Motorola Moto G official: specs, features, price and availability

The Moto G wasn’t a well-guarded secret (though it wasn’t as leaky as the Moto X either), but we’ve still looked forward to finding out what this affordable little device is all about.

Now the Motorola made the Moto G official and we have the rundown on specs and features, as well as the all-important price information. Is the Moto G worth more praise than its spec sheet suggests? Let’s find out.

Motorola called the HD display of the Moto G its hero feature, and highlighted its excellent pixel density, which is better than that of the iPhone 5s. Indeed, for a device that starts from just $179, the 4.5-inch 326 ppi screen is nothing short of excellent.

Powering all those pixels is a Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM. This is a good mid-range configuration that should get most users through a majority of tasks. And thanks to a less bloated operating system, the Moto G should perform as good as other devices with more powerful configurations. Motorola claimed at the event that the Moto G can perform faster than the Galaxy S4 in many situations, but we’d wait for a hands-on before trusting this bold assertion.

The Moto G will run slightly modified stock Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box, but Motorola “guaranteed” a KitKat upgrade by January 2014. The device comes with some of Motorola’s apps, but should be, more or less, close to vanilla Android nevertheless.

Moto G price and availability

Now for the amazing proposition of the Moto G, it’s price: the device will be available unlocked in the United States for just $179 for the 8GB version. The 16GB version will cost just $199, suggesting that Motorola fought off the temptation to maximize margins through flash storage price gouge.

Official availability info:

[quote qtext=”Moto G goes on sale this week in Brazil and parts of Europe and will be available within the next few weeks throughout Latin America, Europe, Canada and parts of Asia. It will be available in the US, India, the Middle East and more of Asia in early January. Moto G will be in more than 30 countries with 60 partners by 2014. ” qperson=”” qsource=”” qposition=”center”]

[quote qtext=”In the US, Moto G will be sold on Motorola.com, with no contract, no SIM lock and an unlockable bootloader for USD$179 with 8GB of storage and USD$199 for 16GB. Moto G will also be available through various carriers and retailers.” qperson=”” qsource=”” qposition=”center”]

Update:

Here are the countries where the Moto G will become available first: