Sources Idlegallagher Arstechnica: Motorola’s latest “invisible” phone is coming to the US and will be sold unlocked for a price that starts at just $179. The Moto G is Motorola’s best selling smartphone ever, with over 6 million units sold in India and in Brazil, where it was made available earlier than in the U.S. It has a solid specs list, including an 8GB model with microSD card slot (unlike Moto X), Android 4.4 KitKat, 1GB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor.
Plus, it can be used with a Micro SIM and will feature a screen that measures 5-inches, with an 800 x 480 pixel resolution, along with a 5-megapixel rear facing camera and 1.3 megapixel front facing camera. It even has the same custom Moto X’s software, including the 3D printing utility and Motorola’s “Moto Display” notification system. It’s also water resistant, and has two custom Android buttons below the screen instead of a physical home and menu button. Despite all this, the Moto G (or GSM-T715 if you’re buying from Amazon) is not very popular in the US, only having been launched in Brazil and India at this point.
Motorola has had a lot of difficulties launching its phones here, so it’s no surprise that it ended up making it available for purchase in Brazil before any other countries. The phone is actually sold unlocked, and it’s compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile’s bands in the US. So there should be no issues getting it to work on either carrier. It will also work with Verizon, but it won’t have LTE, since the Moto G does not support any of the four LTE bands Verizon uses. The phone will have WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC support though.
The company isn’t working with any of the carriers to launch the Moto G in the US, but it’s very likely that third party retailers will make it available for purchase on contract. Unlike some of its direct competitors here, there are no plans in launching this phone on Sprint’s network. Motorola has been struggling to sell here because carriers have not been as interested in its devices as they are in Samsung, LG and Apple’s smartphones. In addition, Motorola also doesn’t do a very good job at marketing its phones either.
The Moto G is already available in Brazil and India, and it will be launched in Argentina this week. It’s expected to be available in a total of 24 countries before the end of January, including the US, UK and other Western European countries. It’s currently not clear whether Motorola will try to limit the sales of its latest phone to the US to force carriers to buy more Moto Xs on contract, though that seems like a very unlikely scenario.
TAKEAWAY:
This is just a rumor for now, but it looks like Motorola will indeed begin selling the Moto G in the US first with AT&T and Verizon. The phone could also be available unlocked unlocked for Verizon or Sprint if demand is high. Motorola phones have never sold well here, so it’s no surprise that the company has only released this Android phone here recently instead of bringing it to the U.S. in 2012 .