Moto G Play

I will start off by saying I have no interest in $1000+ cell phones - to me they are disposable devices that get replaced every few years. That said, this is the perfect phone for my purposes. The coverage (carrier dependent), audio, display quality and speed are perfect for my needs. I use the this as - wait for it - a phone - as well for texting and taking some pictures, mapping directions, etc. This is my 4th or 5th Motorola phone, and I have always been happy with the value proposition. Even through my former carrier the Motorola phones have always had much less bloatware than, say Samsung (ugh) which loads up their phones with all kinds of nonsense. When you buy it unlocked it comes with even less bloatware, and you can delete or disable most of it. It is much faster than my old phone, which one would expect, with 8MB of RAM, and 128MB of internal storage. There are several things I like about this phone, a couple being that it still has a headphone jack, and also it will take a micro SD card for additional storage. Both of these features are found on very few phones these days. There are 2 features that are unique to Motorola on the phones I have had, including this one, that are REALLY convenient. You can open the camera app just by twisting your wrist, and you can turn on the flashlight by a chopping motion - no screen to wake up or app to start up - brilliant really. Also, the battery life (5000ma) is phenomenal. I can use it all day, leave it overnight, and it will still have plenty of charge the next day. I really only charge it every other day. I will note that I turn off as many background processes as I can, don't watch movies on the phone (really?), and in general use it as a tool, not a brain-sucking toy (editorial comment :-). If you want a well functioning device and don't want to spend huge dollars this phone may be right for you.

Great basic smartphone for those with simple daily needs of calls, texting, light web browsing for recipes or Wikipedia, and checking the weather. Battery life is great and the phone is light in weight with a nice, grippy-textured back. Phone speaker and alarm/call volumes are loud enough to hear without strain. Because it's plastic on the back, this actually means it's much more suited to those of us who probably won't use a case, making it slightly more durable. You can install all the basic Android apps (ebooks, banking, fitness, etc.) with 128 GB, but you can always add a microSD if that is not enough, especially if you want to take photos. It says it can do eSIM but I didn't try it since I already have SIM cards. The ONLY NEGATIVE that I found was that the UI (user interface) is NOT optimized for large fonts for those with vision problems. When you make the fonts larger for accessibility purposes, many of the settings in native Android apps such as Google, Google Maps > Location Sharing goes off screen. I had to minimize fonts to a tiny size to get everything to display so I could set up Google accounts properly. After that I turned back on the larger, accessible font size. I got two on sale for $149 each and that is a great value. I cannot imagine needing a $250+ smartphone for the above needs. Highly recommend Motorola Moto G 2025 for those who want a smartphone that runs snappy without needing anything super high tech or extra skinning bloat common in budget Samsung phones.

GREAT PHONE. I needed a new unlocked phone to dump Metro and go to Mint mobile. Beautiful phone. Functions well. Aesthetically pleasing. Good camera. Holds charge a long time. Charges quickly. Easily inserted SIM. Slim design. Feels good to hold and easy use.

The phone came in early and programmed everything to work on the phone. Takes time to download all of your things from one phone to another. It does well and takes good pictures with 5G capabilities. Will continue to test and check out more features. The only drawback that it does not bring a charger except the c to c cable to use with a charger which I git from Amazon separately. Good phone for the price.

The G Power 5G 2024 continues the reputation of the G series of being bang for buck and reliable. This is a 4th Moto G phone to add to our household, all working like new since 2022. I need phones for communication and a road warrior tool. Faster speed always helps. Over a week, its a solid performer out of the box, and lives up to the advertised tech spec. No bugs or glitches. I'll touch items not mentioned in other reviews, and address some criticisms. The 2024 its a substantial upgrade from prior Power Models and SoC is faster than the 2025. Geekbench score shows its speed and its easily noticeable in use. If you prefer OLED screens, the Stylus 2024 is equally well made and slightly better hardware, for $70+ more, or more IP proofing, the 2025 is $120 more. Its faster CPU, 120 refresh rate, more RAM, and 5G are power hungry, you'd expect runtime to shorten, as it has the same 5Ah battery of the series. Luckily, Android 15 has better power management which are implemented well and options to save even more. With these, battery life is as good or better than my 4G only phones without sacrificing performance. Its a key reason I didn't mind a 5G phone now, as early 5G phones suffered this issue. The 2024 has a battery wear saver by limiting charging to 80% SoC which I previously emulated using aftermarket apps. It fast charges faster than my prior Moto phones which uses Turbo Power. I migrated my prior phone with the phone's built in tool, connect both with the supplied USB-C cable and it "cloned" the phone automatically. It copied everything, including desktops and Android configurations, such as fingerprints, Moto Actions and Camera settings which didn't happen on my last upgrade in 2022. I did have to re-log chat apps and configure non-gmail email. After the phone finished initialization, it installed all prior firmware updates up to Feb 2025. It was over 6, and took 6+ hours but the phone could be use while it updated. LCD is close to and as clear as the stylus pOLED 2024 in dpi, so images are as sharp, but pOLED is much brighter and has greater dynamic range, particularly viewed in sunlight. Its dual SIM and easily switched to either, allowing full customization to each SIM, one SIM card and another eSIM. Wifi is still 802.11ac, 300Mbps, similar to the 2022 Stylus, tested with Ookla. Its USB-C jacked but 2.0 speed. Wifi Calling works on both SIMs. I put a 256GB microSD, formatted and transferred all the photos in the phone carried over by the migration to the card. The camera works well, but I haven't compared its quality to better phones. It has great stereo sound, bluetooth connectivity, and plays 4K videos perfectly. I do not play games, use NFC, or wireless charging, so did not test its capability here. In sum, I'd easily buy this phone again and give its successor, priority.

