Do you think Motorola made the G camera look worse then the X's on purpose?

CADude · Mar 2, 2014

Have you guys noticed that nothing has been done about the G camera's excess noise reduction? It smudges a lot of the detail that should be there but isn't.

I have a feeling that the Aptina AR0543 CMOS sensor can take significant more detailed pictures but Motorola saw it and thought: "hmmm this camera is too good and it will make the Moto G too much of a good deal compared to the X" so they added some ridiculous software noise reduction to make pictures look worse and thus make consumers think "hmmm if I want a good camera I should spend the extra money and get the X"

I know some people will think this is unlikely, but there's no good reason why the noise reduction is so high on the Moto G's camera and considering that the Moto G is the saving grace for Motorola while the X hasn't really sold that well, they should just give up and make the Moto G's camera even better by getting rid of the noise reduction and tuning the colors so they keep selling more and more Moto G's.

What do you think?

i_rnb · Mar 2, 2014

yes this is true.. even my good old galaxy apollo's 3.1MP shooter is far better than Moto G's. camera is the worst thing happened to Moto G.

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SamsungAdmire · Mar 2, 2014

Yes. See this. Moto X had the same problem with the noise reduction.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7353/moto-x-update-dramatically-improves-camera-quality

Either Motorola doesn't know yet(post on their forums about it a lot so they know) OR they're not updating it on purpose so the Moto X camera looks better.

eastdata · Mar 2, 2014

Yeah, I think they overcompensated with the noise reduction, that should be a post-effect. My beef is with the white balance, it's noticeably blue. They're all software issues and I can't see how that could have been missed. All the hardware is there for a decent picture.

ViperXTR · Mar 2, 2014

Subject also discussed here:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2567260

I wonder if just a bomb tickin to explode with an update (as waht they did with the X)
Maybe they update it once the competing phones comes out

CADude · Mar 2, 2014

eastdata said:
Yeah, I think they overcompensated with the noise reduction, that should be a post-effect. My beef is with the white balance, it's noticeably blue. They're all software issues and I can't see how that could have been missed. All the hardware is there for a decent picture.

Exactly. I don't see how somebody at Motorola can look at a sample image and thought that is acceptable for production unless they wanted it to be that way. Every Moto G seems to look like a oil painting when zoomed at 100% and they have to know by now but for some reason they haven't even acknowledged it despite this phone being one of the best phones of 2013 and every single publication and user online saying the camera is the single flaw in this phone.

If they never deliver a firmware update, it's got to be intentional. Hopefully I'm wrong and they are just dragging their feet since its not a very profitable device.

jaspreet997 · Mar 2, 2014

CADude said:
Exactly. I don't see how somebody at Motorola can look at a sample image and thought that is acceptable for production unless they wanted it to be that way. Every Moto G seem to look like a oil painting when zoomed at 100% and they have to know by now but for some reason they haven't even acknowledged it despite this phone being one of the best phones of 2013 and every single publication and user online saying the camera is the single flaw in this phone.

If they never deliver a firmware update, its got to be intentional. Hopefully I'm wrong and they are just dragging their feet since its not a very profitable device.

Haha conspiracy theory!.... Let's flood them with emails?

Sent from my XT1033 using Tapatalk

eastdata · Mar 2, 2014

CADude said:
Exactly. I don't see how somebody at Motorola can look at a sample image and thought that is acceptable for production unless they wanted it to be that way. Every Moto G seem to look like a oil painting when zoomed at 100% and they have to know by now but for some reason they haven't even acknowledged it despite this phone being one of the best phones of 2013 and every single publication and user online saying the camera is the single flaw in this phone.

If they never deliver a firmware update, its got to be intentional. Hopefully I'm wrong and they are just dragging their feet since its not a very profitable device.

I hope that it's an oversight on Moto's part. I mean the sale to Lenova was somewhat hushed and timed just after release--they probably wanted to make sure it had a market presence to allay any misgivings in the acquisition. In that sense they may have pushed for release and not vetted the software as they may otherwise have done. There have been issues with the camera app itself.

CADude · Mar 2, 2014

jaspreet997 said:
Haha conspiracy theory!.... Let's flood them with emails?

