Moto G5 / moto updates

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timmmay

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#230446 24-Feb-2018 07:15

My wife's Moto G is getting a bit long in the tooth. It takes about 10x longer than my phone to do anything, and has been knocked around a bit by our toddler.

I was planning on getting my wife the Moto G5 (standard not plus) this weekend, but I just happened to come across info that the G6 might be announced in a few days. Seems they do tend to announce new models in Feb. G5 from Amazon.com is about US$180, a new phone might be US$250.

She uses it for basic stuff - email, txt / Whatsapp, and ad-hoc family photos. She has the original Moto G with a 4.5" screen or so and likes it, will go to 5.0" at most. Not really looking at other brands, but if there's anything awesome with a small screen it might be interesting. Main advantage I can see of waiting is it might be usable for a bit longer - probably has a slightly faster processor and slightly newer OS.

Any opinions on whether we should hold off the few weeks it might take for the G6 to be available? Not the plus model, standard.

NB: this is an old thread. I updated it just now to compliment Moto on releasing Android 8.1 for an 18 month old phone :)

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#1963268 24-Feb-2018 07:30

Can't really help with this, but my partner has the G5s and she is extremely happy with it, I am also very surprised at how fast and good it is. It's even faster than my Nexus 6P.

If you can wait, you should wait. Problem is when the G6 comes out you will pay a premium for the price since it has just come out.

timmmay

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#1963270 24-Feb-2018 07:55

Good to hear she likes it :) The G5 is probably easily "good enough", I just wonder if the G6 is worth waiting for. Has the G5 gotten Android 8? Motorola says it's released.

From what I can see the G5 cost about US$230 on release and costs US$180 now. If the newer model lasts and extra 6 months it'd be worth it. I probably wouldn't pay $100 extra though.

Rumour also says the G6 will have a bigger screen, 5.7 and 6.0 in the plus. My wife wouldn't go for that, too big for her hands.

mdf

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#1963286 24-Feb-2018 08:33

I went through a similar exercise a couple of months ago. IIRC (and I may well not), the G5 lacked NFC. May or may not be important to you. But the "facelift" g5s does have NFC and an all aluminium body. Bit more expensive and slightly bigger though.

Mrs MDF ended up with a $250 warehouse Nokia 5: https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/p/spark-nokia-5-bundle-black/R2391615.html

We had some initial issues caused by a non UHS3 sd card (lesson learned) but she's been really happy with it since (clearly not set the world on fire specs).

timmmay

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#1963307 24-Feb-2018 09:29

My wife wouldn't go for a bigger phone. She'd prefer a 4.7" phone I think. I've never used NFC in my life, and my wife doesn't even use paywave!

Might take her to the Warehouse to look at the Nokia too, thanks. How's the performance @mdf ? Main reason to replace the Moto G is it's really, really slow.

mdf

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#1963325 24-Feb-2018 10:14

I'm pretty impressed with it on a bang for buck basis. Mrs MDF is certainly fully satisfied with it for the range of apps she uses. I've slowly been whittling away her resistance to new fangled technomological contraptions. But the decisive factor on Android Pay was the time she forgot her bank card but was able to fall back on her phone.

Only 16GB onboard memory so you will need an SD card. I originally got a class 10 uhs 1 for this and the apps on the card did have problems. Upgrading to a class 10 uhs 3 solved this (I had no idea that not all class 10s were created equal...).

My last lingering complaint is the default message tones which Mrs MDF stubbornly refuses to change. Puts me in mind of a battleship sonar room spotting an enemy submarine.

timmmay

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#1963330 24-Feb-2018 10:45

Original Moto G was 8 or 16 GB and didn't need a card, but night get one while ordering from Amazon. I usual buy Sandisk or Transcend, what's worked for you?

mdf

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#1963334 24-Feb-2018 10:51

SanDisk Extreme, but the gold and red one. Has a 3 inside the Bucket. Rated (apparently) at 90MBps

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timmmay

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#1963352 24-Feb-2018 11:40

Ah cool. The version of the G5 I'm looking at is 32GB, so probably no need for a memory card. Later versions of Android don't work well with cards, they make it difficult to use them.

TeaLeaf

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#1965580 28-Feb-2018 10:21

You can get much better hardware for the money than moto/lenovo but one thing they are is consistent with fixes and updates. The Toyota Corollla of the Android phone world.

timmmay

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#1965629 28-Feb-2018 10:55

My wife specifically wanted another Motorola, as she used them years ago and likes her G1. I ordered the G5 because the G6 is meant to have a bigger screen she didn't want, and skipped the G5 plus because it cost more and she didn't care about the differences.

TeaLeaf

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#1965830 28-Feb-2018 13:16

Sorry Timmmay what are you saying there?

I think you made the right choice. Phones that are going bigger now are going 18:9 which makes single handed the same as smaller phones, but with OLED I think its a bad idea given youtube and netflix are potentially going to cause burn in with black bars, or more to the point, more vibrancy in the black bar areas.

cadman

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#1965887 28-Feb-2018 14:10

I wasn't aware the G5 came in a 32GB flavour. Are you sure you don't mean a G5S?

Also, if you're ever adding an SDXC card you're going to need a UHS-I Class 3 like the SanDisk Extreme. I can tell you that the Kingston UHS-I Class 1 simply doesn't cut the mustard if directly saving photos to it from the camera app or using it as adopted storage where it acts like internal.

One of the Moto features I really like is the ability to shrink the screen for one handed typing or navigation. This negates the whole issue of awkwardness typing on larger screens that put me off moving.

TeaLeaf

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#1965901 28-Feb-2018 14:26

cadman:

One of the Moto features I really like is the ability to shrink the screen for one handed typing or navigation. This negates the whole issue of awkwardness typing on larger screens that put me off moving.

Yep thats on a lot of large phones, very handy. Personally I dont type i swype, 10x faster once you get accurate. If a typer though, a popsocket or similar really does help a lot with single handed typing. With swyping you dont need as much of a grip. I love being able to beat out paragraphs far faster than I can type on a notebook keyboard (on 95wpm accurately)

cadman

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#1965902 28-Feb-2018 14:29

TeaLeaf:

cadman:

One of the Moto features I really like is the ability to shrink the screen for one handed typing or navigation. This negates the whole issue of awkwardness typing on larger screens that put me off moving.

Yep thats on a lot of large phones, very handy. Personally I dont type i swype, 10x faster once you get accurate. If a typer though, a popsocket or similar really does help a lot with single handed typing. With swyping you dont need as much of a grip. I love being able to beat out paragraphs far faster than I can type on a notebook keyboard (on 95wpm accurately)

Yes, I use swift keyboard for that too.

timmmay

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#1965907 28-Feb-2018 14:36

cadman:

I wasn't aware the G5 came in a 32GB flavour. Are you sure you don't mean a G5S?

Also, if you're ever adding an SDXC card you're going to need a UHS-I Class 3 like the SanDisk Extreme. I can tell you that the Kingston UHS-I Class 1 simply doesn't cut the mustard if directly saving photos to it from the camera app or using it as adopted storage where it acts like internal.

One of the Moto features I really like is the ability to shrink the screen for one handed typing or navigation. This negates the whole issue of awkwardness typing on larger screens that put me off moving.

Moto G 2GB RAM 32GB storage on Amazon. No need for a memory card with 32GB storage - my wife currently uses 6GB of storage for apps and data so she'll have heaps with 32GB.

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