New Delhi: After announcing the second generation of the Moto E days before the Mobile World Congress last month, Lenovo owned Motorola, on Tuesday launched the phone in India for Rs.6,999. Like its previous models, the phone will be exclusively available through e-tailer Flipkart on March 11, midnight.
While the pricing of the product was known well in advance, the bigger takeaway was the fact that Motorola has plans of launching the 4G LTE version of the device. The company has not revealed when it will launch the 4G variant of the phone, but it did say 'soon'. Additionally, no pricing details for the 4G version of the phone were revealed.
The first generation of the Moto E proved to be wildly popular in an emerging market like India. However, due to changes in the market dynamics and the entry of disruptive Chinese brands like Xiaomi, the phone started showing its age. Since its launch, over the year, the Moto E became inferior to the competition purely in terms of hardware.
The second generation model attempts to breath new life into the product. The 3G version of the phone has a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, which happens to be the same one that Motorola uses in the higher-end Moto G. It also has 1GB RAM and a 2,390mAh battery.
The big deal will be the 4G version, which also adds a superior Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, with support for 64-bit computing.
Motorola has bumped the screen size from the older model to 4.5-inches, but it retains the same qHD resolution, which means its sharpness is lower.
The camera also gets an upgrade. The previous model of the Moto E had a 5-megapixel camera, but it had an inferior fixed focus sensor. The new model adds auto-focus into the mix and also has a front facing VGA camera.
Software wise, the Moto E is one of the first phones in India to be launched with Android 5.0 Lollipop. In typical Motorola fashion, the customisations to the core Android interface are minimal, which means the phone operates a lot like a Google Nexus smartphone.
That being true, there are some minor Motorola additions, which include the Moto Migrate app and some widgets. Motorola is also bringing premium experiences found in the flagship Moto X to the Moto E. So things like Motorola's active display technology and the custom Moto Quick Capture feature for the camera can be found on the Moto E.
Overall, the phone appears to be like a solid product, however it will not be without competition. Chinese vendor Xiaomi is expected to launch a new version of its budget Redmi smartphone on March 12.
