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Phones

Motorola G

7owners with an opinion
80%of verdicts positive
3/0positive/negative since 2024
5 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for value and performance; criticized for software.

Where people moved

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What people wrote

Likes itOwned 5 years
> USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables Bought a Motorola G6 in 2018 for €199. It takes "fantastic" photos, and came in a "stunning new" (!?) color of black(ish). It's pretty much indestructible, runs Firefox with uBlock Origin, and it's "better for the environment" because every year you don't buy a new phone, the environment is happy. It also has USB-C, and a 3.5 jack.
Neutral
I may have been lucky then with my Redmi Note 5 Pro (and a similar one for my daughters), possibly because the first thing I did with these phones was root them, remove all bloatware, remove all Xiaomi-specific apps including the 'Mi account'-related things, remove the Googly bits, add F-Droid and install free software. Never had problems with the things for 8 years, I'm currently running one of them with LineageOS 23.2 (Android 16), the other lost its screen so it is playing Linux server. Good hardware, possibly questionable firmware but that can be mitigated. I was forced to move to a new device with NFC (a Motorola G75) by the same app - Swedish BankID (and this time also Dutch DigiD) - which forced me to move from the Motorola Defy+ to the Redmi Note 5 Pro all those years ago. In another 8 years time they'll probably force me to move yet again for reasons as of yet unknown. Since I also used the Defy+ for about 8 years this seems to be the current practical lifetime of an Android device, at least for me. Those now 16 year old Defy+ devices still work but Android 4.4 has gone out of fashion quite a while ago. They are still usable for other purposes though, as trailer camera, sensor device, music player and more.
Likes it
Yeah I'm on the same page - I spend a couple hundred bucks on a low-end-of-midrange android phone ever few years (usually because I broke the old one by doing something stupid like walking into the ocean with it in my pocket). I can't fathom why I would want to spend 5-10x on a flagship to do... what exactly? My current phone (Motorola g34) runs all the games fine, and that's probably the heaviest thing people use phones for. I do take photos, but like I'm not running a photography business, and social media compresses them to shit anyway so the quality is perfectly fine.
Likes it
I bought a Motorola G73 5G a few months ago, paid $160 for the 256GB variant including 25% VAT. Compared to my primary phone, Samsung S21, it's a ridiculous amount of phone for the money. But I find the default Google apps to be quite limited compared to Samsungs offerings. Google's calculator app has no unit conversion and a very bare-bones "scientific" mode. Google's file app has no way to search for files containing special characters, while Samsung's can do that just fine by using \ to escape the character. I don't have a SIM in the Motorola as I just use it around the house, other is "work phone", so haven't tested the phone and messaging parts yet, but I recall Samsung were better there too several years ago when my SO had a Sony or something phone. But yeah, seriously considering getting something else next time around.
Neutral
I'm on an iPhone 7 Plus since a year. It's an old model that I bought secondhand. It was partly experiment. I was using an Android phone: Motorola G5 (also old). I love that G5, but I have the variant with only 16GB internal memory, which is simply not enough nowadays. For me the G5 is still fast enough, but every time there are app updates, I need to free space so the update can install. My wife was already using a second hand iPhone and convinced me to try it too. I got that iPhone 7 Plus for cheap, it is in really good condition and it has 256GB internal memory. I was aware it would be stuck on iOS 15, but to my surprise, Apple still sends out security updates for iOS 15. I just checked: my phone is on 15.7.7 and I noticed 15.7.8 came out just a couple of days ago. See [1]. I know that Apple is a closed eco-system and all, but for my phone I don't care that much. My phone just has to work. I still use Google products (maps, mail, calendar, keep, chat), but those run just fine on iOS. The other apps I use, are also working just fine (no performance issues). To me, it's amazing that a phone from 2016 is still receiving security updates. That is simply non-existent in Android world. As someone who does not have the urge to always have the latest and hottest, that is very nice to see. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212788
Doesn’t like it
On a similar note, I have a Motorola G8+, Android 10. It has 4GB of RAM, plenty of free space in storage, and the CPU isn't actually that bad still. The battery is in good condition. A brand new phone doesn't necessarily have any better stats. For some reason, it is slow . As in, it will still usually run apps at full speed, the framerate in a flight sim is just as high as before etc, but then it will just freeze up for seconds at a time, or suddenly do something really slowly for a while. Sometimes it will fail to respond to the power button short-press to turn the screen on, but if I try again a minute later it will be fine. I have experienced this with multiple Androids over time. My previous phone got so bad that it sometimes wouldn't actually respond quickly enough to be able to answer a phone call, which is when I got the new one. What causes this? Is there some build-up of junk lying around in the system that I could press a magic button and clear out, without having to reinstall all my stuff from scratch? I could buy a new phone. But given a new one wouldn't have much more resources than my current one, it very much feels like the wrong workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist.