Motorola has confirmed it will bring the Moto X to the UK. It’ll be the first Motorola phone to come to the UK since the Moto G – which won our product of the year award.
Is the Motorola Moto X as exciting? Let’s see how the two phones compare.
The Price - £130 vs £380
The Moto X is almost three times the price of the Moto G. One is affordable enough to be considered a budget SIM-free phone, selling for around £120-130 in the UK. The Moto X will sell for £380 SIM-free, making it a direct competitor for phones like the Nexus 5, Galaxy S4 and HTC One.
What we’re left asking – is the Moto X really worth that much more money?
The Design – Moto X and Moto G are similar
When the Moto X launched in the US, Motorola bigged-up the number of choices you had – you could choose from thousands of finishes and colour variations. However, customisation has been dropped for the UK because it doesn’t make much sense logistically (all the infrastructure for this is in the US). And maybe it wasn't as popular as Motorola hoped anyway.
What you get is the choice of a carbon fibre-effect plastic rear or a plain white one. The Moto G comes in black, but there’s a wide variety of cases and rear plates you can get to customise the phone after buying. It’s worth noting that they don’t change the front black look, or part of the side too.
The feel of the phones is similar, but the Moto X is significantly slimmer than the Moto G – 10.4mm instead of 11.6mm. As such it does feel a like a more expensive, fancier phone. It’s lighter too, at 130g instead of 143g.
We imagine the higher price allowed Motorola to use more advanced, lighter-weight materials than it could afford to put into the Moto G.
The screens – Same resolution, higher-res Moto X panel
At first glance, the Motorola Moto G and Moto X screens look similar. The Moto X screen is 4.7 inches across, the Moto G screen 4.5 inches. Their resolutions are same too, 720p. This is one element that lets the Moto X down a bit, as other phones at the price have 1080p displays. Conversely, the Moto G is lucky to have a 720p screen at the price.
Spec-wise they’re close but the screen types are completely different. The Moto X has an OLED screen, the Moto G a more common IPS LCD screen.
Contrast and colours are stronger in the Moto X, with deeper blacks and generally richer-looking images. The screen is more vital, and it as sharp as the Moto G’s too – some OLED screens look less sharp than their LCD equivalents.
The Moto G screen may not impress as much as the X, but it is good
Power – The Moto X is more powerful than the Moto G
The one real shortcoming of the Moto G is that it is not hugely powerful, despite having a ‘quad core’ processor. The dual-core chip of the Moto X is a lot more capable.
This is something you might not pick up on if you saw them next to each other in a phone shop. The Moto X has a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, the Moto G a low-end 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 chipset. The differences aren’t shown just in the clock speed either.
The cores of the Moto G are a lot simpler than those of the Moto X. The G really isn’t a performance phone. So if you want to play every new demanding 3D game, you’d be much better off with a Moto X. It isn't the best performer you can get for £400, though.
For day-to-day performance, the difference that we think matters most is how much RAM these phones have. The Moto G has 1GB of RAM, the Moto X 2GB. With a bunch of apps installed, the Moto G can start stuttering a bit. With a Moto X, you can push it a bit more.
Camera – The Moto X camera is much better
One of the most serious limitations of the Moto G is that its camera is fairly low-end. Its sensor is a 5-megapixel unit – pretty low-res – and it’s slow at shooting. The Moto X is a lot higher-end, with a 10-megapixel sensor – and is a good deal faster to shoot.
You have to try a lot less hard to get decent shots out of the Moto X. However, it’s not a class-leading camera by any means, as much as Motorola bigs-up the custom camera software (which is also used in the Moto G).
4G, and other bits – Moto X has it, Moto G doesn’t
As a super-cheap phone, it’s predictable that the Moto G does not have 4G connectivity. You have to make do with plain old 3G. The Motorola Moto X does have 4G, accounting for a chunk of the extra cost.
It’s not the only extra feature either – you also get NFC, missing in the Moto G. However, these are features many of you may not need, or miss.
Verdict
The Motorola Moto X is a mode advanced phone than the Moto G in most respects. However, the massive difference in price means the Moto G is easily the more remarkable phone. Where the Moto X can be beaten at the price in almost every field, the Moto G is clearly the best Android phone you can get right now for the money.
Next, read our Moto G tips and tricks feature
