When you think of a Moto G Series phone, you probably imagine a budget device with lower level specs but some good battery life. The new Moto G 100. Turns that on its head though, offering more than any Moto G we’ve seen yet
Design
The Moto G 100 is a class above what we’ve seen from the Moto G series and more like the higher tier moto edge phones. In fact, it’s nearly identical specs wise to the new Moto edge s which is only available in China. While it’s a frosted matte finish, it gives off a shiny metallic sheen that ranges from blue to purple. We’re not sure what this back panel is made from but it doesn’t feel cheap.
The phone does feel rather tall and it isn’t very light tricks like using the hardware key to summon the Google Assistant are difficult to pull off unless you use two hands. Even though the G 100 doesn’t have an official IP rating, it does have water resistant coating on its internals as well as a rubber seal on the SIM tray so it can handle a splash or two.
Display
On the front is a 6.7 inch IPS LCD with a 20 DP resolution, fast 90 hertz refresh rate and a tall 21 by nine aspect ratio. Another feature here that’s a bit unusual is a dual selfie camera setup. Each camera has its own punch hole. This screen is decent at 10 ADP the resolution is a step up from the 720 P we’ve seen on other recent Moto G phones.
There’s pretty good contrast for an LCD and you get HDR support to brightness is good. We measured a max of around 500 nits with a slider and a boost to around 610 minutes in auto mode when out in bright sun. But the colors aren’t too accurate here trending toward blueish.
Since the screen has a 90 hertz refresh rate fast movements like when you’re scrolling or swiping will appear smoother than on a standard display, you can set the refresh rate to be adaptive to and in this case it will dial back down to 60 hertz when you’re not interacting with the screen to save energy.
Audio
The Moto G 100 has a single bottom firing speaker for audio that we would have preferred to stereo setup. Loudness scores just average on our charts and the sound quality is nothing special here either.
You do have a 3.5 millimeter jack here for plugging in traditional headphones to if you want.
Feeature
The interface of the Moto G 100 is pretty much the same as other recent moto phones is pretty close to talk android 11. But with some proprietary features added on top. These features are conveniently organized in the colorful and user friendly moto app. Here you can access plenty of customization options, including icon shapes, accent colors and wallpapers. You’ll find motos signature gesture shortcuts listed here too, including karate chop and twist.
Display related features include attentive display, which keeps the screen on while you’re looking at the phone. And peek displays a screen that displays time and notifications, which will show up when you move or Lift the phone. Waking up and unlocking the Moto G 100 is done with a side mounted fingerprint reader, which doubles as the power button is quite responsive.
The Moto G 100 has 128 gigs of storage on board which is expandable and you also get support for NFC here too for contactless payments and connectivity. Speaking of connectivity, the G 100 supports Motorola’s new connectivity feature called ready for the allows you to connect the phone to a supported TV or display via cable or a special dock sold separately. This can achieve different things for one it can provide a desktop like experience where you can use the phone as a trackpad for controls.
If you connect a mouse and keyboard even better, why spend money on a PC if you can just use your phone. Another way you can use this feature is for gaming on the big screen. This works best if you connect an external controller to get more of a console like feeling. And the ready for connection is also useful for video calls where you use the phone basically as a webcam.
Chipset
Behind all of these features is a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, which is basically last year’s top chipset but with some higher CPU clock speeds on top. It’s the next best thing after the Snapdragon 888 Which you’d find in today’s most premium phones. So of course in benchmarks, the Moto G 100 blows all the other moto G’s out of the water performance wise and also pretty much any other mid Ranger. There’s enough power here to handle whatever you throw at it, including the heaviest game titles and you have support for 5g network connectivity to powering the Moto G 100 is a large 5000 milliamp hour battery just like other Moto G phones we’ve seen so far this year.
Battery
Battery life is a bit less here due to the more power hungry screen and chipset but still the numbers are great. The G 100 scored an endurance rating of 100 hours in our tests with the screen at 90 Hertz. The phone comes with a 20 watt charger in the box and with it we were able to charge from a dead battery to 37% in half an hour. Okay, but nothing impressive.
Camera
On the back there’s a 64 megapixel quad Bayer main cam, a 16 megapixel ultra wide camera with autofocus and a two megapixel depth sensor. There’s also a TLF laser autofocus. First let’s go over the quality of the main cam. It’s 16 megapixel images are very sharp and detailed and find details and textures are natural looking colors are a little punchier than real life. And while there is a bit of graininess here and there, it’s fine.
Dynamic Range could be better though with some visible clip highlights. portrait shots have competent edge detection, as long as the subjects hair isn’t too messy, and the background isn’t too complex. There’s no telephoto camera on this phone. 2x digital zoom from the main camera is actually pretty sharp, a bit better than your typical simple crop and upscale. The ultra wide cameras 16 megapixel images are good. They have okay sharpness and colors which are pretty close to the main cams.