Moto G Power 5G 2024 Received new unlocked phone, put my Boost Mobile sim in turned it on and used the included usb cable to transfer the files and settings over from my previous phone, a Moto G Fast from 2021. (I did not have contacts, photos, etc. backed up to the cloud) It works good. Had it 5 days and so far it is great for the price. Update: Now just skip to the end. My ringtone assignments were not transferred from the old phone - all using the default. I had to go manually add mp3's as ringtones and assign them to individuals. Also my alarms the same thing. It upgraded to Android 15 and I'm not sure how I like some things about Android 15 compared to the Android 11 that I was using previously. Eventually Android will be more bloated and full of idiotic (dis)improvements that hamper you than Windows if it isn't already. I really like the Moto Gestures but not a fan of the power button being reconfigured by default. The camera seems ok but no better than the 4 year old one with many less megapixels. Didn't notice anything new in the camera software or photo editor from the 4 year older one. Not sure but I think that I took some pictures that were verified with the shutter sound but then no pictures were in the album. I am saving camera pics to the micro sd card. I will keep an eye on this to see if its an actual issue. No charger/power plug is included. No USB A to USB C cable is included. A USB C to USB C cable is included. Good for phone to phone transfer or if you have a USB C female plug or PC/Tablet with USB C port. So I am using my 4 year old charger and cable even though I don't think its rated for as quick of charging as the new phone. I may have to get a 30W charger plug and cable or 15W charging pad. Its been a few months now. The phone still works good. As with all phones and connected devices now, the apps on it collect and send a lot of data on your wifi and using your bandwidth and data cap. I've been using the Gemini AI that comes up when you press the power button. Its hit or miss and you always have to know when to tell it its wrong and then it says "oh, you're right, I'm sorry". It uses much, much more power so a charge that would last 2 days normally will last, literally, 3 or 4 hours of chatting with the Gemini AI about anything, useful or not. Google keeps insisting that I backup my photos and such to their cloud but I don't want to - its not secure and they haven't paid me to use my data for training their AI that they are using to make billions of dollars off of as they jettison more and more employees, bankrupting the whole system, so why should I give it away for free? No, I just copy them to my PC instead, its much, much more private and secure. No need for a secretive shady middle man making like Igor stealing people's corpses in the night LoL. If Google wants data for training purposes we can discuss payment and usage terms. Until then, greedy hands off! OK so the last time I used my phone I was met with a notification from Android that my age could not be verified and so it changed parental controls and other settings on my phone. It did not give any other info. Coincidentally, the next time I went to YouTube on my PC, a message popped up that said my age couldn't be verified by Google AI so it is treating my account as a child account. If I didn't like it, send a copy of my driver's license to prove my identity and age. So it doesn't take a crystal ball to see the connection and know Google has treated me like a child and locked me out of my own phone based upon faulty AI output. Is this the Twilight Zone? I don't know but I'm not sending a copy of my license anywhere to fix Gemini Ai's mistake. I am online ordering an iphone now and thought I'd also update this review to let people know about Android and Google's ability to change settings on your own devices based upon some faulty AI logic or glitches or hallucinations or whatever they choose to call it. I call it my life.

This Moto G is packed with features I'll probably never use but it functions just great. I did experience the latency that several reviewers mentioned but the recent android update seems to have fixed that issue. My activity is definitely being tracked if that is a concern. But that is a Google Chrome constant aggravation. And there is some bloat ware too. Be sure to assess the permissions on all the apps included with this device. I really like the extra storage for songs and photos. Take note it does not come with a charger of any kind and it's limited on the wattage of some super chargers that are available. The battery life is really good. I hope that's the case after a year or so.

I got the phone in September, it's now December and the phone has slowed down considerably. Games will crash if I'm listening to music at the same time, sometimes it takes me pressing the power button multiple times for it to actually respond and turn on, and more recently the song name on the drop-down will not match the song that is playing on Spotify (songs continue to play, but the image on the drop-down stays the same). All phones start to slow down and glitch over time, I just didn't think it would happen to quickly with this one. With it being like this 3 months in, I can't foresee it lasting as long as my last one (the Moto G7 Power). I will say that the speakers are really good (for a budget Motorola), and the camera quality is also pretty good. I honestly think that while phones are getting more powerful, the quality is also going down with each new release, and they last a little less time. I'm going to use this phone for a while because I paid good money for it. But after that I'm going to look around at some older phones.