Motorola Moto M Review : Disaster of a Phone

I recently had the misfortune of wasting Rs.16000 on a Motorola Moto M smartphone (more like a dumb-phone though). Posting this short Motorola Moto M review here now to make sure that no one else suffers what I went through with this phone. I will keep this review to the point without adding any specifications or details about the phone; because in the end I am just telling you to not buy it at all.

Motorola Moto M Review

There was a time when Motorola was a leading company in wireless technology and mobile phones. Go back about 12-13 years and if you wanted to buy a cellphone; names suggested would pretty much be limited to either Nokia and Motorola. Both of these companies shut down a few year ago; got taken over by other companies and have been trying to make a comeback ever since. Motorola as a company got split in two independent public companies and their mobile division; Motorola Mobility; was taken over by Lenovo. Now Lenovo is trying to revive the name Motorola and boost up their sales.

I am not speaking for everyone here but as far as my experience goes; Lenovo mobile phones are a catastrophe at a whole another level. I would never recommend anyone to buy a Lenovo smartphone and the same imperfections are visible in their Motorola phones as well. A Moto M boasts of 4 GB RAM powered by 2.2GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio P15 processor which will have you believe that it will be a super smooth phone capable of multi tasking and some heavy gaming. Reality however is quite different. It is full of problems that started right from the day this phone was delivered to my doorstep.

The biggest problem with the phone was of constant freezing. At least 3 to 4 times a day, the phone will freeze and I will have no other option but to force shut down and restart. It could happen anytime, while you were playing a game, just surfing through the messages or while on a call. The phone will become completely unresponsive and the constant forced shut downs made me wonder how long it was going to last before a complete system fail.

When a phone reads 4 GB RAM, the last thing you would expect out of it is a lag or stutter which happens a lot with Moto M. There will be a noticeable lag even while playing simple games like Pool, candy crush or hill climb racing. I did not try some heavy gaming but I am sure if I did, it would have fainted in my arms.  Even while going the contact list or messages, this stutter will be quite regular and annoying.

Next in line is the heating problem. After a while of playing games or phone calls, it would start heating up like someone just lit it on fire.

While the overall outside look of the phone is quite trendy, the on-screen look isn’t really that great. The Icons are so huge as if they meant to make this phone for someone with eyesight problem; someone who couldn’t see small icons or read small fonts. What’s more, you are stuck with that Icon size. There is no way to make it smaller.

Charger is next in the line. I am not sure what they were thinking but the charging point of this phone is different. Yes, it means that you can only charge it using a Motorola Moto M charger, none other. The point where you plug in the data cable in the phone is a bit wider so if your charger or the cable gets ruined, you have no other choice but to buy a Motorola charger again.

Some of the very basic requirements are missing from this phone which will make you feel to throw it out of your window. There is a bug Google Search Bar on the home screen and there is no way you can remove it. The moment I started the phone, it started to download some kind of system update and then stopped because of the heavy file size; saying that a download is only possible over WiFi. For the next few days that I owned this phone for; that notification of “file download paused” remained; and for the love of my life I couldn’t figure out how to remove it. It is like a forced update. If you do not want to, you are stuck with the notification.

The worse part? There is no Gallery in this phone. Yes, you heard me right. It doesn’t have the very basic media gallery and you will have to rely upon the “Google Photos” app that comes installed with the phone.

This was quite enough for me to give up the phone and opt for another. For a minute I thought I received a faulty piece and it was just me facing all these problems. Then I mentioned it to a few friends out of which 2 had used Moto M earlier; can’t say that I was surprised when both of them described the same problems. I went through the web a bit and found similar reviews.

Motorola Moto M Review – Final Verdict

Stay away from this phone and avoid it like a plague.

I hope the information provided above was helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section below or at our Community Forum and I will be glad to answer.