Slashdot Mirror
The Moto G7 Lineup Offers Bigger Screens and Smaller Bezels On a Budget (theverge.com)
Motorola is releasing three versions of the Moto G7 this year: the G7, the G7 Power, and the G7 Play (a fourth, more powerful G7 Plus model will also be released internationally). These new devices offer slimmer bezels, bigger displays, and larger batteries than their predecessors. The Verge reports: [T]he $299 G7 (not to be confused with LG's G7 ThinQ) is the top-of-the-line model, with a 6.2-inch Gorilla Glass display that features a 2270 x 1080 resolution and a more subtle teardrop notch. The G7 also has more RAM (4GB), and more internal storage (64GB) than its siblings, along with a dual-camera setup on the back that offers a 12-megapixel main lens along with a 5-megapixel depth sensor for a better portrait mode experience (the other G7 phones will have a software-based portrait mode instead). The G7 also supports Motorola's 15W TurboPower charging spec, which promises nine hours of battery life from a 15-minute charge.
The next phone in the lineup, the $249 G7 Power, may not offer the same level of premium upgrades as the G7, but it does offer an intriguing feature that its pricier counterpart doesn't: a massive 5,000mAh battery that Motorola promises should last for up to three days, besting the 3,000mAh battery in the G7 by a considerable amount (it also supports Motorola's TurboPower charging). The G7 Power also features a 6.2-inch display, but at a lower 1520 x 720 resolution and with a larger notch, and only a single 12-megapixel camera on the back. It also drops down to 3GB of RAM and a base storage of 32GB, and is a bit bulkier than the main G7 -- but if sheer battery life is your goal, it seems like the G7 Power will be tough to beat. Lastly, there's the $199 G7 Play, the smallest and cheapest model in the 2019 Moto G lineup. There are more cuts here: a smaller 5.7-inch 1512 x 720 display with an even larger notch than the G7 Power, a cheaper plastic case, and just 2GB of RAM. All three devices will feature Qualcomm's mid-tier Snapdragon 632 processor, Android 9.0 Pie, 8-megapixel front-facing cameras, charge via USB-C, and offer rear-mounted fingerprint sensors. Lastly, the 3.5mm headphone jack is still included on all three models. Motorola is promising a release date sometime in the spring for both the U.S. and Canada.
The next phone in the lineup, the $249 G7 Power, may not offer the same level of premium upgrades as the G7, but it does offer an intriguing feature that its pricier counterpart doesn't: a massive 5,000mAh battery that Motorola promises should last for up to three days, besting the 3,000mAh battery in the G7 by a considerable amount (it also supports Motorola's TurboPower charging). The G7 Power also features a 6.2-inch display, but at a lower 1520 x 720 resolution and with a larger notch, and only a single 12-megapixel camera on the back. It also drops down to 3GB of RAM and a base storage of 32GB, and is a bit bulkier than the main G7 -- but if sheer battery life is your goal, it seems like the G7 Power will be tough to beat. Lastly, there's the $199 G7 Play, the smallest and cheapest model in the 2019 Moto G lineup. There are more cuts here: a smaller 5.7-inch 1512 x 720 display with an even larger notch than the G7 Power, a cheaper plastic case, and just 2GB of RAM. All three devices will feature Qualcomm's mid-tier Snapdragon 632 processor, Android 9.0 Pie, 8-megapixel front-facing cameras, charge via USB-C, and offer rear-mounted fingerprint sensors. Lastly, the 3.5mm headphone jack is still included on all three models. Motorola is promising a release date sometime in the spring for both the U.S. and Canada.
Less bezel equals less space for the inevitable case to take hold around the phone. New phones are such shit that they can't exist without cases. It's a racket.
My phone is a nearly 2-year-old G5 plus. It's an okay phone, but I'm going to have to replace it when they stop supporting updates for it later this year.
However, I will not buy a phone with a notch, and my new requirement is 5 years of security updates. Sorry Moto, you just lost a customer.
p.s. If I can't find a suitable phone with at least 5 years of security updates, then I'll just install Lineage OS on my current phone when they stop updating.
It looks like they're bringing back the Nexus style phones: entry level bar settings with good->great features at a low cost. I've got a samsung s8+ and that's the last $900 phone I ever buy.
Sorry, Motorola, I'm still rocking your basic Moto G. When will you manufacturers comprehend that not everyone wants to lug around an overpriced tablet? Would it really kill you to at least try making a smaller phone - less than 5" - these days?
I was hoping that Motorola would not never do the idiotic notch display. Guess it is time to start looking for another phone maker that doesn't allow use of LSD during their design phase.
Poors buy stuff for poors even without ads
When did it happen than folks really and truly cared about the "notch".
A phone is a phone, physics are physics, a lens needs light.
Oh, let me guess - not one of them will get any security updates after the first 6 months, right? Because Android.
