useful as one would think. The always listening feature that is. The moment you get outside of a few core Google apps, about all you can do is launch an app. A querry as simply as "what is the weather forecast tomorrow?" fails and you just get google search results. I have location info enabled but it isn't smart enough to use it. I have to say "what is the weather forecast for Dallas Texas tomorrow?". Even something as simple as "what time is it?" fails. Sending SMS messages doesn't work particularly well either. It has trouble with the context switch from the contact info to the message content. Giving it a command doesn't seem to work at all. For example, "read the last text message from Jane Doe" will likely end up composing a message of "read the last text message" to Jane Doe. If you are patient though and simply say "text Jane Doe", it will prompt you for which number if there are multple, then prompt you for the message content, the ask if you want to send it.

It also doesn't listed continuously via bluetooth. It listens via the built in microphone. You have to press the button on the headset to get it to use the headset for voice commands. Makes sense really as you would chew threw the battery on a bluetooth pretty fast, but for a car hands free, its annoying.

I don't know how things change if you put it in car mode. I haven't manually done so and you can't buy the actual dock for the thing as it seems to be permenantly out of stock. Seems odd when so many of the whiz-bang features are aimed at hands free usage as you would in a car.

That said, I'm happy with mine. I picked up a developer's edition for $400 during the cyber monday sale. Battery life seems good. <get off my lawn>If you are on your phone enough to burn through the battery in a day (12 hours or less), you are on your phone too much</get off my lawn> GPS reception seems great. I've got 14 satellites and a 30ft error, sitting indoors on the bottom floor of a two story house. Camera is fine for what I would use a cell phone camera for. If I am taking pictures I care about, I'm using my DSLR. One minor note: there is no USB mass storage support. You get MTP or PTP and that's it.

--SS

DancinJack wrote:

NeelyCam wrote:

oldDummy wrote:

The G is a great phone and much better for the money.

How's the battery life in comparison? I'm wondering if those A7's help save some juice on the G...

http://anandtech.com/show/7586/motorola-moto-g-review/3

Not sure what it's like with KitKat.

Wow... that's impressive

NeelyCam wrote:

Not sure what it's like with KitKat.

Wow... that's impressive[/quote]

Yes. A great phone.
If power consumption mandates disabling some features in X ;
the scales tip heavily in G's favor for comparison.

EDIT: Improved readability.

SecretSquirrel - what about voice dialing? That's what I'm most interested in with Bluetooth. I have to wake up my phone, double-tap the home button, to launch S-Voice and then hit the bluetooth's button before I can voice dial (or else I'm doing something wrong on my SGS4). At that point I might as well just dial on my phone. If I could get it down to "just pressing the Bluetooth mic button" I'd be pretty happy.

derFunkenstein wrote:

SecretSquirrel - what about voice dialing? That's what I'm most interested in with Bluetooth. I have to wake up my phone, double-tap the home button, to launch S-Voice and then hit the bluetooth's button before I can voice dial (or else I'm doing something wrong on my SGS4). At that point I might as well just dial on my phone.

With a bluetooth headset, if you set the phone to handle the bluetooth button with the touchless control feature, then it should be "press bluetooth button, speak 'ok google, call Joe'".

--SS

On the way back from JFK airport last night:
No voice command worked. It acknowledged activation, that was it.
First time I tried it. So it could be me...most likely is.

oldDummy wrote:

On the way back from JFK airport last night:
No voice command worked. It acknowledged activation, that was it.
First time I tried it. So it could be me...most likely is.

Also requires a network connection...

Right now have to use my phone for internet.
Verizon is showing their displeasure at my jumping ship by finding "account problems" and shutting down internet access until I call them. After 8am...Then they will offer me a "deal", most likely....
Irritating.

EDIT: Yup, restored service, will call later with some "Great" deals. Was disabled to protect customers...?

SecretSquirrel wrote:

oldDummy wrote:

On the way back from JFK airport last night:
No voice command worked. It acknowledged activation, that was it.
First time I tried it. So it could be me...most likely is.

Also requires a network connection...

Had roaming disabled. Believe it has to be active.

An app I need [whatsapp] would not install under ART.
Doesn't run under ART at all.
Damn, back to Dalvik.

oldDummy wrote:

An app I need [whatsapp] would not install under ART.
Doesn't run under ART at all.
Damn, back to Dalvik.

