Google Moto G Now Available on Amazon With Free Shipping
After releasing the Moto G one month early for the holiday shopping season, Motorola's new low-cost unlocked smartphone is available on Amazon, just in time for Black Friday.
The super cheap but impressively built smartphone was originally available only on Motorola's website, where the customizable Moto X has also been sold for a couple of months now.
But now the mid-range phone is available on Amazon for the same price, with free shipping beginning on Dec. 4, and pre-orders immediately available on Friday. The Amazon release date is two days later than Motorola's website will be shipping, but Motorola's checkout states that "taxes and shipping charges may apply," so the cheapest route may actually be through Amazon, if you can wait the extra couple of days.
As our review of the new device from Google's Motorola subdivision explains, the Moto G is an exceptional value for a low-cost phone, with two models available for under $200. The base priced 8GB Moto G costs only $179, and that's for a fully unlocked smartphone with no contract to hold to. The 16GB version costs only $20 more, also without a contract.
The Moto G comes with an impressive set of features for such a low price, contract-free, making it a great buy for those who want a good quality smartphone that they can take from carrier to carrier, including some low-cost pre-paid carriers, depending on what kind of deal they can get. The smartphone features a 4.5-inch display with 720p (1280 x 720) High Definition resolution, giving it an impressive 329 pixels per inch.
The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, with an Adreno 305 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 400 processor was pretty much the top choice Android chip in 2013 for "mini" versions of flagship devices, such as the HTC One mini and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. The Moto G comes with all of the hardware essentials for current smartphones, including WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, a microUSB port, and various sensors to support modern apps. And speaking of modern, because the Moto G is a Google-made piece of hardware, it comes with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean "with a guaranteed upgrade to Android 4.4 KitKat," Google's most cutting-edge operating system that is designed to work smoothly on lower-spec'd devices like the Moto G, in the beginning of 2014.
The only thing really lacking for the Moto G is that it's not LTE (4G) capable, and right now the only Moto G available is one that's compatible with HSPA+ GSM networks, such as AT&T and its sub-networks like Net10. A CDMA-compatible Moto G will be available in the U.S. in Jan. - which was the original release date for the Moto G, before Motorola decided to step it up.
The Moto G is being released among a slew of unlocked phones, as the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) new Chairman Tom Wheeler has made it clear that he wants unlocked devices to be, if not the new norm, at least much more available for consumers.
On Nov. 14, the Chairman issued a public letter to the CTIA, a trade group for U.S. wireless carriers, saying that he wanted the companies to amend their consumer code that allows consumers to unlock their mobile phones once contracts are fulfilled. Doing so became technically illegal at the beginning of 2013, as an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowing cellphone unlocking expired. Wheeler stated that he wanted the looser rules to be voluntarily put in place by the December holiday season, or the FCC would exercise its authority to regulate looser unlocking rules into place.