Motorola just sent us through a box of goodies the company has been teasing for a while now. We predicted it may come with the long rumoured launch of the Moto E (2015) and low and behold we were correct.
The new Moto E arrived in a little presentation box with a unique website showing off the real announcement of the phone.
But you don't want to hear about a box – you want to know what the phone is like, surely?
Don't expect much to blow your mind on the new Motorola Moto E, a lot here is very similar to the phone we reviewed back in May last year. But that's a phone we gave a four out of five to, so how does this re-release hold up?
Design
All round the design is pretty similar to what we saw on the original Moto E. It's still got a plastic body with a round body feel to it. All the buttons remain in the same places with the unlock and volume rocker on the right hand edge of the phone.
The headphone jack sits in the middle at the top and the microUSB slot continues to sit in the bottom middle of the handset.
On the back it remains emblazoned with the Motorola logo indented into the body and the main camera sitting above it. This time the rim around the camera has had a bit of an upgrade with a much nicer looking thick silver rim around the edges.
But there isn't a removable back panel this time - instead there's a plastic rim that you take off to get to the SIM card and microSD slots.
It can be a real struggle to get the plastic edging off the phone and once I actually I thought I'd broken it off. I hadn't, but it's pretty flimsy.
On the front there is now the front camera (the original E didn't have a forward facing snapper) sat next to the earpiece along the top but the 4.3-inch 540 x 960 resolution display remains in the middle.
The display looks good in a variety of different lighting areas and is a great size for the average user.
Performance
The new Moto E comes with an upgraded Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz. That comes alongside 1GB of RAM and should give it a bit of an upgrade under the hood but isn't going to blow anyone away particularly.
It is still an impressive feat to get such a good chipset into such a low price handset and in our small amount of time using the handset we didn't notice anything worrying in terms of performance.
Battery
One of the positives on the original Moto E was its strong battery life, and we're hoping things will be even better on the new Moto E as it's been upgraded from 1980mAh to 2390mAh.
Considering there isn't particularly anything different here to power we'll likely see even better battery life on the new Moto E (2015).
Check back for our full review where we'll give it a proper test and really put it through its paces.
The essentials
One of the biggest benefits of the Moto E is it comes with the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system on board in its purest stock form. It means all the latest features from Lollipop are here, and it's an impressive feat on a low end handset.
Arguably the biggest benefit is the addition of LTE in the new phone meaning you'll now be able to get a 4G signal and swift download speeds with the Moto E (2015).
This is a feature we felt was potentially held back from the original Moto E just for this update but it is good to see such a low end handset get what a couple of years ago was considered a top end feature.
Camera
The 5MP rear camera remains on the Moto E. We didn't get much of a chance to play around with it during our hands-on but it was one of our biggest criticisms of the handset.
It's a shame to see this hasn't been upgraded on the new phone but Motorola has seen fit to add in a front facing camera.
It's a VGA shooter so don't expect anything impressive but it's better than not being able to take selfies at all.
Verdict
Motorola all new Moto E will launch at £109.99, $149 (around AU$180) making it potentially the cheapest handset on the market running Android Lollipop out of the box.
It offers an impressive amount of features considering the price tag and has upgraded on a few already strong features for adding in a bigger battery and an even more powerful processor.
The biggest benefit comes from the addition of LTE connectivity meaning it's one of – if not the cheapest phone on the market offering super-fast internet speeds at such a low price point.
Camera wise the addition of a front-facing selfie snapper is a welcome one but it would have been good to see some upgrades to the poor main camera.
But for that price, can you really judge Motorola? At such a low price point it's impressive to have half of these features and if you're looking for a low priced handset you really couldn't go wrong with the new Moto E.
from TechRadar
