Moto M first impressions: This metal body Moto phone shows promise

Moto (formerly Motorola) has been quite a successful brand with its various lines of devices in the E, G, Z and X (now discontinued) series. While Moto devices have generally been targetted at the mid-range segment, except the X series and now the Z series, the focus has been on offering value for money phones. The Moto E and Moto G series have held that mantle for many generations. But it looks like Moto does not want to be limited to these three alphabets. So today the Lenovo-owned company announced a new series with the Moto M .

Build and Design

Moto M is the first Moto smartphone to come with a full metal body design. So far we have seen Moto devices with either a plastic back or a glass back or a mix of both (like we saw with the Moto Z). At a time when Chinese smartphone makers are launching metal-body phones in the same price bracket as the trusty Moto G series, it was about time that Moto gave a response too.

Moto M impresses you with its looks. The golden colour body notwitstanding, the phone exudes a subtle elegance in its finish. At 165gms, the phone is slightly heavy, but it maintains a 7.85mm thickness. The device feels sturdy in the hand, although is a tad bit slippery. While the metal back is covered by a matte gold finish cover, there are shiny chrome elements which break the monotony. The circular finger print scanner for instance has a chamfered edge, which gives it the feel of a shiny ring around the scanner. The edges also have chamfering, which assist with the otherwise slippery grip. The camera module though is slightly raised from the plane of the rear side. Antenna lines are visible on the top and bottom as well.

On the front, you have a 5.5-inch Full HD display, but there is no 2.5D curved glass goodness here. The display does come with a water-repellant nano-coating which is definitely desirable. The Moto branding is present on the base in the bezel area. The Moto bat-wing logo is present on the bottom rear side. All in all, the Moto M is a well designed device with just the right amount of heft for a metallic phone.

Display

The front has a 5.5-inch Full HD display which offers a 401ppi pixel density. I am not sure whether the phone comes with any Corning Gorilla Glass protection, but according to Moto there is a water repellant nano-coating. The display at first glance appeared to be quite reflective. Viewing angles were fine, and 50 percent brightness level when you are using the phone outdoors isn’t enough. I did not notice any pixellation while I was handling the device. But I need to use the phone thoroughly, watch some movies or TV shows on it, to get an idea of how good the display is.

Chipset, Storage, RAM

Moto M houses a MediaTek Helio P15 chipset which is comes with an octa-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz. Now there are two variants in which the Moto M will come - one comes with 3GB RAM + 32GB internal storage and the other comes with 4GB RAM + 64GB internal storage. Both the variants let you expand the storage via a microSD card for up to 128GB.

OS and Software

If there is one thing that has endeared the Moto brand to a lot of users, then it is the fact that the phones come with a clean Android OS which is close to stock. The Moto M comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS onboard. Surprisingly, I did not find the Moto apps such as Moto Assist, Moto Help but Microsoft apps such as Excel, OneNote, Word and so on. Also there wasn’t any mention of the Moto gesture features while the phone was being announced.

The phone comes with the Dolby app thanks to the support for Dolby Atmos powered speaker. This is the first Moto phone to come with Dolby Atmos support, something which we have seen on quite a lot of Lenovo devices.

Camera 

On the camera front, you get a 16MP rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture, phase-detect AF, dual tone flash unit, auto HDR and more. The front-camera has an 8MP sensor with beautification mode for selfies. The camera interface is slightly improved over the ones we have seen with the G and Z series phones. It seems more on the lines of the interfaces we have seen with the Vibe UI on Lenovo phones. The HDR mode is on by default, something that is becoming increasingly common in Android smartphones. It is capable of shooting full HD videos as well.

I did not have enough opportunity to click photographs of different scenes, but here are a few outdoor sample shots.

Battery and Connectivity

Moto M rumours were suggesting a 5000mAh battery, but in reality, the Moto M houses a 3050mAh non-removable battery. That seems like a decent configuration for a 5.5-inch Full HD phone. A thorough real life usage of the device is needed to see how much real life usage can be extracted on a single charge. The phone also supports a 10W rapid charging.

In terms of connectivity, you get a hybrid dual SIM configuration taking in either two nano SIM cards or one nano SIM card and one microSD card. The Moto M comes with 4G LTE support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi hotspot, GPS with A-GPS and more. There is a USB Type-C port on the base of the Moto M for charging and data transfer.

Conclusion

As a first metal unibody device, the Moto M really does look quite well designed. The phone is priced at Rs 15,999 for the 3GB RAM + 32GB storage variant and it will go on sale from 14 December at 11.59PM on Flipkart. The phone also comes with some launch offers such as EMI of Rs 776 per month, discount on the Moto Pulse headset, exchange of up to Rs 2000 on old smartphones and more.

The phone comes with a MediaTek Helio P15 chipset which may make some seem like the price is slightly on the higher side. I had tested the InFocus Epic 1 last month, which had the Helio X20 chipset. I wasn’t much impressed with it. But it is priced at Rs 12,999. Moto M does offer 4GB RAM variant and has a relatively cleaner Android OS. Will it provide a better overall user experience, if not the performance, than the InFocus device? Will the Moto M set a benchmark for metal body devices, just like the Moto G had set when it launched? I can say for sure only after testing the Moto M thoroughly.

Apart from the InFocus, Moto M also has other competition in the form of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 which also has a metal back. The competition is tough in this price bracket.