Sent from my XT1033 using Tapatalk

Hopefully people have already been doing that along with posting on their forum.

x92 · Mar 2, 2014

I am suspecting this as well.
The MSM8226 processor is supposed to be 1.4 GHz but in our Moto G it is underclocked to 1.2GHz.
5MP camera is good enough to take 1080p video, but for moto g the maximum is only 720p.
It could be the same for picture quality, they try to distinct their flagship and their budget phone by making Moto G looks worst.

zack.1988 · Mar 2, 2014

Did you already find an open thread about this topic on Motorola forum?

pisherthefisher · Mar 2, 2014

x92 said:
I am suspecting this as well.
The MSM8226 processor is supposed to be 1.4 GHz but in our Moto G it is underclocked to 1.2GHz.
5MP camera is good enough to take 1080p video, but for moto g the maximum is only 720p.
It could be the same for picture quality, they try to distinct their flagship and their budget phone by making Moto G looks worst.

What's the point of having it clocked to 1.4 when 1.2 is already smooth as butter? It will just waste battery life.

What's the point of having it record 1080p videos when it only has a 720p screen? It will just waste memory.

I think you guys should start thinking about this logically before assuming moto is out to purposely make the moto g terrible. Optimizations of battery life and file size are important, especially on a phone that has a non removable battery and no SD card slot.

Sent from my XT1034 using Tapatalk

denzel09 · Mar 2, 2014

Too many movies! Come on..

CADude · Mar 2, 2014

x92 said:
I am suspecting this as well.
The MSM8226 processor is supposed to be 1.4 GHz but in our Moto G it is underclocked to 1.2GHz.
5MP camera is good enough to take 1080p video, but for moto g the maximum is only 720p.
It could be the same for picture quality, they try to distinct their flagship and their budget phone by making Moto G looks worst.

Actually its 1.6ghz and you can overclock it easily with the Faux Kernel.

I personally think the underclocking was done for battery life though.

x92 · Mar 2, 2014

pisherthefisher said:
What's the point of having it clocked to 1.4 when 1.2 is already smooth as butter? It will just waste battery life.

What's the point of having it record 1080p videos when it only has a 720p screen? It will just waste memory.

I think you guys should start thinking about this logically before assuming moto is out to purposely make the moto g terrible. Optimizations of battery life and file size are important, especially on a phone that has a non removable battery and no SD card slot.

Sent from my XT1034 using Tapatalk

Where is your evidence that processor clock at 0.2GHz slower will actually save much battery? how many percent?
It might be smooth for now but that doesn't mean it will be smooth after major android update in the future.

Really? do you mean that those phone out there that can take 1080p cannot shoot in 720p? there wasn't any option for that?

I didn't say Motorola try to make Moto G terrible, I'm just saying they try to distinct their flagship and non-flagship.
In fact, I think Moto G is a terrific product for under 200 US dollar but by looking at the capability of Moto G hardware, I wish it could be better.
Back to topic, what do you think Motorola is trying to "save" here by having excess noise reduction for the camera?

CADude · Mar 2, 2014

x92 said:
I am suspecting this as well.
The MSM8226 processor is supposed to be 1.4 GHz but in our Moto G it is underclocked to 1.2GHz.
5MP camera is good enough to take 1080p video, but for moto g the maximum is only 720p.
It could be the same for picture quality, they try to distinct their flagship and their budget phone by making Moto G looks worst.

You're kind of taking us off topic here. Nobody has a problem with the SoC, and few people care about 1080p video since 720p is enough for most people and the screen is 720p anyway.

The image quality is the real problem here. Another issue is the fact that the video camera records at too low a bitrate.

x92 · Mar 3, 2014

CADude said:
You're kind of taking us off topic here. Nobody has a problem with the SoC, and few people care about 1080p video since 720p is enough for most people and the screen is 720p anyway.

The image quality is the real problem here. Another issue is the fact that the video camera records at too low a bitrate.

Nope, SoC and 1080p are examples that help bring out my point:
"It could be the same for picture quality, they try to distinct their flagship and their budget phone by making Moto G looks worst."

903tex · Mar 3, 2014

Well from what I known and seen Motorola camera have never been good on any of their smart phones that I used. But they get the job done.

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zack.1988 · Mar 3, 2014

Feel free to share your doubts also with the Motorola team in the discussion we have opened on the support forum:
https://forums.motorola.com/posts/484ae2193b

CADude · Mar 3, 2014

zack.1988 said:
Feel free to share your doubts also with the Motorola team in the discussion we have opened on the support forum:
https://forums.motorola.com/posts/484ae2193b

Thanks for opening that. The more people flood their forums, the better.

Do you think Motorola made the G camera look worse then the X's on purpose?

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