Motorola Moto C - A hands on review

Hi Everyone. Today, I am reviewing the Motorola Moto C, a budget Android smartphone for everyday tasks with a good battery life. For those of you on a budget and don’t need all the high-end specs of today’s flagships then the Moto C is a good choice for its price point.

Design

The device comes in this nice matt black colour made from plastic, it is very slim and It feels nice in the hand it weighs just 154g. The front of the phone features a 5” screen, a 2MP camera with selfie light, as well as three capitative touch buttons for home, back and open apps. Unfortunately, these buttons have no back light, so they can be hard to see in low light conditions, but you do get to know where they are very quickly.

The back features a similar design to the Motorola Moto G5 with the round camera and flash housing, speaking of the camera it has a 5MP main camera which can record 720p video at 30 frames per second along with an LED flash. Under the back cover is the space for the 2,350 mAh removable battery, Micro sim card slot and the Micro SD card slot which support cards up to 32GB to expand the on board 16 GBs of memory. On the right is the power and wake button as well as the volume up and down buttons. The top features the headphone jack and Micro USB connector.

Hardware

The Moto C is a low-cost phone so we’re not going to be comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the iPhone 7. Below, I have compared the main specs of the Motorola Moto C to its closest competitors by price to see which gives us the best value for money.

Motorola Moto C

• Quad-core 1.1GHz
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB Storage (Expandable)
• 5.0" FWVGA 854x480 Display
• 2,350mAh battery (Removable)
• Front camera: 2MP
• Back camera: 5MP
• OS: Android 7.0

Alcatel U5

• Quad-core 1.1GHz
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB Storage (Expandable)
• 5.0" IPS LCD 854x480 Display
• 2,050 mAh battery (Non-Removable)
• Front camera: 2MP
• Back camera: 5MP
• OS: Android 6.0

LG K4 2017

• Quad-core 1.1GHz
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB Storage (Expandable)
• 5.0" IPS LCD 854x480 Display
• 2,500 mAh battery (Removable)
• Front camera: 2MP
• Back camera: 5MP
• OS: Android 6.0

As you can see the Moto C is on par with most of the specifications of the Alcatel US and the LG K4 2017. However, it comes with more memory built in and ships with a newer operating system. In my testing, I found its 1.1 GHz Quad Core processor and 1 GB of RAM ran video including streaming videos from apps such as YouTube and BBC iPlayer with ease. Basic games such as Doodle Jump run okay. However, some more intensive games such as Real Racing did make the device lag a little bit.

The device supports:

• 4G networks
• up to Wi-Fi® 802.11n
• Bluetooth® 4.2
• WiFi Direct
• Using the device as a WIFI hotspot

Software

The device ships with Google Android 7.0 Nougat with only a little bit of Motorola UI changes on top, for the most part the software is basically stock Android and doesn’t come with a tonne of Motorola Apps, in fact, the only one App added by Motorola on my testing device was the FM Radio player. I like it when companies don’t fill the devices with loads of Apps you are probably never going to use, so I’m happy Motorola decided not to do that.

Charging & Battery Life

The device comes with 2,350mAh removable battery and charges via a standard USB to Micro USB 2.0 cable. Unfortunately, the device doesn’t support fast charging, although most of us charge our phones overnight these days so you should have no problems starting the day at 100%. In my testing, I got a day and a half worth of battery life out of the device in what I would say is mild to moderate use. However, if you get a lot of calls in a day or are constantly using 4G data, playing music and games a lot then you may find you’ll get around a day or less of battery life. Remember the device has a removable battery so there’s always the opportunity to carry a few spare batteries with you if you’re going to be away from power for a long period of time.

Camera

I found the camera to perform very well in good light conditions, it was able to produce a sharp and crisp image picking out the detail rather well considering it’s on a budget phone. The devices low light performance was okay, however, images had a bit of noise in them because of the lack of light, so it definitely performs at its best when there is a lot of light around. Below are the specifications for both cameras on the Moto C:

Front camera:

• 5MP
• 720P @ 30FPS Video
• LED Flash
• Features: Autofocus, HDR, Burst mode, Panorama mode

Back camera:

• 2MP
• 720P @ 30FPS Video
• LED Flash
• Features: none

In the box

As well as the device itself you get a Micro USB 2.0 to USB cable, a UK wall plug, the 2,350mAh battery and some information cards. Unfortunately, you don’t get any headphones with this phone. Why not check out my unboxing video below.

Conclusion

The Motorola Moto C is a good option for those of you on a budget. It has a good amount of on board memory, decent battery life, comes with Android 7.0 with minimal changes and additions from Motorola and takes good pictures in good light conditions. As long as you don’t mind the screen not being the best and don’t need to play the latest and greatest games then it’s a good phone to consider for its price point.

To see the device in action why not check out my video review of the device below.

Let me know in the comments if this review has been helpful to you, if you have the Moto C and what you think of it. If you are looking for a more up to date Moto handset, make sure to see the phones giffgaff is selling from Motorola here.

Thanks for reading,

Written by Carl