Five reasons why the Motorola Moto G4 was a Slight Disappointment'

Motorola announced the Motorola Moto G 4th generation in New Delhi this month. The event was one of the most anticipated ones, given how popular the Motorola Moto G has been. In fact, India has been the second biggest market in terms of units sold globally after Brazil and the phone here has become quite synonymous with the budget category of Android phones. We pretty much knew it all about the device, thanks to the open world of the internet that we live in, but it would have been unfair to say anything about the device until it is officially out.

While we understand it is next to impossible to produce a perfect phone, the Motorola Moto G4 and the G4 Plus did fall just a tad lower than the high expectations that the lineup has set. Here is what we feel, the devices missed out on.

Opting for a flatter design: If you have held any of the Motorola Moto G devices, the first thing you will notice is the curved backs on them. These backs made the Motorola Moto G devices some of the best to hold in the hand, as they fit your palm very well. With the Motorola Moto G4 coming with a flat back, we cannot help but miss the curved back. While the flat back would mean the phone can sit back on table top without moving all over the place, we would much rather give up some shakeup on table for a good in hand feels.

No IP Rating: Living in a city like Mumbai, where it rains pigs for a good solid, two months, the IPX7 rated Motorola Moto G 3rd generation was a God send. You could use the device without any fear of water killing it away making it a fantastic option for a second phone, the sorts you could just carry with you outdoors. However, the Moto G4 or the G4 Plus comes with just a nano coating, making the phone just resistant to occasional splashes and no more IP rated. Missing out on a proper IP rating is definitely a blow and sort of a downgrade.

The fingerprint scanners: We are not really sure about the fingerprint scanner, available only on the Moto G4 Plus, for two reasons. One, we are not sold on the shape, as the square just looks very very odd, making the front of the phone ugly, and secondly, why would Motorola not include a fingerprint scanner on a phone that is selling for around Rs 12,000 which you would expect from the Moto G 4th Gen when it releases? Did Motorola themselves not say that all phones using Moto branding will have a fingerprint scanner by default and all lower end devices will be bearing the Vibe branding if they did not? It looks like Motorola and Lenovo are still to sort things on that front.

Both phones sporting 5.5 inch displays: The Motorola Moto G 4th generation and the Moto G4 Plus come with 5.5 inch 1080P displays. If Motorola was anyway going to be going with two devices, we feel it would have been better to give users a shot at a lower display size on the unit which did not hold the Plus moniker, just like Apple has done starting with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It is a little odd that both, the Plus and the normal Moto G4 have the same size while the only real difference being some added clock speed, a 16MP camera as opposed to 13MP and aforementioned fingerprint scanner. It feels like Motorola, even though wanted to give the users options, did not want to give too many of them away.

No Type-C: With it being clear that USB Type-C is the way forward in the coming years and it set to being the standard, we were a little surprised to not see the Type-C port on the Moto G4. The device still comes with a Micro USB port out of the box, so you are still stuck with a port that does not allow reversible input or high read-write speeds. In fact, devices like the LeEco Le1S already come with the Type-C port and they are available pretty much in the same sort of price range as the Moto G4. While obviously, this is not a deal breaker, it would have been nice to have a device that is future proof, and having a Type-C port, which clearly will be present in more and more devices as the time goes on, would have ensured just that.

The Motorola Moto G4 is a fine device, at least on paper it looks like a solid and reliable performer. However, a little bit of fine tuning especially not ditching things that Motorola did so well, would have made it a really desirable product. However, we still expect it to compete strongly against the likes of Lenovo K4 Note and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 for supremacy in the budget ranged phones.

This article has been contributed by Arpit Verma, who manages Digital Marketing initiatives at Pricebaba.com