Arriving a year later than the Moto E (second generation), the Sony Xperia E4g is poised to overtake Motorola's budget smartphone. A lower price and comparable specs, however, could help the Moto E stand firm against the Xperia E4g when it arrives later this year.
With the E4g still unreleased, there isn't a solid price point to go on right now. Some retailers have the phone priced as low as $165, while others have set the pre-order mark at around $200 -- the Moto E is retailing for $120 right now.
The comparable price points of the EG4 and Moto E place them so close together that it comes down to nitpicking at the features of the newer phone to determine if it's worth shelling out a bit of extra cash to bring it home.
For starters, the E4g boosts a larger screen than the Moto E's 4.5 inch display. While the E4g has a 4.7 inch screen, both phones are tied at display output with resolutions of 540 x 960 -- so the contender has a slightly lower pixel density than the older handset.
The two phones again tie up with their rear camera, with the E4g matching the Moto E's 5MP count. However, the Moto E's VGA chat camera falls short of the E4g's 2MP front camera and its rear camera's 720p output falls below its rival's 1080p quality.
With the Moto E falling short in picture and video, the losses continue in the processing department by just a hair. Both handsets are stocked with just 1GB of RAM and driven by quad-core processors, but the E4g 1.5 GHz clocks beat out Moto E's 1.2 GHz cores.
In the recollection department, the Moto E and E4g tie with 8GB of storage space. Also, both devices can be expanded, via memory card, by another 32GB.
In the battery department, the E4g's capacity is slightly higher than the Moto E's reserves. The E4g's larger display appears to bring its talk time down.
The verdict? The E4g edges out the Moto E, but it won't be available until April of this year. The E4g is priced to compete with the Moto E, but the older phone could see some price cuts before Sony's latest budget phone arrives.
