Lenovo working on its most affordable smartphones ever

PanARMENIAN.Net - Motorola is working on its most affordable handsets ever, according to someone briefed on the company’s plans: the Moto C and Moto C Plus, VentureBeat reports.

The Lenovo subsidiary has gradually been moving downmarket with its new model lines ever since 2013’s Moto X-initiated reboot. First came the Moto G, then the Moto E.

Like this year’s fifth-generation Moto G5 and G5 Plus, both Android 7.0 Nougat-powered C-series models feature the same size display — 5 inches — and are differentiated by their internal components. For instance, while the regular Moto C offers just an FWVGA resolution of 854 x 480, the C Plus steps it up to 1280 x 720 HD.

What’s more, while the Moto C Plus is strictly a 4G LTE-capable device, the basic C itself will offer two flavors — 3G and 4G — featuring slightly different configurations.

Motorola is said to be going with MediaTek systems-on-chip across the board, all of which are quad-core, ranging from a 32-bit processor clocked at 1.3GHz on the Moto C 3G to a 64-bit version running at the same clock speed on the Moto C Plus. The Moto C 4G, meanwhile, also steps up to 64-bit architecture but operates at a slightly more conservative 1.1GHz.

Further complicating matters, while the C contains 1GB of RAM regardless of version, memory on the C Plus will supposedly vary by region between 1GB and 2GB. Storage-wise, the C Plus has a 16GB internal capacity, while the C contains either 8GB or 16GB, depending on cellular modem and region. All variants should feature microSD expandability, however.

Perhaps the biggest selling point for the Moto C Plus comes in the battery department: While the Moto C sports a 2350mAh capacity, the C Plus nearly doubles that to a hefty 4000mAh.

Finally, the Moto C features a 5-megapixel rear camera with flash (fixed-focus on 3G, auto-focus with 4G), along with a 2-megapixel selfie cam that also has a flash. The Moto C Plus uses the same front-facing camera configuration, but increases the main image sensor’s resolution to 8 megapixels.

Both models will ship in a variety of colors, including black, white, gold, and red.