Moto G LTE vs. Nexus 5 vs. Galaxy S4 On T-Mobile?

[WirelessWanderer]

G'day,

My wife and I are currently using HTC Sensation 4Gs. They are more-or-less okay--which I guess is about the most that can be said for them.

We're considering upgrading. Cost aside, the following three devices are under consideration:

• Motorola Moto G LTE (outright purchase and BYOD)
• Nexus 5 (thru TMO)
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (thru TMO and TMO branded)

Doing my research, it appears to me the Moto G LTE beats the other two in the following aspects:

• Build quality (it's even slightly water resistant)
• Runtime
• Cell signal acquisition and retention (typical of Motorola)

I know the N5, and particularly the S4, are higher-performing devices, with bigger, better displays, but the other three criteria are more important to us. We use these things nearly 100% as phones and for texting, followed by email, calendaring, keeping an eye on the weather, and occasionally light web browsing. No gaming at all. No video streaming at all. Neither of us even streams music, news, etc. on them.

The only thing that really gives us pause about either the N5 or Moto G is the lack of WiFi calling.

I haven't seen many comments about the performance of the Moto G LTE specifically on T-Mobile's network. Anybody have anything they can share?

 

[kate]

For your usage needs I 'd recommend the Moto G LTE - great phone, especially for the price.

If you really need WiFi calling with the Nexus 5 or Moto G there are apps in the Play Store that you can use, but most require you to use a different phone number.

 

[WirelessWanderer]

Thanks for the follow-up, Kate.

I don't how much we "need," WiFi calling. One of the things precipitating this is poor coverage at home that our carrier, T-Mobile, has determined appears to be some kind of incompatibility between our current handsets (HTC Sensation 4Gs) and the cell. We should have excellent coverage. They finally sent field engineers out to find out what's going on and figured it out. I'm assuming that, with an upgrade, we'll get that. If so: We won't need WiFi calling so much, any more.

On the road, of course, WiFi calling is essentially worthless, and I'm assuming that if our handsets have a problem with the tower nearest home, they're probably having issues with a good many cells.

Where WiFi calling would be useful is on stops or overnight stays in areas with poor/no coverage, and the like. It had occurred to me that a separate SIP service could cover that, but that would be an added expense, so I'm not so sure we'd be interested in doing that.

So, relative to what I think of as the "Big 3": Physical robustness, wireless signal acquisition and retention, and runtime: I put WiFi calling somewhat further down the list. More important than, say, the camera, but somewhat less important than, say, visibility of the display in bright sunlight. Less important, even, than GPS performance, to me. (Probably not to my wife.)

Those are other things I'm wondering about: Relative performance of the displays in bright sunlight and the GPS performance. The displays on our handsets are nearly unreadable in bright sunlight. The GPS in our Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10 tablets is terrific. In our handsets? Pretty poor. My wife doesn't use her handset's GPS at all. I use mine frequently.