motorola moto g pure
MSRP $160.00
“The Moto G Pure is the cheapest Moto smartphone you can buy. There are big commitments, but also some fun surprises.”
Average
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Surprisingly decent daytime camera performance
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Good design
Against
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The camera is terrible everywhere.
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slow performance
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No NFC or 5G
The Moto G line of phones isn’t supposed to be glamorous. They create money. For every high-end model Motorola sells, there are at least a few dozen low- and mid-range phones flying off the shelves. That’s why the Moto G series persists even when others fail. Unfortunately, the Moto G lineup has gotten a bit confusing of late, with phones like the Moto G Power, Moto G Stylus, and Moto G100. Now we have the Moto G Pure, which is apparently trying to get back to its budget roots.
The Moto G Pure is an entry-level phone, with compromises all around, as I found out while using the phone on Verizon’s network for seven days. It comes with a somewhat attractive price, a good design, and software from Motorola that is both a blessing and a curse.
Design and display
Like most smartphones, the front design is quite simple. The 6.5-inch IPS LCD screen has a cutout at the top for a single front-facing camera and a fairly large chin at the bottom. Around the sides of the phone are a raised power button and a volume rocker on the right. At the top is the headphone jack, on the left is the SIM/microSD card tray, and at the bottom you have the speaker grill and USB-C port.
The back has a nice wavy textured pattern that is nice and snug and easy to hold on to. On the back is a fingerprint sensor with the Motorola logo and a camera bump that holds the two camera sensors and the flash. The bumps on the back have a feature to catch light at different angles and play around the back of the phone. The phone only comes in one color, which Motorola calls “Deep Indigo.”
As mentioned, the screen is a 6.5-inch 720p IPS LCD panel. It’s pretty unimpressive, but it has a 20:9 aspect ratio that makes it easy to use with one hand. However, being stuck at such a low resolution is a bit of a pain, especially if you want to use that big battery for media consumption.
Software
Motorola’s software has advantages and disadvantages, but let’s leave the disadvantages right away. This phone comes with Android 11, which wouldn’t be too bad, except that Google released Android 12 to the public on October 4. Motorola promises an operating system upgrade and two years of software updates. Again, that’s not so bad, except that other OEMs promise up to three OS updates and four years of security updates. Considering people keep their phones for more than two years, that’s a paltry promise.
But on the other hand, Motorola’s software is also a blessing because it’s very, very good. Motorola offers what amounts to a Pixel-like experience with a minimal bootloader and plenty of design cues from Google. Although Motorola goes further with a series of gestures such as clicking to turn on the flashlight. Motorola’s usual flick of the wrist to activate the camera isn’t here for some strange reason, but the new flick of the screen gets you into multitasking mode quite easily.
Motorola offers what amounts to a Pixel-like experience with a minimal bootloader and plenty of design cues from Google.
These are things I’ve gotten used to when using Motorola phones and really miss them when I switch to another OEM. It is not clear why the swivel joint is not here, but it is missing. The new multitasking gesture would make up for it, but this phone’s performance isn’t adequate for single tasking, let alone multitasking.
Performance and battery life
Inside the G Pure is a MediaTek Helio G25 processor, 32 GB of memory and 3 GB of RAM. Add to that a 4000mAh battery and you have pretty typical specs for a phone in this price range. The phone lacks NFC, wireless charging, and 5G. Of all the specs, 32GB of storage seems light for this price range, but everything else is on par with what you’d expect from the competition.
In general, this is what you would expect a budget phone to do. Launching apps can be very slow, launching the camera takes a few seconds, and switching between tasks is a bit of a chore. Gesture navigation is quite clunky due to the fact that the phone is not very responsive when idle. I’m not too surprised that the performance is what it is, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed.
Adam Doud/Digital Trends
This phone pretty much drains the battery which can be a definite plus.
It could be a good way to justify the performance tradeoff in the form of battery life. At 4000 mAh, it’s not the biggest battery you can buy in a phone today, but it’s a very good size and delivers good results. I’m more of a light smartphone user, and I used this phone for two days without charging, the second day I went to sleep at 19%. This phone pretty much drains the battery which can be a definite plus.
cameras
As for the camera, this phone has a 5-megapixel camera at the front and two cameras at the rear. The rear cameras are a 13MP main camera and a 2MP depth camera. In general, the performance of the camera is quite mixed. During the day, the cameras work quite well; it’s actually better than most phones at this level. Details are sharp and clear, with little focus loss around the extreme edges of the photo. There are no blown highlights, the darks are not pixelated at all. As long as the subject doesn’t move, that is.
When you try to photograph a person or an animal things fall apart quickly. Auto mode is basically useless on a moving object, and burst mode isn’t much better either. This applies regardless of lighting conditions. It is possible to take a good photo of a moving subject, but this is certainly the exception, not the rule.
At night, the camera at the border is unusable. The photos lack focus and any definition. The highlights are washed out, the dark colors are a mess. This is the same for video. Speaking of video, daytime video recording is better, but there is no stabilization on either the main camera or the selfie camera. If you are walking and shooting a video, it will be a bumpy ride.
Another highlight of the camera comes in the form of a feature called “spot color.” This mode allows you to select a color in the frame and convert the rest of the photo to black and white. It’s a pretty cool effect that I had quite a bit of fun with. My only gripe with performance is the fact that it requires two hands to use. While holding the phone with the subject, you have to touch the screen to select the color you want to keep. When you do this, the camera will show you in real time what your photo will look like.
None of this is particularly surprising given the price of the phone. In fact, the only surprising points are the pleasant surprise in daytime performance and the spot color effect. The cameras that come with $160 phones are almost entirely dependent on the light you have available, and the Moto G Pure is no exception.
Prices and availability
The Moto G Pure will hit the market at a price of $160, available for pre-orders starting October 14. The phone can be purchased at Best Buy, Walmart, B&H Photo, Amazon, and directly from Motorola. Verizon will also sell the phone exclusively until later this year, when T-Mobile and Metro are expected to offer it as well.
Our opinion
This phone is more like the Moto E, except that it borrows from the Moto G series with a larger screen, a fingerprint sensor, and a decent camera. Make no mistake, this is a budget phone with all the compromises you’d expect, like lag, apps that launch slowly, and a camera that only takes good photos in good light. This year is special because it’s almost hard to buy a bad phone. This is not a bad phone. But it’s not a good phone either.
But there are some pleasant surprises here, which is all you can realistically ask for when paying $160 for a smartphone. It will not be a beast, it will not be a champion. It takes some decent photos and lasts a long time between charges. Sometimes that’s good enough.
Is there a better alternative?
There is no shortage of smartphones that can be bought for under $100, and many of them are Motorola’s own devices. As I mentioned before, it’s actually hard to find a bad phone in 2021, and these sub-$100 phones are no exception. It’s also worth noting the new Nokia G300, which is HMD’s cheapest 5G phone at $199. We haven’t tested it yet, but it’s an attractive price for 5G connectivity.
How long will it last?
Motorola has a history of making solid phones and offers a standard one-year warranty, which is nice. But Motorola also has a history of poor software support, which isn’t good. You’ll get Android 12 on this phone, but that’s about it. Security updates will stop after two years in 2023.
Should you buy it?
No. While this is the cheapest Moto phone you can buy, Motorola and HMD have options that include a bigger battery and even 5G connectivity. Although the camera is a nice surprise on this phone, it’s not enough to justify the relatively high price this phone offers. A few extra bucks will get you even more functionality within the Moto G lineup, not to mention cheaper phones from other OEMs.
editor’s recommendations
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn