Last week, we unboxed the brand new second generation Moto E, which carries over a price tag that brings high performance, improved design, and lots of software updates. So we wanted to show off all the improvements of this brand new Moto E. What better way to do it than doing a Moto E first gen vs. second gen to find out all the new changes.

First up is the size and design of these two very affordable smartphones. Last year, the Moto E came equipped with a 4.3-inch display inside a rather boring looking shell. It resembled the Moto G greatly in design and shape but obviously there were some small differences. For one, the display was only rated at 960x540, the camera lacked in flash, and the weird 4x3 ratio display was sort of an oddball in the world of smartphones last year. However, we did see front-facing speakers in the first generation Moto E, which was a very nice touch. Other than that, the design was pretty plain, which was completely in line for a very affordable device.

Now looking at the second generation Moto E, we can see that things have changed rather drastically. The display has been bumped up to 4.5-inches; the same display size as the last generation Moto G. The front-facing speakers have been sacrificed for a single front-facing speaker and the removable back is no longer removable. The camera still lacks a flash and the display, even though it’s larger, has the same resolution of 960x540. The phone’s material seems to be a little high-quality but that’s mainly due to the ridges running along the sides of the phone; which provide a very comfortable and secure grip. But lining these two up and you can definitely see similar design languages.

Next we have to dive into the hardware and internals. Inside the first generation Moto E, we had a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor next to 1GB of RAM and the Adreno 302 single-core GPU. Definitely not the most powerful thing but it was definitely adequate enough to run a basic stock form of Android KitKat. Camera-wise, we had a 5MP rear-facing camera and no front-facing camera at all. Lastly, the battery was rated at 1980 mAh, good enough for a day of usage. One last thing to mention with the first generation Moto E was its lack of LTE—it was a 3G smartphone only so you couldn’t take advantage of any GSM LTE network here in the States.

On the second generation Moto E, things have improved by a good amount. First off, the processor’s now 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor with the same 1GB of RAM. It’s also sitting next to a brand new Adreno 306 GPU. The hardware runs Android Lollipop with again a slight customization from Motorola very smoothly. Camera-wise remains a 5MP camera but they have added a VGA front-facing camera and again there is no LED flash. The battery size has been increased all the way up to 2390 mAh, which is already improved to last a very long time. probably the biggest update to the Moto E 2^nd generation this year is the addition of LTE radio. The last upgrade will be found in software. The first generation Moto E came with Android KitKat. It was basically a stock form of Android and it didn’t have any of the Moto actions or voice features that were found on more expensive phones like the Moto G and Moto X. The second generation Moto E now runs Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, the latest version of Android. It also does feature a few of the Moto features, including Moto Actions, Moto Assist and Moto Display. These are definitely some great features to have on phones like these.

Those are the new features and changes found on the brand new second generation Moto E. We’ll definitely bring you a lot more content about the Moto E, including the full review and a couple more head to heads in future videos so make sure to leave your comments below on what you’d like to see or get answered in future videos.