Moto G: Camera performance review and comparison

The Motorola Moto G has been running out of stocks on Flipkart and people have been craving to get their hands on the budget smartphone. But how well does this smartphone perform in the camera department? Well, it has a  5MP camera but as we have repeatedly said in the past, Megapixels do not matter. A good smartphone camera depends on a number of things like ISO control, low light performance, colour saturation, contrast, shutter speeds, exposure and so on.

So we carried out a basic camera test and compared the Moto G to the Xolo Q1100 (as it offers almost similar specs with a slightly higher resolution camera at the same price), the Nokia Lumia 720 (as it is supposed to have great optics thanks to Carl Zeiss), and the Apple iPhone 4S (simply because the camera on all the iPhones works great).

Here are some sample shots that compare the performance between all the mentioned smartphones. (Click on the images for full resolution)

Apple iPhone 4S                                                                          Nokia Lumia 720

             Motorola Moto G                                                      Xolo Q1100

Apple iPhone 4S                                                                       Nokia Lumia 720

    Motorola Moto G                                                             Xolo Q1100

Apple iPhone 4S                                                                          Nokia Lumia 720

    Motorola Moto G                                                                        Xolo Q1100

Apple iPhone 4S                                                                             Nokia Lumia 720

    Motorola Moto G                                                                         Xolo Q1100

Apple iPhone 4S                                                                         Nokia Lumia 720

Motorola Moto G                                                                         Xolo Q1100

Bright and under the sun
All the smartphones performed well in bright conditions under sunlight. In the first and the fourth set, you can see that iPhone manages to have a better control on exposure and colours. The Moto G isn't far behind with a nice balance between highlights and shadows. Surprisingly the Lumia 720 disappointed under the sun as its auto white balance added too much of a blue tone which made the pictures slightly soft.

Low light
The Moto G had no chance in low light conditions as the Lumia 720 aced the test, although there was some loss in details. The iPhone 4S also proved to be much better than the Moto G and the Xolo Q1100  as it produced better colours in low light.

Colours and white balance
If you see the third set of pictures, the Moto G and the iPhone 4S have a nice and balanced tone with punchy colours. The Lumia and the Xolo again add a lot of blue tone which makes the pictures look more cooler, although we did like the performance of the Xolo Q1100. Overall we were impressed by Moto G's auto white balancing algorithms.

Focusing
Coming down to auto focus, almost all of the cameras on these smartphones were able to focus well and fast. The Xolo was the slowest among the lot, but the smartphone is expected to receive an update that will improve the camera application. So we expect better performance from it. Focusing on the Moto G was easy and quite fast, while there is a slight shutter lag, the pictures look in-focus in most of the situations.

So the Moto G, with its 5MP camera, isn't shy to produce some quality pictures. Of course it isn't the best, but it did manage to surprise us with its great control over exposure, white balance and focusing. 

More information on Moto G 

Moto G Review
Moto G performance comparison
Moto G against Android phones under Rs. 15,000
Moto G gets Kitkat 4.4.2 update
Moto G gallery

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Kunal Khullar