Moto G announced for $199 off contract, Motorola’s bid to take on low-end market

Motorola has announced the Moto G, the cheaper international version of the Moto X for low-end markets. The news was broke at Motorola’s event in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the phone will be shipping out first, alongside a few other large consumer markets for cheap devices.

The Moto G is essentially a cheaper version of the Moto X without some of the key hardware and software features. Instead of having a custom back built on the Moto Maker store, Motorola has issued out a selection of removable backs with different colors.

Removable back does not mean removable battery or external storage, Motorola has added this purely to give Moto G users a different color if they aren’t happy with their stock option. Motorola has not added any of the custom software features onto the Moto G and the phone is running Android 4.3 with an update to Android 4.4 in the coming weeks.

Inside the Moto G runs a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8/16GB of internal storage and runs on a 1,950mAh battery. Motorola has added a 720p LCD panel instead of AMOLED to the Moto G and reduced the size to 4.5-inches.

The biggest announcement on the device was the price, starting at an impressive $199 (£130) off contract for 8GB. This is an aggressive move into the low-end market, currently dominated by Samsung, HTC and Nokia, but is not the cheapest smartphone out there running Android.

Motorola also said the Moto X will be getting updated to Android 4.4 in the coming weeks and we may see a few new software features. The Moto X has sold 500,000 units so far, but Motorola will be hoping for more sales with the Moto G in various low-cost markets.

The Moto G will be available in the US around the start of 2014 and will come on Verizon Wireless and some other unnamed carriers.