3/12/24, 11:20 PM Motorola’s newest budget phones look surprisingly good - The Verge

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Motorola’s newest budget phones look surprisingly good / Two

new Moto G phones get some significant upgrades.

By Allison Johnson, a reviewer with 10 years of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a
special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
Mar 12, 2024, 9:00 PM GMT+8

5 Comments (5 New)

Moto G Power: Now with NFC and wireless charging. Image: Motorola

Motorola’s recent budget phones have been held back by lackluster designs,
pointless extra cameras, and underwhelming feature sets. But there appears to
be hope on the horizon: the 2024 Moto G Power 5G and Moto G 5G look pretty
good — at least on paper.

Both phones finally offer NFC (why that was ever missing in the first place is a
mystery), and they come with fetching vegan leather back panels. They even
include a microSD card slot and a built-in headphone jack, handy features most
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3/12/24, 11:20 PM Motorola’s newest budget phones look surprisingly good - The Verge

phone manufacturers abandoned years ago. The G Power 5G also includes

wireless charging for the first time — a rare feature in any budget phone. They’ll
start at $199 for the Moto G 5G and $299 for the Moto G Power 5G.
The pricier Moto G Power comes with a 6.7-inch 1080p LCD with a fast 120Hz
maximum refresh rate — personally I’d take a contrast-ier OLED panel with a
lower refresh rate, but for a $300 phone you take what you can get. It uses a
midrange MediaTek Dimensity 7020 chipset with 8GB of RAM, and there are just
two rear cameras: a 50-megapixel main with optical stabilization and an 8-
megapixel ultrawide with autofocus that doubles as a macro camera. There are
no silly, low-res depth sensors or macro cameras here and bless Motorola for
that.

The Moto G Power comes in midnight blue — seen here — and pale lilac. Image: Motorola

The G Power supports up to 30W wired charging, though you’ll have to buy a
charger separately to get those speeds. Wireless charging is supported at up to
15W. There’s a massive 5,000mAh battery on board, though the lower-priced
Moto G 5G has one of those, too. Fun fact: the 5G Power’s internal codename

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appears to be Cancun and the Moto G’s is Fogo, based on the file names of the
spec sheets Motorola shared with me. I love some inside baseball.
The lower tier Moto G 5G uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 chipset with
4GB of RAM and includes a 6.6-inch 720p LCD, also with a 120Hz refresh rate.
There’s a 50-megapixel main camera (and a 2-megapixel macro still hanging
around), and wired charging tops out at 18W. Like the G Power, it’s only “water-
resistant” and not rated for full dust resistance or water immersion —
unfortunate, but normal in the budget class.

The Moto G 5G comes in just one color: sage green. Image: Motorola

There are promising changes afoot here, but as always, a lot depends on the
execution. The last midrange Motorola phone I reviewed was so chock-full of
bloatware that I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone. We won’t have to wait long
to find out: the 2024 Moto G Power will be available starting March 22nd at
Cricket Wireless and coming to other carriers soon afterward, with an unlocked
version arriving on March 29th. The 2024 Moto G 5G will arrive first at T-Mobile

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starting March 21st, with other carriers to follow. The unlocked version will be a
bit of a wait: it arrives on May 2nd.

5 COMMENTS (5 NEW)

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