Moto G9 Review

Moto G9 Review

Moto G9 Review: The Moto G9 is priced at Rs. 11,499 for the lone 4GB RAM, 64GB storage setup 

The Moto G series has been the backbone of the Motorola lineup in India for a little while now, and helped the newest reestablish its place in the funding department.  

Lately though, this series was overshadowed using the One Series from Motorola, along with the past couple of models haven't made huge marks.  

In order to bring the Moto G series back into the limelight, Motorola has brought the Moto G9 into India, and we are the primary market to get this new smartphone.  So has Motorola made this phone well enough to face its fierce competition?  I review the Moto G9 to find out.

Moto G9 Design: Tall and glistening 

I spent time with the Motorola Moto G9 at the time of its launching and you may read my very first impressions of this device.  The Moto G9 has a large 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel with an HD+ resolution and tall 20:9 aspect ratio that's great for seeing content on, in landscape mode.  

But, reaching the surface of the screen isn't easy when using this mobile single-handed, and demands a quick shuffle in the hand.  Motorola has kept the bezels slender on the sides but the chin is thinner.  

We're now seeing more and more smartphones with hole-punch screens in the budget section, but Motorola has stuck with a more conventional dewdrop top notch to house the selfie camera.

Pick up this phone and you will observe that it steps over 9mm in thickness.  The components are squared but they curve to the back giving you a fantastic grip on the device.  

Motorola has packaged in a 5,000mAh battery,and so the Moto G9 tips the scales at 200g.  You will notice the weight after utilizing this smartphone for a while.

Motorola has included a dedicated Google Assistant button that's a fantastic bit, but the positioning could have been improved.  It's on the top right side of this device and is not reachable very easily while holding it.  

The power and volume buttons on the Moto G9 will also be on the best, so that is four in total.  The left just has a SIM tray.  Motorola could have set the Google Assistant button on the left side, just like it's positioned on the Nokia 5.3$13,999 (Review), which I analyzed lately.

Together with the Moto G9, the business has opted for flashy colours, and so you get Sapphire Blue and Forest Green colour options.  I had a Sapphire Blue device for this review, and it grabs eyeballs very easily.  Additionally, it has a gradient color finish.  

The camera module is squarish and has three lenses in addition to the flash so that you don't possess a separate cutout for that.  Right beneath the camera module is the fingerprint scanner which has a matte finish and also contrasts nicely with the glossy back.  I found the fingerprint scanner to be well placed.

This really is an octa-core processor built in an 11nm procedure using four cores clocked at 2GHz along with another four cores clocked at 1.8GHz.  

The functionality cores run at a lower clock rate than people around the Snapdragon 665 SoC so that it'll be interesting to see the performance difference if there's any from the benchmarks.

The 6.5-inch display has an HD+ resolution, which is not the highest in the price point, and competitors at around the exact same cost like the Redmi Note 9 (Review) do feature full-HD+ screens.  

There is a hybrid dual-SIM tray, so if you've got two SIMs from the device, you won't be able to expand storage, which might be a problem because the Moto G9 is only available in 1 configuration.  

Motorola provides MyUX on top of Android 10, which includes very minor customisations.  It feels as though you are using stock Android with a few helpful features sprinkled on the top.  Moto Actions allow you to execute certain shortcuts with gestures.  

The Moto G9 uses swipe-based gesture navigation by default but you do get the option to change to the traditional three-button layout if you are not familiar with this.

I had the July Android Security patch on the review unit.  Motorola has also included Moto Gametime that lets you block calls, notifications, and certain Moto activities as you're gambling, to prevent distractions.  

I like that Motorola has retained preinstalled programs to a minimum, and you only get Facebook preinstalled apart from several Google apps.

Moto G9 functionality: Regular user's delight

A new processor is obviously exciting to check, so I was curious to understand how the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC performs.  I didn't confront any lag whilst traveling through the menus and loading stock programs in the Android UI.  

I could also load multiple programs and multitask between them very easily.  However, loading heavier apps and games took noticeably longer.

I conducted a few benchmarks to determine how the Motorola Moto G9 fares in contrast to a number of the other smartphones in the marketplace.  In PCMark Function 2.0 it scored 7,604 points which is higher than the Nokia 5.3 using its Snapdragon 665 SoC.  

I could not get AnTuTu to run on the Moto G9.  Concerning images, this telephone managed 49fps and 13fps in GFXBench's T-Rex and Automobile Chase tests respectively.  

Another competitor, the Redmi Note 9 managed better CPU performance, but its graphics scores were poorer in benchmarks compared to the Moto G9, but that could be due to the difference in display reolutions between those mobiles.

 The large capacity battery does assist the Moto G9 get an edge over the Nokia 5.3.   Motorola ships a 20W fast charger at the box that can help charge the device relatively fast.  

The Moto G9 got to 32 percent in thirty minutes and 63 per cent in one hour.  Charging it completely took a bit more than two hours.

I played Asphalt 9 about the Moto G9, and the game took slightly longer than normal to load.  The graphics quality has been set to Default and I didn't notice any lag in the races I played.  Bumping the graphics up to High caused a few slowdowns.  

The phone barely got hot to the touch after playing for 20 minutes, and I detected a 4% drop from the battery level.

I had been somewhat surprised to see Motorola opting to get a triple camera installation, considering that many smartphones at this price level now sport four cameras, though their value is debatable.  

The Moto G9 includes a 48-megapixel main camera with an f/1.7 aperture, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel thickness detector.  The 48-megapixel main camera employs pixel binning to deliver 12-megapixel output by default.  

I'd have chosen a wide-angle camera rather than the macro camera, which would have been more useful.The camera app is well laid out and I never had to fight to obtain the feeling I was looking for.  You get multiple shooting modes which are neatly laid out in a sub-menu.

I found that the Moto G9 to be quick to recognise scenes and then set the camera up, and it enabled HDR automatically in bright surroundings.  

It didn't reproduce the best dynamic range in shots taken outside in daylight, but they came out with great detail.  Text at a space was recognisable.

For close-ups, the Moto G9 was quick to concentrate and managed a shallow thickness effect for the desktop.  Edges were well understood and the subject had great detail.

The macro camera has a 2-megapixel resolution and allows you to get near the subject whilst shooting, for sharp results in adequate lighting conditions.  

For portraits, the Moto G9 lets you set the degree of blur before taking a shot.  Edge detection was quite good, and photos turned out clear with sharp focus and good information.

Low-light camera functionality is below average, however, and photographs seem dim.  Enabling Night mode features a radical effect on the camera performance, helping the Moto G9 deliver much brighter images with greater detail.  Having analyzed the Motorola One Fusion+ a couple of weeks ago, this was a feeling of deja vu.

Selfies taken with the 8-megapixel front camera in daylight turned out nicely.  Low-light selfies taken beneath a street lamp looked softened, with some grain visible on zooming in.

Video recording tops out at 1080p 60fps for your key camera and 1080p 30fps for the selfie shot.  Video stabilisation can be obtained, along with the Moto G9 does a fantastic job in daytime.  Stabilisation in reduced light causes a noticeable shimmer effect at the output, which could impact the usability of the footage.

Verdict

The Moto G9 was established at Rs. 11,499 that's an aggressive price for what it offers.  Motorola has got the applications experience right with the Moto G9, and I was not bothered by spammy notifications with this particular device.  

The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC provides decent enough performance to keep the average user happy, but it could render power users wanting for more.  

I would have preferred a full-HD+ resolution screen, but quite few new smartphones today offer you this at this low cost, together with the Redmi Note 9 being one such exclusion.  If you're looking for better performance on a budget, then you could consider spending a little more and going for the Realme 6i INR 13,999  instead.

Good

• Adequate performance
• Near-stock Android
• Good battery life

Bad

• Big and bulky

Moto G9 Key

• Display: 6.50-inch
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 662
• Front Camera: 8-megapixel
• Rear Camera: 48-megapixel + 2-megapixel + 2-megapixel
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 64GB
• Battery Capacity: 5000mAh
• OS: Android 10
• Resolution: 720x1600 pixels