Moto G or Nexus 4

[onevivip]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of getting either a Moto G or a (used) Nexus 4 for a friend who might be getting into Android development. I understand that Nexus devices are the most developer friendly but in what way and by how much will the Moto G be worse off as a developer device?

Development aside, I'd rather get the Moto G because it'll new and has better battery life. The higher specs / better gaming experience of the Nexus 4 is not that important for my friend.

 

[michaels_epp]

I would say go with the Moto G. I'd say that the Nexus wouldn't be that much more developer friendly.

 

[strav22]

Get the Moto G, battery life on the Nexus 4 was always bad for me. Moto G was much better. Not sure about development and which one would be better.

The moto g might be a more popular device for its price point and availability.

 

[Scott7217]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of getting either a Moto G or a (used) Nexus 4 for a friend who might be getting into Android development. I understand that Nexus devices are the most developer friendly but in what way and by how much will the Moto G be worse off as a developer device?

It looks like you can easily unlock the bootloader on a Moto G, according to Motorola's website:

Bootloader Unlock Program - Supported Devices

Both the Nexus 4 and the Moto G appear to be suitable for developers. You can probably go with whatever is cheaper.

 

[anon(847090)]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of getting either a Moto G or a (used) Nexus 4 for a friend who might be getting into Android development. I understand that Nexus devices are the most developer friendly but in what way and by how much will the Moto G be worse off as a developer device?

Development aside, I'd rather get the Moto G because it'll new and has better battery life. The higher specs / better gaming experience of the Nexus 4 is not that important for my friend.

I know benchmarks are stupid but someone did a benchmark for G and N4.
Moto G beat the N4

 

[Geodude074]

I know benchmarks are stupid but someone did a benchmark for G and N4.
Moto G beat the N4

Show me, because I don't believe you. And if it was Quadrant Standard I'm going to laugh.

Nexus 4 has a Snapdragon S4 Pro with a quad-core 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Moto G has a Snapdragon 400 with a quad-core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.

I bought my kid sister a new Nexus 4 for $200 when Google was selling off the last of them. To this day I would still say that was the best bang-for-your-buck that you could get.

The gf I bought a Moto G, and I'll see how well that performs first hand when she opens it on Christmas.

 

[Ry]

I would rather have a new Moto G than a used Nexus 4.

 

[Central n ohios best]

Considering the fact the n4 LTE can be unlocked I would rather get a n4. A 3g only phone in 2013 makes no sense.

Sent from my T-Mobile LG Escape running 4.1.2 using tapatalk 2 (Central n ohio Austin IL)

 

[anon(847090)]

Show me, because I don't believe you. And if it was Quadrant Standard I'm going to laugh.

Nexus 4 has a Snapdragon S4 Pro with a quad-core 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Moto G has a Snapdragon 400 with a quad-core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.

I bought my kid sister a new Nexus 4 for $200 when Google was selling off the last of them. To this day I would still say that was the best bang-for-your-buck that you could get.

The gf I bought a Moto G, and I'll see how well that performs first hand when she opens it on Christmas.

Motorola Moto G benchmark results impress » Phone Reviews

Motorola Moto G v Nexus 4 Head to Head (Benchmark, GPS, Speaker, Browser) - YouTube

 

[notserpmh]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of getting either a Moto G or a (used) Nexus 4 for a friend who might be getting into Android development. I understand that Nexus devices are the most developer friendly but in what way and by how much will the Moto G be worse off as a developer device?

Development aside, I'd rather get the Moto G because it'll new and has better battery life. The higher specs / better gaming experience of the Nexus 4 is not that important for my friend.

There are a couple ways a Nexus device is better for Android development:

1. Although you can unlock the bootloader and root a Moto G, unlocking the boot loader or rooting any Motorola phone voids its warranty (according to their terms at least). They may or may not enforce this, but they can at any time. Unlocking a boot loader, rooting, or even installing a ROM on a Nexus phone does not void the warranty.

2. The Moto G has been promised that it will be upgraded to Android 4.4 (KitKat), but that is it. There is a decent chance that it will get upgrades beyond that, but no guarantees. The Nexus lineup will (according to statements from Google) updates for at least 18 months from time of purchase. Since the Nexus 4 was discontinued Nov 1, 2013, that would mean that it should get updates into 2015. I think Google (who owns Motorola) intends to do updates for 18 months on the new moto devices (Moto X and Moto G), but I haven't seen anything official.

All that said, a large, large portion of Android software development (assuming that is what meant and not doing ROMs or something like that), is done on a desktop using the Android SDK. With it, the developer can emulate different sizes of phones, different versions of Androids and all kinds of other variables easily. Only as a "final" test would you actually put your app on a real, physical phone and test it (generally). Even then, only testing on one model phone doesn't mean a whole lot, so which phone he has shouldn't make a huge difference.

You almost could argue the Moto G might be better for the developer, since the RAM is smaller it will force him to be a more efficient coder, resulting in a program that works better on more devices (instead of just higher end devices).

Really, the only main potential issue might be the warranty, and even then, if you are just developing apps, you can sideload without rooting or unlocking the bootloader, so you could still use the Moto G, as a developer, without voiding the warranty.

 

[Geodude074]

Motorola Moto G benchmark results impress » Phone Reviews

Motorola Moto G v Nexus 4 Head to Head (Benchmark, GPS, Speaker, Browser) - YouTube

Nexus 4 has the better CPU performance, no surprise there.

Nexus 4 also has twice the amount of RAM, but they don't take that into consideration during the benchmark.

Nexus 4 has better 2D graphics. But if you do a lot of 3D gaming, I guess you should go with the Moto G, since it scored 1200 points more than the Nexus 4. That alone accounts for the majority of the 600 point lead the Moto G has over the Nexus 4.

 

[lucverhoeven]

Moto G. Great phone.

Posted from Nexus 7

 

[pixelRyan]

Show me, because I don't believe you. And if it was Quadrant Standard I'm going to laugh.

Nexus 4 has a Snapdragon S4 Pro with a quad-core 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Moto G has a Snapdragon 400 with a quad-core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.

I bought my kid sister a new Nexus 4 for $200 when Google was selling off the last of them. To this day I would still say that was the best bang-for-your-buck that you could get.

The gf I bought a Moto G, and I'll see how well that performs first hand when she opens it on Christmas.

It depends on the benchmark, look at the anandtech review
AnandTech | Motorola Moto G Review
Moto g beats Nexus 4 in almost every benchmark including talk time, web browsing time, charging speed, html5, even some read speeds, the Nexus 4 only beats it in 3d tests. So it depends on what you use the device for, if you are going to be at home playing GTA San Andreas the Nexus 4 will be better with a larger screen and better 3d processing, if you are just making calls on the go and don't care about 4g the moto g could be better with its bigger battery.