A Great Update. The New Moto G3
The new third generation Moto G from Motorola may be the flagship phone from the company but it is likely to be the highest selling phone to carry the stylised M logo this year. It is a a great midrange phone that gets almost everything right and has very few weaknesses. Issues with previous generations of the G have all been fixed and the Moto G3 covers all the bases and then some, for what most users would want out of a premium midrange smartphone in 2015.
Lets start with the screen. The most popular size for smartphone screens now seems to be at around 5 inches and the Moto G moved to this size with its second generation. With the higher end Moto X available with a 5.5” screen, the Moto G3 was wisely maintained at 5 inches this year, allowing it to appeal to people for whom anything larger would be unmanageable. While the X gets a Full HD screen, the Moto G3 has just 720p, which keeps the price of the phone down and also comes with performance and battery benefits from driving the much smaller number of pixels. The Moto G3 covers the screen with Corning’s shatter and impact resistant Gorilla Glass 3 for shatter proof protection and the internals have Motorola’s nano coating that gives the phone protection from rain and water splashes.
The Moto G3 also addresses one of the few remaining issues that were not fixed in the previous generation of the phone. The rear camera has now been upgraded to a 13 mega pixel unit that can shoot fullHD 1080p video, unlike last year’s model that was limited to 720p. However, with the phone screen limited to 720p, you wont actually be able to view the video shot by the Motorola G3 on the Motorola G3 itself, at least not in its full, native resolution.
Still images in low light should look better though, thanks to the new dual tone flash on the back of the G3. The front camera also gets a big upgrade, with a 5 megapixel unit that can shoot 720p video, another first for this generation of the Moto G.
However, one of the most compelling features of the Moto G is not the actual hardware but rather the fact that it ships with an almost stock version of Android Lollipop 5.1.1 and Motorola has recently announced that the G3 will be one of the many models that it will be rolling out the 6.0 update to around the end of this year. This should make the Moto G one of the few phones besides the Nexus line-up that will be getting the latest and greatest version of Google’s smartphone OS so soon. At least at it’s midrange price point, there is probably no other phone that will get Marshmallow before 2016. If Motorola sticks to its promise and there is no reason to think that it wont, this is just another reason to go with the Moto G3, if a great midrange Android smartphone is what you are looking for.
