Motorola announces the Moto G at dirt-cheap $179 off-contract price

This is what many people were expecting the iPhone 5c would be like. Motorola on Wednesday announced its new Moto G smartphone, a budget alternative to its Moto X flagship phone that offers mid-range specs for a dirt-cheap $179 off-contract price. Among other things, the device features a 4.5-inch display with a 720p resolution, a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 8GB of storage and a 5-megapixel camera. The device will ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean but Motorola says that it will be upgraded to Android 4.4 KitKat by January 2014. Motorola says that its goal is to sell a quality smartphone to consumers in emerging markets who can’t afford high-end devices such as the Galaxy S4 or the iPhone 5s. The phone will launch in many European markets starting on Thursday but won’t come to the United States until January.