Motorola Moto G review: Little big G

Little big G

GSMArena team, 11 December 2013.

Standard connectivity features

The Motorola Moto G starts off with the basics - quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 3G globally, or CDMA support for the North American model.

Also on board is Bluetooth 4.0 alongside Wi-Fi support which includes b/g/n.

Although it is missing some of the more advanced connectivity features like NFC, and IR-port, or LTE support, the Moto G does have an FM radio and GPS.

Google Chrome is solo

The Moto G comes with Google Chrome as its solitary preinstalled browser. The interface hasn't changed much since Chrome's launch for Android and is clean and minimalist.

At the top there's an URL bar with a refresh/stop button next to the tabs and settings buttons. You can switch between tabs with a wide swipe from either the left or right of the top bar.

Opening the tabs area reveals a list of tabs which can each be closed again with a left or right swipe. The animation accompanying this action is neat, too.

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Google Chrome

Chrome is running on the WebKit rendering engine, so underneath the minimalist UI it's basically the same as all Android stock browsers.

Of course, one of Chrome's strengths is its ability to seamlessly sync with its desktop version using nothing but your Google account. This allows you to open an article on your PC and finish reading it on your mobile phone. It also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites.

Google Chrome is generous on settings as well. You can control almost every aspect of your web browsing from choosing what content you want to allow to load like JavaScript, images, cookies and pop-ups.

If you are out of Wi-Fi access, you can, for example, choose temporarily not to load images. Digging into Chrome's options, you also have the option to toggle form auto-fill and password storing.

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Switching between tabs • An incognito tab

Unfortunately, while Chrome excels in many areas, it falls short on the one that could be a deal-breaker for many Android users - Flash. Sadly, as Adobe has dropped support for Android, viewing Flash content is the one thing you won't be able to do here.

Reader comments

  • Anonymous
  • 02 Jul 2023
  • 7$q

Still using mine. No problems.

  • Nathbhaskarchandra
  • 17 May 2023
  • rK5

If available, i want this.

  • Thabz
  • 24 Sep 2021
  • f0N

Been using this phone since 2013, and its taken so many falls but still functions. What i can say is it is better than today's bezel less midrange phones. The phone is only starting to fail now after so many years