The Motorola Moto G series has always been an easy-to-recommend Android family. Five generations of rock-solid phones offered solid performance and value Samsung and Apple couldn’t touch, and none of the software oddities you might see in a Chinese import.
Not sucked into the iPhone or Galaxy prestige? Buy a Moto G. Trust us, it’ll be fine, was the message.
The Moto G6 range is a little different. Nothing much has changed in the strategy. There are three models: Moto G6, Moto G6 Plus and the cheaper Moto G6 Play. You get class-leading tech and the prices are accessible. But they highlight the impending identity crisis of expensive phones.
How can anyone justify spending £900 on a phone when improving standards all-round push the obvious benefits into supplementary features? Isn’t it a lot to pay for sprinkles and candied cherries on the sundae?
The Motorola Moto G6’s design demonstrates this most clearly. It has a curved glass back and aluminium sides. The look and feel are similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7, and the materials used aren’t cut-price.
Its back is Gorilla Glass, used in most top-end phones. It’s Gorilla Glass 3 rather than Gorilla Glass 5, less scratch and impact resistant. But drop an iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9 on the pavement and there’s still a good chance it’ll crack anyway. Tell someone you paid a small fortune on the Moto G6 and there’s a good chance they’d believe you. But they would be wrong: the Moto G6 starts at £219.
The phone’s display also highlights the diminishing returns of higher-spec displays. It has an on-trend 18:9 screen, letting it fit a 5.7-inch display into a shell no wider than last year’s 5-inch Moto G5.
And while the Moto G6 may not match the sRGB, DCI P3 and Adobe RGB industry colour standards like a Samsung Galaxy S9, most buyers don’t even know what these are. Similarly, while top-end phones are starting to boast of HDR-capable displays, you have to question the point in a display smaller than that of the average airplane seat.
At this point “good enough” in phone tech is barely distinguishable from “perfect” for many. It’s a good job companies like Apple and Samsung have giant marketing budgets to convince us otherwise.
Read the WIRED Recommends guide to the best Android phones for our no.1 picks in every category
As in previous years, Motorola has continued to trim out elements that might show up the Moto G6 as a cheaper phone. There’s a fingerprint scanner under the screen. It’s fast. It uses a USB-C port rather than the dated microUSB seen in last year’s models, and there’s a fast charger in the box. It will even unlock by recognising your face, like an iPhone X.
One of the clearest externals “tells” the Moto G6 isn’t a top-tier phone is its 3.5mm headphone jack, highlighting the slightly ridiculous state of mobile phone hardware in 2018.
WIRED is still getting to know the Moto G6, but so far it seems to run Android 8.0 very well, and the mid-range Snapdragon 450 CPU can handle all of Android’s most demanding games. The power of phone CPUs and GPUs has radically improved over the last five years, but the fantasy of turning a phone into a pocket games console hasn’t developed beyond the state it reached in 2010-2012. You can blame “in-app purchase” games for that.
The real benefits of a sizzling phone CPU more powerful than the Moto G6’s are not actually higher frame rates in games or more advanced graphical effects. They are marginal improvements in app loads and interface transitions measured in milliseconds.
There’s a similar head-scratching effect in the camera. For the last few years, 12-megapixel sensors have been used in almost all top phones. They offered, and still offer, the best balance of resolution and low-light sensitivity.
Now they are so well-established, even the Moto G6 gets one of these sensors. With the added help of a little software tweaking, you get dynamic range comparable with some of the best phone cameras around. And much better low-light detail than the rival Nokia 6, which has a higher-resolution sensor with smaller sensor pixels.
There’s also a secondary sensor on the back to enable the Portrait mode, which blurs out the background to make your subject pop more.
Is this a dream phone without issues? No. Like the Moto G5 range, the Moto G6 camera suffers from shutter lag. It is particularly noticeable when the Auto HDR kicks in, as it involves merging multiple exposures.
Low-light photo quality won’t touch a Samsung Galaxy S9 or Huawei P20 Pro either. Fine details take on a slight fizziness in low light and as there’s no stabilisation you need to keep your hands reasonably still to get a sharp image.
There’s also no lossless zooming, one of the real joys of phones like the Huawei P20 Pro and iPhone X for the keen photographer. The speaker isn’t as powerful or bassy as that of the top-end phone either. There’s a single driver in the earpiece area above the screen, offering no stereo effect.
There are real differences between the Moto G6 and a phone four times the price. Of course there are. But as such benefits become centred ever more on what were once considered secondary or tertiary elements, and fine-tuning the final five percent of the basics, perhaps it’s time to ask whether we are really good enough to really appreciate them.
The Moto G6 will go on sale on May 2, and starts at £219. For £269 you can upgrade to the Moto G6 Plus, which has a more advanced 12-megapixel camera sensor, a slightly larger 5.9-inch screen and more powerful Snapdragon 630 CPU.
For those not obsessed with the dynamic range of their photos and the sharpness of their phone’s display, there’s the £169 Moto G6 Play. This uses a Snapdragon 430 CPU, has a plastic rear, 1440 x 720 pixel screen and a lower-end 13-megapixel rear camera without a secondary background blur sensor. However, it also has a large 4,000mAh battery so should comfortably outlast either the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus - and 90 percent of phones in general, come to think of it.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