I do wish phone manufacturers would realize this. I couldn’t care less about thinner bezels, fast charging, tap-to-pay or notches. But to have the confidence that my phone would get security updates and love & attention from the manufacturer for at least a couple of years - yes, that’d convince me.
I own a Moto G4 play and it still is a solid device. Good to see the line refreshed; and if it is like previous generations, the Android setup would be mostly bloat-free. I don't care about the notches, though. They look just like an useless gimmick.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
One of the older models of the Moto G had a IPX7 rating.
It's been harder to find in the more recent Moto Gs.
Will the G7 have IPX7? If not, can anyone recommend a good budget Android phone without much bloatware that is waterproof?
Motorola used to design and manufacture kick ass microprocessors. The 68040 was my favorite, but the line went until the 68060 (or 68080 if your a Vampire fan with an FPGA, but that's different). They were CISC processors and I always felt they were similar in a lot of ways to the VAX (which was in some ways the ultimate CISC processor). You heard lots of hype about RISC, yes? Let me kick some street knowledge to those who don't do ASM: RISC sucks donkey balls for ASM coders on the metal. RISC's play was based on the fact that compilers generally aren't sophisticated enough to properly utilize the instruction set architecture (ISA) of a CISC CPU. So, the theory goes that if you pare down the CPU to only the instructions that a compiler is going to generate, then you can save money on the CPU by reducing the size and complexity you needed on silicon. That actually worked in the 1990's pretty well. Okay sure, one had some RISC CPUs that did not completely suck to code on due to SIMD instructions for multimedia activities like color space transformations and FFT (MIPS and ARM come to mind as most respectable) and a few of the best CISC instructions made it, too. The trouble is that RISC is great if you happen to be a compiler, but it's no fun for a human. You write want to write code on the metal in assembler? Then, you probably want CISC. The 68040 was a beautiful thing, especially for the time. It was fully pipelined, had respectable cache, strong FPU performance, and clock for clock would stomp the 486 (Intel's closest rival) pretty easily. Plus, you didn't have to deal with all the memory management quirks of the x86 or it's sub-par performance. Motorola sold off their semiconductor units and IP long ago. It's owned by NXT/Freescale now and they mostly forgot it exists. Every time I see a Motorola phone article on Slashdot it makes me feel like I'm seeing a zombie of a good old pal wandering around in the park and getting picked on by pigeons.
The cell phones are made by Motorola Mobility, which was bought by Google (for its telecommunications patent portfolio) and sold to Lenovo (after stripping out most of the patents).
Motorola's semiconductor business was spun off as Freescale Semiconductor in 2004, and operated independently for a decade. Freescale was bought by NXP Semiconductors (a Dutch company) in 2015.
I, like many other people, do not want Y.A. massive, fragile Phablet.
We want - NEED - a small (4" screen) rugged, thick, high-powered phone that can be dropped, and kept safely in our back trouser pocket.
Why won't ANY manufacturer serve us ?
The shipping industry standardized on container sizes and shapes because it is much easy to automate and long term efficiency shoots up. Why would you waste a human brain/attention on writing machine code when compiler does that. You want to move up the food chain. Just because Joe spent 4k hours mastering CISC doesn't mean that's the right way to go. human cost in software development is the most significant. So you develop hw that is compiler friendly not human friendly. RISC won as it's simpler and standard.
For all the folks dissing on the Power model - you are forgetting not everyone is like us.
There are quite some folks who:
- don't need that much cpu power/memory
- don't have a 10/10 eyesight, do want a bigger display, don't have problems keeping the bigger phone in the pants (think at home, think shoulder bags, pouch and so on)
- don't need high resolution (think calls, whatsapp, facebook and maybe basic instagram usage); remember the previous point, maybe even on the bigger screen they can't see the difference between 720p 1080p 2k 4k screens at that size and distance....
- have problems charging (or remembering to charge) the device midday. Just charge at night while you sleep, forget about the battery, yeas even when the device will be a couple of years old you could still get a whole day of battery life...
- don't care for differences in design and quality like notches, multiple cameras and so on
Think some older folks. Think not-geeks. Devices like that can be quite appealing.
I cannot believe there is no NFC on new cellphones...everywhere in the world we use NFC to pay with our phone, or do others things ; except in USA so US cellphones do not have NFC, great! This is why I bought a Nokia, I have the 6.1 but the X6 or 7.1 are wonderful for the same price as the G7. The 6.1 is cheaper than the G7 Power and has better specs.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
We are Sparta! I mean, Slashdot - we want to know, first and foremost, if the battery is user-replaceable, because we like to use our phones for several years.
