So a few weeks ago I was pickpocketed on my cell-phone and my passport. While the passport is a bit of a pain to lose, I didn’t care that much about losing the phone since it was an old Samsung Xcover 2 and I was so tired of it anyway. It had 1GB of flash memory of which at least 700MB was used by Android and a significant amount of the rest by Samsung’s forced bloatware, meaning I couldn’t really install much on it. And even if I could, most newer apps wouldn’t work with it because the Android version was too old. Overall it was really slow to do anything on, and the battery life was really crap.
Anyway, the day after I lost it I did some research on a new phone and went ahead and bought the 8GB Moto G Third Generation.
It seemed like the best budget phone available. And well, going from the Xcover 2 to the Moto G3 is a huge step up obviously. But I really do like this phone a lot. It has an almost stock version of Android 5.1.1 running, which I like because I hated all the bloatware I never used which Samsung had installed on the Xcover 2. This also means that despite the modest hardware, it performs really, really well. The UI is fast and snappy, and opening and switching between apps is quick.
It also has a 13 MP camera which is pretty decent, at least with good lighting conditions. In low-light situations it gets pretty noisy but that’s the case with most phone cameras.
The display is only 720p rather than 1080p, but that also means that it’s pretty light on the battery. And speaking of which, the one feature I like the most about this phone is the battery life. It’s really incredible. Right now for example I have 80% battery left and the time is 23:30. I unplugged the charger at around 10:00 and have used the phone as much as I usually do, maybe even a bit more. The battery app says I have 1 day and 16 hours left on the battery. Now granted, I don’t watch a lot of videos or play a lot of games on my phone. But my Xcover would’ve been nagging me to plug in the charger an hour ago, and with this phone I have only used one fifth of the battery in the same time! (Added after I finished writing this article: About an hour later at 00:30 the battery is still at 80%.)
Another feature I really like is the Active Display feature that Motorola has on their phones. It’s basically like showing you notifications on the lock-screen but a little smarter. When you get a notification the screen lights up for a few seconds and shows you the time and an icon of the notification, and you can press the icon to display the info. Then you can slide the icon up to go to that app immediately. But what I really like about it is that it senses if you touch the phone, or pull it out of your pocket. So let’s say I’m out and about and want to see what time it is. I just pull the phone out and it’ll have the clock right there on the screen together with notifications, without having to press any buttons. It displays this info in a white font on a black background, to conserve as much power as possible.
Had I had a bit more money I would’ve purchased the 16GB version instead, since it comes with 2GB RAM rather than 1GB that the 8GB version comes with. But I don’t usually keep a lot of apps running so I don’t mind that much. That said, I have noticed that apps have been forced to reload when switching to them from time to time. I think 2GB RAM would help with that. And it would be nice to have more storage space as well. It does have a microSD slot though.
It’s possible to update Android to 6.0 as well, although I’ve been hearing that it significantly reduces the battery life so I have decided to stay on 5.1.1 for now. I’m also suspecting that the 8GB Moto G3 would be at a disadvantage with 6.0, since the OS uses more of the available space. 5.1.1 already uses like 3.5GB of the 8GB, and I hear that 6.0 uses an additional gigabyte of space. The fact that it only has 1GB RAM might also be a disadvantage, although supposedly 6.0 has better RAM management than 5.1.1. But the main reason I’m sticking with 5.1.1 is the battery life issue. Since the Moto G3 has such an excellent battery life, it would be a shame to make it worse. The only thing Android 6.0 offers that I’m really interested in is that you can select exactly what permissions an app has, rather than the all or nothing approach of older Android versions. And the fact that you can use the microSD card as internal storage is pretty neat. Other than that it doesn’t seem like a huge improvement
Overall I’m really happy that I got the Moto G3, and I really do think it’s the best phone in its price class. So if you’re looking for a great budget phone I can’t recommend it enough. Just don’t upgrade to 6.0 Marshmallow since it doesn’t really seem to be worth it at the moment.
The only thing I can complain about is that when I accidentally dropped it while sitting on the toilet, the upper left corner of the bezel became a bit deformed and didn’t stay completely against the screen. I was able to mostly fix it by pushing against the deformity until it became pretty much exactly like before, but I think it’s kinda weak that it became deformed that easily since otherwise the build quality seems great. The Xcover 2 is built to handle being dropped, and while the Moto G is IPX7 water proofed it won’t handle being dropped as well. So I’ll have to get some sort of shell for it, since I will inevitably drop it again. At least the screen didn’t shatter…
Google is your friend
So I’ve always been very concerned about privacy, and how much info about myself that I let companies/the general public have. That’s the main reason I don’t have Facebook for example. And also the fact that Facebook these days seem to be mostly for narcissists posting about how great their shitty lives are, or posting stupid videos that I have no interest in. But originally it was mostly because of privacy concerns! And this concern has also been a factor for me when it comes to Google, although to a somewhat lesser extent. I had sort of given up on hiding info from Google since I use their services so much that they probably know most things about me anyway. And for some reason when I got this phone I realized, or rather accepted, how futile it is to try to hide from Google when you’re using their services. So I finally gave in and pretty much enabled every damn data collecting feature available. Why? Well it does give me an enhanced experience in Google products, since they use the data to make life easier for me. And I do sort of trust Google in not giving away my private data to a third party at this point. So I thought, why fight it? Just let it go.
Now I have my location info on the phone turned on all the time, and have enabled the location history in Google settings. I also enabled Google Now. And by doing so, it confirmed to me that they already know everything about me anyway. They accurately pinpointed where I live and where I go to school for example. I’m not sure how they knew this before I even turned on these features, which is a bit creepy. I’m guessing they’ve used the WiFi access point data on my old phone to determine it, since they do keep track of access points all over the world.
And despite giving up pretty much all my privacy to Google, I have to say I kind of enjoy the enhanced experience it gives me. Google Now is pretty handy at giving me the info I want, when I want it for example. So I think that in the end it is worth it, since they seem to know everything already anyway. Google will be the only company I’ll be “comfortable” doing this with though. I say “comfortable” in quotes because it does still concern me, but I just don’t care about Google knowing anymore. I’m more concerned about having my info out in the open, which I do feel pretty comfortable about Google not enabling.