Whatsapp and ART don't mix. It is well documented. ART is still experimental so if you are not the adventurous type, don't go there.

Flying Fox wrote:

Whatsapp and ART don't mix. It is well documented. ART is still experimental so if you are not the adventurous type, don't go there.

Thanks,
Tried to install under Dalvik run with ART.
Was a no-go.
My understanding is 4.4.1 fixes it.
Will wait for that.
Never used it before, now it will be one of/main conduit of communication with my son.
Figures.

Why not use Hangouts? Works with ART and if you have an Android phone, you have it already. Not to mention you can access it from Gmail and G+ webpages so if you don't have your phone, you can still chat.

edit: By the way, I don't think it's all that adventurous to run ART. I've been running it since they introduced 4.4 and I haven't had any issues. I don't use my phone for gaming or anything though so I can't comment on a bunch of social/games stuff. I mostly use the main Google Apps plus a few extras that I need for work.

FWIW, Qualcomm/Moto have a special sauce Dalvik on the MotoX. They actually say it's faster than ART. There really isn't much advantage to ART on a MotoX, especially if your apps aren't working, obviously.

I use Hangouts.
my son uses Whatsapp on his iPhone utilizing Wi-Fi.
better chance of me adapting/changing than him.
he needs it for work.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

One minor note: there is no USB mass storage support. You get MTP or PTP and that's it.

--SS

Well that's kind of annoying, but I can't tell by how much. Does MTP allow to move around generic files? Or is it only audo/video/images? Also, does the Moto G have mass storage support?

Kurotetsu wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

One minor note: there is no USB mass storage support. You get MTP or PTP and that's it.

--SS

Well that's kind of annoying, but I can't tell by how much. Does MTP allow to move around generic files? Or is it only audo/video/images? Also, does the Moto G have mass storage support?

Tried to copy .docx files to X storage, it would not do it.

is that your question?

Regarding My X:
Battery Saver off, 16+ hrs off charge, Active Display off, Touchless Control off, Wi-Fi on, 85% battery left.
Obviously doesn't have sleep battery drain problem referred too in the forums.
Power usage better than ok.
Now will turn on Active display see how that behaves.

oldDummy wrote:

Kurotetsu wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

One minor note: there is no USB mass storage support. You get MTP or PTP and that's it.

--SS

Well that's kind of annoying, but I can't tell by how much. Does MTP allow to move around generic files? Or is it only audo/video/images? Also, does the Moto G have mass storage support?

Tried to copy .docx files to X storage, it would not do it.

is that your question?

It was. I would have assumed mass storage support was easier to implement than MTP. Makes me wonder why they chose the latter instead of the former.

Kurotetsu wrote:

It was. I would have assumed mass storage support was easier to implement than MTP. Makes me wonder why they chose the latter instead of the former.

Don't know how far along you are with your Linux odyssey, think this could be overcome with root privileges.
Not positive, but seems reasonable.

Kurotetsu wrote:

It was. I would have assumed mass storage support was easier to implement than MTP. Makes me wonder why they chose the latter instead of the former.

MTP mode is "safer" in the sense that it can withstand unplugging better than MSC/UMS mode without file corruption.

oldDummy wrote:

Don't know how far along you are with your Linux odyssey, think this could be overcome with root privileges.
Not positive, but seems reasonable.

I think this involves installing the kernel module for MSC/UMS mode. Root alone is not enough, it is just the enabler/prereq for it to happen.

Flying Fox wrote:

I think this involves installing the kernel module for MSC/UMS mode. Root alone is not enough, it is just the enabler/prereq for it to happen.

My knowledge of this is limited: Did not know if it was compiled into kernel or as module. Source would reveal all of course...if one wants to start up that long curvy road.

On another note:
With Active Display/Touchless Control active; 1 Hotmail and 1 Google email account doing their thing (sync= 1/hr):
[Mostly idle of course] 1.5 hrs.screen time.
18+ hours, 72% battery.
This to me is no cause for concern.
In fact think it's pretty good.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

<get off my lawn>If you are on your phone enough to burn through the battery in a day (12 hours or less), you are on your phone too much</get off my lawn>

--SS

...think email syncing might have been killing battery life, putting in a moderate schedule has done wonders.
Android update is notorious for taking a bit of time to calm down. This played a role also.
Whatever, it's seems to be behaving now.