Troublingly, I could not find (as of now) any articles/reviews that would communicate this crucial piece of information to the reader. I can but assume the battery is glued in.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Sony with 21:9 aspect ratio.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Frankly, unless you are built like your typical NBA player, holding one of those big phones to your ear makes you look like a jerk. And, yes, as unbelievable as it may sound, many of us still use smartphones to make and receive phone calls, among other things.
Yet to see phones that match my 3yr phone at feature price point..lenovo vibe k5 plus (3gb) at â7600..
What's that? A "subtle" notch? Pass.
The trouble is that RISC is great if you happen to be a compiler, but it's no fun for a human.
The trouble is Motorola wasn't competent to develop a high speed CPU, so they had to get involved with IBM and make PowerPC. Plenty of cellphones were made with low-power PPC cores. But who cares how friendly RISC cores are to assembly programmers? Assembler is less important than ever before, for anyone who isn't writing a compiler, because compilers keep doing more optimization. Unless you're writing code for the baseband processor in a cellphone, you're probably not going to bother with assembler. The other big examples, stuff like graphics for example, tend to just be handed off to coprocessors of some type or another.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
RISC isn't "standard", and RISC vs CISC ultimately ended up becoming an irrelevance as modern CPU architecture doesn't really resemble either. Even ARM has little in common with its Acorn RISC origins.
They developed the 88000 series, which was well received, but suffered from internal politics (Motorola didn't promote it and priced it ridiculously high because they didn't want to cannibalize their 68k business) and being just one RISC CPU in a market full of them. Meanwhile Apple didn't want to be reliant upon one supplier and was looking for a unified architecture supported by numerous third parties. From Apple's point of view they wanted CPUs with a well supported ABI, that wasn't Intel. That meant someone had to throw their hat into the ring with someone else, rejecting their own work. And from that point of view, given the 88000's low adoption, Motorola teaming with IBM worked for everyone.
Motorola's CPU engineers were the best in the business and they made the best CPUs. The switch to PowerPC shouldn't be interpreted as meaning they didn't know what they were doing - indeed, far from it, Motorola's implementations were considered superior to IBM's until the G5 came along, when it came to desktop and mobile CPUs.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Motorola's implementations were considered superior to IBM's until the G5 came along,
What? By whom? They offered superior price-performance, but they had inferior performance, notably because only the PPC601 implemented the full POWER instruction set. They also had inferior performance (and price-performance) to x86 processors. The G4 was about the same as a good Intel chip (but for more money) and the G5 was faster than an Intel chip for about a month, then it was slower again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To the hell with Motorola after Lenovo acquired it. The support got pure crap and you only receive shop news through the Motorola news channel, nothing about new functionalities or fast updates like they were in the past. After my third Motorola phone (after Lenovo unfortunately acquired it) I don't give a damn for this brand anymore and will change to another brand I already tested and liked it a lot and won't praise or mention here so people don't start "XPTO FANBOY". New cell phones today have NO NEW TECH nor any breakthroughs, anyway.
By their customers, noteably Apple.
Which is what matters, unless you're implying some other metric exists that Apple would take into account that IBM did better than Motorola with. As far as I'm aware they were equally reliable, for example. So price-performance was the only metric in which they differed.
But not per dollar, so it doesn't matter. Desktop users don't really give a rats behind if there's a $1,000 CPU from IBM that performs 50% better than the $250 CPU in their Performa.
IBM didn't make x86 processors, except for that brief time when they partnered with Cyrix.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
They also had inferior performance (and price-performance) to x86 processors
IBM didn't make x86 processors, except for that brief time when they partnered with Cyrix.
That's orthogonal to the argument. Apple should have either gone multicore ARM (they were an ARM licensor from way back, the Newton was ARM) with a GPU coprocessor, or they should have just jumped to x86 instead of PPC. The ARM decision only necessarily makes sense in hindsight, so x86 is the one that would have made sense. PPC cost too much more than x86, though, so it never made any sense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For some things such as maximum performance and/or minimal size, compilers still suck. Try compiling FFmpeg with assembly disabled and compare to assembly enabled. It's almost useless with assembly disabled.
There's also things that compilers still can't really do, such as optimizing for different CPU's.
Just like those containers don't really work for certain application such as shipping heavy equipment, compilers have their limitations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I believe such narrow applications where u need the last bit of juice for each watt, it's better to put it in silicon - build custom hw/asics/fpga. The point is human capital/attention is way too valuable to be mucking with bits n wasting time in debugging (a small error where u meant to store 0xcafe but did 0xcaef - like typo). I'm sure any great compiler like gcc is built for various CPU.
I meant supporting various CPU's dynamically in the same binary, and who wants to update hardware every time a new video codec comes out or your browser update includes an update to the JavaScript JIT.
I'm running 10 year old hardware with even older OS and am happy that libavcodec can render 1080 video with about 1/3rd CPU use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
But who cares how friendly RISC cores are to assembly programmers?
