The moto g didn't cost over $1160 over the course of two years (partly for amortized monthly costs, plus higher costs for the plan)... moto g on, for example Simple Mobile is $40/month plus the cost of the phone. Pricing may be slightly different, but when I compared when I got my N4 a couple years ago, the plans I was looking at for my phone would have been around $70-90/month or more, with any iPhone, plus the initial out of pocket... compared to a moto g out of pocket today, that's a lot more.

That's quite a big difference. I've been pretty happy with my Nexus 4, and hoping to get a full third year out of it... since the Nexus 5 isn't a huge bump, and the N6 is way out of the ballpark on pricing imho. I've been recommending the Moto G LTE for most people lately... it's a usable phone without a lot of extra monthly expense.

Why does the data plan matter ?

The Moto G is under 250 unlocked and the first gen is one year old. The 4S went for a bit less than 700, is now 3 years old and resells for roughly 200. I don't think comparing the performances of the two under the most recent OSes available is biased.

One is a new device, the other is used. Comparing them when they were new would be where I was talking about.. even today I'd suggest a moto-g over a 4S unless you have other apple hardware already.