Moto’s G Power (2022) Keeps What Works and Improves the Rest

The Moto G Power (2022) is officially the newest part of Motorola’s Moto G family, and the successor to the Moto G Power (2021) that we reviewed early this year. As our review of the earlier model noted, all the key selling points are here, like the long-lasting three-day battery life, huge display, and sturdy design. But on top of that, Motorola also appears to have addressed our complaints about the weak camera performance and mediocre panel, by significantly beefing up both, though it still hasn’t brought 5G to the device likely to keep it under $200.

To start with, the new G Power features a 6.5-inch 1600 x 720 IPS display with a 90Hz refresh rate, meaning everything will be smoother than last year’s 60Hz panel. It’s still not really a bump up from 720p — 1080p would have been nice given the big screen, but it’ll still feel a lot better to use. In terms of weight and dimensions, it’s about the same size and tips the scale at about 203 grams. The design is fairly sturdy and is IP52 water-repellent, however, it is not technically waterproof, so don’t fully immerse it.

On the back logo is a built-in fingerprint sensor as always, but if you’d rather not use that, the phone also supports face unlock. Design flourishes are minimal, with Dark Grove being your only color option. The G Power also comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack, which may start to become less common next year as Samsung moves to remove the headphone jack from its midrange devices.

Battery life continues to be the primary selling point of the G Power, with the phone juiced by a 5,000mAh cell that supports a three-day battery life and 10-watt charging. This is about the same as last year’s model, but we’ll have to wait to test our review unit to confirm.

The other big selling point this year is the triple rear-facing camera array which consists of a 50-megapixel primary sensor with Quad Pixel binning for better low-light performance, 2MP macro camera, and 2MP depth camera. Low light tends to be the real bane of midrange and budget phones, so it’ll be interesting to see if the new G Power is able to do better.

The front-facing hole-punch camera is 8MP. The cameras can record 1080p video at 30 frames per second, which is pretty standard for budget phones. They do support Dual Capture mode, which records with both the front and back cameras to ensure your reaction is captured without missing anything in front of you, which seems handy for streamers and vloggers.

As for specs, things are decidedly midrange. The Moto G Power runs with a MediaTek Helio G37 octa-core processor coupled with 4GB of RAM. It’s no powerhouse, but it’ll get the job done for average browsing and app usage. The built-in storage options include 64GB and 128GB, but you can expand it up to 512GB with a microSD card.

The phone comes running Android 11 and may get an Android 12 update eventually, though certainly not as soon as flagship devices. Like most other Motorola phones, the Moto G Power comes with the Moto app My UX which is geared towards greater customization with the classic Motorola gesture controls, voice commands, and more. It also has ThinkShield, which supposedly provides extra security on both hardware and software levels.

For connectivity, the G Power has 4G LTE and Bluetooth 5.0, but no 5G, as we noted earlier. While 5G phones are getting cheaper, we still haven’t typically seen them below $200 in the U.S.

Price and availability

The Moto G Power will run you $200 or $250 depending on the storage you get, and it’ll be available sometime in the coming months with from Republic Wireless and Metro by T-Mobile. After that, it should become available at Verizon, Boost Mobile, Xfinity Mobile, AT&T, Cricket, UScellular, and Google Fi. If you want to get the Moto G Power (2022) unlocked, you can pick it up at Best Buy, Amazon, and Motorola in early 2022. Canada will also get the device in the coming months, but no other details are specified.

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