Moto G (2013) review

Battery life

Motorola claims that the 2070mAh non-removable battery inside the Moto G and Moto G 4G will give you all day battery life, and while I found it's unlikely to see out 24 hours, it's just about able to see through the day.

I managed to get a full days use from the Moto G (7am-11pm) and by the time I got into bed the battery meter in the notification bar was red and the handset was in need of an overnight charge.

The Moto G had been used pretty heavily, with a couple of hours of music streaming, web surfing, constantly updating email inboxes, some social media activity and a few hours of pretty intense gaming.

With more reserved usage the Moto G will comfortably make it to bedtime, last overnight and give you a few hours use in the morning (if you're lucky). If you're planning on staying overnight somewhere you'll still need to take your charger with you to be safe.

It's worth keeping an eye on screen brightness, especially when you're watching movies on the Moto G as it can drain the battery somewhat.

The good news is there isn't any real difference in battery life performance between the Moto G and Moto G 4G - and I had a Jawbone Up24 and LG G Watch connected to the latter during most of the review period.

During the battery test I played a 90 minute Nyan Gareth video on full brightness with all accounts syncing in the background and the 3G enabled Moto G lost 33% of life from a full charge.

That's not a terrible result, but if you're planning a bit of a movie marathon you'll want to make sure you're within reach of a charger.

If you find yourself getting close to the limit but are nowhere near a charger you can always enable the battery saver which restricts background data activity in an attempt to eek out more life.

Connectivity

The Moto G comes with all the standard connectivity options you'd expect from a low-end smartphone - Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G are all on board. Of course if you go for the Moto G 4G you also get LTE connectivity, plus a handy microSD slot.

Pull down the notification bar on the Moto G, tap the icon in the top corner and you'll get a selection of quick settings allowing you to toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth quickly.

For the other options you'll need to head into the settings menu, where you'll also find the wireless hotspot function. This lets you share your phone's data connection with other devices, such as tablets and laptops.

Keep an eye on your data usage though, as this can munch through it in next to no time and you don't want to be lumped with a huge bill.

The standard Moto G doesn't have a microSD slot, so more of an importance is placed on the microUSB port on the base of the device as you'll need to plug the Moto G into a computer to transfer over multiple files.

NFC is missing from both the Moto G 4G and G, but this is less of an issue as the contactless tech is still yet to take off in a big way.