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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2014
Warning - the phone ships as of the date of this review with KitKat 4.4.3, and there are nasty bugs in it that cause the phone to lose connection with the micro SD card, and then tag the card as damaged. With only 8gb of main storage, that's a fatal flaw for this phone.
A few specifics. On the Motorola Android support forums, they're dense with memory card dismounting and being falsely tagged as damage problems. It's not just me. Some people encountered the bug when upgrading to 4.4.4 and now can't make it go away. Many encountered it in 4.4.3. I couldn't get a 32gb class 10 card to work, although I think it may be that the phone had a card status cached and failed the card without really checking. I found an old 16gb card that's probably a class 6, and it IS working. So, old small slow microSD cards work OK... I'll re-verify whether the 32gb class 10 works or not in a day or two and update this review.
NEW INFO: Upgraded to 4.4.4, as have many based on the forums. The upgrade says its whole purpose is to fix the SD card problem, and IT DID. I took a 64gb Class 10 card and put it in the phone. The phone complained about the card not being right, but a new unformatted 64gb card SHOULD produce that response. I formatted it (on the menu it says "erase"), the card mounted itself with the proper amount of free space, and that was it. Exactly as it should be. Happiness.
It really is a lovely, inexpensive phone. Screen quality is really nice, the camera is good enough for what I use it for, the user interface is close enough to my main phone (a Razr Maxx HD) that there was no learning curve. It's not the fastest phone I've ever used, but every bit as fast as my Razr Maxx HD which is a bit over two years old. The battery life is good, when the phone's new. The phone is pretty much exactly what I wanted for an inexpensive second phone for international travel.
Now that you can use a class 10 card, should you? It's not easy to find high capacity (64gb) class 6 cards (but I did find one, cost me a bit more than a class 10), and class 4 were never available over 32gb as far as I know. I did a test with moving a dozen albums into the card and then back out, with the 64gb class 6 and with a 64gb class 10. There wasn't any noticeable difference. May be detectable if it was a lot more data, but for now, if you've got a class 6 of the size you want, use it, don't worry about buying a new one. If you've got class 10 cards, you're also good. Having hunted down and purchased a 64gb class 6, I'm going to stay with that, and put the class 10 back in my GoPro.
I can also say that moving data onto and off the class 6 card is WAY faster than it was with 4.4.3, so they fixed the memory management in many significant ways.
Great value phone. NOW you shouldn't hesitate, just make sure to upgrade to 4.4.4 as soon as you get it.
A few specifics. On the Motorola Android support forums, they're dense with memory card dismounting and being falsely tagged as damage problems. It's not just me. Some people encountered the bug when upgrading to 4.4.4 and now can't make it go away. Many encountered it in 4.4.3. I couldn't get a 32gb class 10 card to work, although I think it may be that the phone had a card status cached and failed the card without really checking. I found an old 16gb card that's probably a class 6, and it IS working. So, old small slow microSD cards work OK... I'll re-verify whether the 32gb class 10 works or not in a day or two and update this review.
NEW INFO: Upgraded to 4.4.4, as have many based on the forums. The upgrade says its whole purpose is to fix the SD card problem, and IT DID. I took a 64gb Class 10 card and put it in the phone. The phone complained about the card not being right, but a new unformatted 64gb card SHOULD produce that response. I formatted it (on the menu it says "erase"), the card mounted itself with the proper amount of free space, and that was it. Exactly as it should be. Happiness.
It really is a lovely, inexpensive phone. Screen quality is really nice, the camera is good enough for what I use it for, the user interface is close enough to my main phone (a Razr Maxx HD) that there was no learning curve. It's not the fastest phone I've ever used, but every bit as fast as my Razr Maxx HD which is a bit over two years old. The battery life is good, when the phone's new. The phone is pretty much exactly what I wanted for an inexpensive second phone for international travel.
Now that you can use a class 10 card, should you? It's not easy to find high capacity (64gb) class 6 cards (but I did find one, cost me a bit more than a class 10), and class 4 were never available over 32gb as far as I know. I did a test with moving a dozen albums into the card and then back out, with the 64gb class 6 and with a 64gb class 10. There wasn't any noticeable difference. May be detectable if it was a lot more data, but for now, if you've got a class 6 of the size you want, use it, don't worry about buying a new one. If you've got class 10 cards, you're also good. Having hunted down and purchased a 64gb class 6, I'm going to stay with that, and put the class 10 back in my GoPro.
I can also say that moving data onto and off the class 6 card is WAY faster than it was with 4.4.3, so they fixed the memory management in many significant ways.
Great value phone. NOW you shouldn't hesitate, just make sure to upgrade to 4.4.4 as soon as you get it.
