Motorola Moto G 5G 2024 Sage Green

I bought this phone because my old one from abroad didn’t meet the compatibility requirements of my network so I needed one that’s unlocked & can support Tello. It works beautifully with the network.

Pros of this phone:
– The look & feel are high quality. I love the color & the weight is average for a phone this size.
– It runs smoothly & apps are organized easily in alphabetical order + folders can be created so the home screen can remain clean & apps can be pulled up easily.
– Compatibility with pre-paid networks is a breeze & WiFi calling is automatically on, at least with my network so I don’t have to worry so much about lack of connectivity (which is a challenge where I live).
– Dual sim: 1 e-sim + 1 physical sim.
– Super fast charging.
– Not a lot of bloatware — mostly Google apps come pre-installed & a handful of Motorola apps.
– The value for the money spent — definitely 5/5. If you’re looking for a lower to mid-range option that doesn’t break the bank, but don’t want to compromise on specs, this phone is fantastic.
– So far the camera is excellent & comparable to my old phone, which had a great camera. (50 MP rear camera is clear & takes good photos. Have not experimented with the selfie camera yet.)
– The sound quality from the speakers is great for listening to music.
– I was worried about 8GB of RAM being a step down from my usual 16, but so far, I haven’t felt any difference. No lagging or freezing even when running music (Pandora) in the background, while using other apps.

Cons:
– There doesn’t appear to be an internal storage area / app on the phone for music or photos so everything saves to Google Photos. You can add an SD card, though, which is a bonus that some Motorola phones don’t have.
– There isn’t a music player pre-installed, which was a bit surprising.
– There also doesn’t seem to be a pre-installed data transfer app; however I did skip the phone setup thing at first, so others may find something I missed.

Overall, I highly recommend this phone to anyone who needs an unlocked option at an affordable price point without compromising decent specs.

Thank you, Motorola!

Note that I don’t have a use for NFC, which I *think* it doesn’t have, and I don’t use facial recognition, so I can’t speak to that. And I don’t play games on it. But everything I have used works great.

Besides working fine, what else is there to say?

First, the battery life is great — I put it on a shelf to just be an alarm clock for 24 hours, and it used about 15% of the battery. Even with some web browsing and a lot of podcast listening during the day, I have never seen the battery below 45%, charging it once a day.

The screen is bright and clear and big (for the phone’s size), with refresh rate of 60Hz normally and 120Hz while scrolling (you can tell w/developer tools). There are better phone screens, but I never find myself wishing it were better. There is a black dot where the selfie camera is, but that’s the price you pay for a wall-to-wall screen.

The rear camera is 48M pixels, like the new Google Pixel phones. I don’t know if it’s actually as good, but if I want to do art photography, I don’t use a phone. It has a separate macro lens that you can select easily with the camera app, and I have never had trouble getting a sharp photo of anything, yet. Like the screen, I’ve never wished it was better.

The built-in speakers are unexpectedly good: there’s one at each end, and, yeah, they do stereo as well as you can expect for speakers 4″ apart, I guess, but the sound quality and volume are significantly better than typical for reasonably-priced phones.

The cell reception is better than the Pixel phones I’ve used, but, surprisingly, not as good as some Samsungs (cell reception used to be a real strong point for Moto).

Unlike most top-tier phones, it has an SD card holder (as well as a physical micro-SIM holder). So you can add another half a terabyte (512GB) of storage for $20, if you like. Eat your heart out, iPhone users. According to Moto, it can take up to 1 TB (1024 GB).

TL/DR: I would say this phone does everything well (of the things it does), without doing anything brilliantly, except battery life. For its middle-of-the road price, it’s a VERY good choice.