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Motorola ups the ante with the £90 Moto E AND a 4G Moto G

Bargain bonanza

Motorola ups the ante with the £90 Moto E AND a 4G Moto G
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We were blown away by the performance of the cheap-as-chips Moto G last year. Today, though, Motorola unveiled the even-cheaper Moto E, a phone that might just take over the world.

At £89, this dual-core Android smartphone is the second attempt by Motorola to prove that cheap doesn't have to mean, well, cheap.

Packed inside this blower is a Snapdragon 200 CPU, clocked at 1.2GHz. It's backed up by 1GB of RAM, a class-leading 4.3-inch 540x960 pixel display (at an impressive 256 ppi), front-facing speakers, a 5-megapixel camera (without flash, however), a 1980mAh battery, 4GB of storage, and a memory card slot.

The Moto E also comes with a range of different rear covers and grip shells. The innards, meanwhile, have been splashed in a water-resistant nano coating to protect the phone from the occasional splash or spill.

Impressive performance

I was able to give the Moto E a quick going-over at the launch event in London, and to run the AnTuTu X benchmarking app to see just how well the phone compares with more expensive models.

The Moto E's score was a fairly average 12,569, which is down on the Moto G. To give that some context, though, it's not far behind the Samsung Galaxy S3, a former flagship Android device.

We'll have a review sample of the Moto E soon, so we'll be able to see if it's really capable of running intensive titles like Asphalt 8 or Dead Trigger 2.

First impressions suggest that the Moto E (running stock Android) is quick enough for all the ordinary phone tasks like loading the dialler, messaging app, or browsing the web.

And with O2 ready to offer the Moto E for just £80 (on pre-pay) when it goes on sale next week, that's still a lot of bang for your buck.

That said, with the Moto G retailing for around £100, it might be worth bagging one of those if you don't mind being restricted to 8GB of storage.

Moto G gets turbo boost

Motorola has also announced an updated Moto G with 4G and a memory card slot. The Moto G 4G will go on sale in the next few weeks with a retail price of £149.

If that's not enough, Motorola also told us to expect another take on the Moto G AND a successor to last year's Moto X (with a 5.2-inch display).

Jonathan Morris
Jonathan Morris
From starting out as a games tester for Mastertronic, Virgin and Sega in the late 1980s, it may seem odd to then ditch everything to write about mobile phones that, at the time, lasted 20 minutes between charges. He always had a hunch mobiles would become quite popular, but possibly didn't realise how powerful (and, ironically, returning to 20 minutes between charges). Jonathan's job is to continue advising on the best hardware to buy, in order to enjoy games that have advanced considerably since those long days and nights testing Double Dragon on the C64.