Me. I am one. I find it useful for my job and I use it hobby projects, too. I still do assembler on about.... 4 platforms on a regular basis. People pay good money for it.I also care because I like to code on my old SGI's and I find it frustrating at times to deal with MIPS versus 68k.
Assembler is less important than ever before, for anyone who isn't writing a compiler, because compilers keep doing more optimization.
My experience disagrees. Have you ever looked at SIMD instructions ? Compilers barely scratch the surface of their power and are notoriously terrible at optimizing for them. They *try* but they fall very short of the mark. When one understands how they work, you'll see why compilers are very very bad at trying to optimize them and if have to hint the crap out of your code, you might as well have just dropped into ASM anyway (better in fact). Write a color space transformation in C and try your absolute best to setup RGB triplets in your C code to be well-hinted and compiler friendly and then target them to some platform with appropriate SIMD instructions to help you out. Go ahead, buy ICC and get the best edge you can. I've done it. What one finds is that compilers optimize common software problems well and against specific software problems much more poorly. Read what others in the thread (about libavcodec and ffmpeg) have said: the results can be absolutely dramatic. Old machines able to do incredible tasks in realtime when properly hand-rolled in ASM. You doubt it and think compilers are godlike AI? Turn off your ASM optimized JPEG decoder in your browser (usually libjpegturbo or the like) and watch your experience CRAWL like you just won't believe. I can quote line and verse were they were hand optimized assembly code and the compiler was told to STFU for extremely good reason.
Unless you're writing code for the baseband processor in a cellphone, you're probably not going to bother with assembler. The other big examples, stuff like graphics for example, tend to just be handed off to coprocessors of some type or another.
I feel ASM is much more flexible than you imply and can be more general purpose when optimization is still important. Guys like the MenuetOS crew have shown that kind of flexibility in lots of general purpose apps for their working all-ASM operating system. Also, most modern graphics routines are often handled now by compiler optimized shaders implemented in a DSL or in C++ and less and less by hand rolled ASM due to the opaque nature of GPU hardware (unless you mean at the driver level and those are generally in C). Your dismissive attitude toward assembler makes me sad on one hand, but I'm glad only a few of us work on the metal these days comparatively. I know the true Scotsman when I meet him. :-)
another advantage of HLL/v-HLL ( high level language like C; very hll like python) is feature-velocity. If your team is using 10 year old system (hw/ sw), it's hard to compete with a nimble competitor who uses the latest tech and reaps the benefit of 10 year tech growth.
When you want to be ahead of the rest, you need to use human capital/attention/time with utmost care and delegate as much work to machines/sw/hw.
one of the reasons a system is run 10 years on same hw or sw is because its hard to evolve it; it's so tied down to various dependencies that you can't use latest cheaper n more powerful hardware. In other words, you can't be fast; that may be ok for some, but for places where u want to be running ahead, you can't afford to be slowed down by inferior processes.
It's like saying a business is happy using fax machines to communicate because it thinks using internet is unnecessary as the fax machine seems to do the work fine at reasonable cost for last 10 years. Unless you embrace a new/better process you won't know what you are missing.
I'm disappointed that to get good specifications you have to buy a phone with an enormous screen. Even the base model is 5.7", which is larger than the flagship screens from two years ago. The G7 bezel is smaller than the G5 bezel, which means the phone size isn't that much more than the G5 (13mm taller), but every generation gets a little bigger.
The 5" G5 was a great size, especially for smaller women with small hands. My wife had a G1 and has a G5, but she refused the G6 and wouldn't want a G7 because of size. I guess there's more demand for larger screens than small, but not everyone wants a tablet in their pocket.
You are so right. I'd also throw in libjpegturbo too, as it or something like it is used in most browsers. Even most IT people have little idea how much optimized, hand-rolled, asm there is in play in their daily computing experience. Then they get on threads like this and talk noise about it like compilers have it all figured out. All that tells me is that they are **not** asm coders and know exactly bupkis about the topic. It's too funny seeing them all commenting on it like they are some kind of authority and I am confident none of them have written a single ASM program in their lives. They just don't realize how ignorant they sound.
Yes, it surprises me the lack of understanding. I'm not a programmer but have still done and watched enough stuff to understand that compilers sometimes put out crap code and that even things like jpegturbo benefits from the hand-rolled simd support as I patched it at one point to support a platform. You don't have to be a programmer to compare compiled C code vs good assembler.
There's also lots of older computers out there and even new ones with crap processors and I hate developers who assume everyone has top of the line equipment with tons of memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's right, you don't have to be a programmer to know better, the performance speaks for itself. Plus, a simple cogent explanation of why SIMD instructions aren't easy to optimize helps, but too many folks just want to dismiss anything that's not in their experience as "OLD" and useless. They have no idea about the giant's shoulders they stand on.