Motorola New Moto E (2nd Gen)

Most often than not, the new-gen devices are leaner and lighter than their predecessors, while offering a bigger display panel and better hardware specs. Motorola’s second-gen Moto E surely satisfies the latter criteria, but hasn’t slimmed down a bit as its waist measures 12.3mm – same as the original Moto E. It tips the scales at 145g, which is in fact 3 grams heavier than its previous iteration. But we aren’t complaining, since the Lenovo-owned brand has improved handling even further in the new smartphone… it fits in the hand well and can be used for long durations comfortably thanks to the curved rear.

The 2014’s Moto E showed that the budget devices needn’t have a pixelated display. At a time when WVGA and FWVGA resolutions were a trend, the device sported a qHD resolution on its 4.3-inch display. Its successor also continues with the same resolution of 960 x 540 pixels on a slightly larger 4.5-inch display. With a pixel density of 245ppi, the display on the Moto E (2nd-gen) offers sharp text and brilliant visuals.

Following the footsteps of its predecessor, the 2015 Moto E is amongst the first devices in its price band that offers the users a sweet taste of Android 5.0 Lollipop. Not just that, the brand has ensured that the users can enjoy Google’s latest design language dubbed Material Design, since the OS hasn’t been customised at all. What you do get however, are a few enhancements from the company, which offer a lot of convenience and were hitherto available only in its flagship offerings.

The first-gen Moto E was a great device in almost every sense, except for its camera department. The device only featured barebones 5-megapixel fixed-focus shooter at the back. In comparison, the new Moto E comes with a 5MP primary sensor having an autofocus mechanism, along with a VGA shooter at the front.

Apart from the cameras, the hardware has also received a refresh in the second-gen Moto E. Instead of a dual-core chipset, the device draws power from a quad-core processor. The same chipset (Snapdragon 200) powers the smartphone as before, but performance is smoother thanks to four cores thrumming at 1.2GHz. The Adreno 306 GPU takes care of graphics rendering. Combined with a gigabyte of RAM, the handset is able to deliver a lag-free usage experience. No matter how many apps we were using concurrently, the phone was able to work well, although the response wasn’t instantaneous.