Moto G AnnouncementGoogle-owned Motorola Mobility wants to bring a splashy smartphone to the masses.

Execs at the company took the stage in Sao Paolo today to announce the brand new Moto G, a low-cost smartphone that follows in the footsteps of the Moto X, which was released earlier this year. Its price tag is particularly notable: Motorola will be selling an unlocked, contract-free 8GB Moto G for $179, and it’s possible to double the phone’s memory to 16GB for $199.

Woodside
Woodside

The phone features a 720p, 4.5 inch display, and is driven by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor. While Motorola’s executives didn’t give a number, they said that the Moto G will feature “all day” battery life.

“Next year, 500 million people are going to buy a smartphone for around $200. And we really believe that up until now, their choice had been buying a cheap phone with last year’s technology, or buying a phone that was several years old. We don’t think that’s fair,” Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside said at the company’s press event in Sao Paolo, Brazil today.

Interestingly, while the presenters kept saying that the Moto G features best-in-class software, the phone isn’t ready to run Android 4.4 “KitKat,” the latest version of the Android OS. Moto G owners will get an upgrade to KitKat in January 2014.

Speaking of January, that’s how long you’ll need to wait if you want to pick up the Moto G in the U.S. Woodside said the phone is launching today in Brazil and “parts of Europe,” with the rest of Latin America, Europe, Canada and parts of Asia getting the phone in the next few weeks.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.