The best Motorola phone of all time

With Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme dominating the mid-range segment in India, Motorola is now an almost forgotten name. It used to hold pole positions with the G-Series but in recent times, the G-Series has failed to keep pace with the competition, at least on paper. Last year, however, Motorola launched a new lineup with Android One certification and reputable specs. The purpose was to address the pain that users experience when using a budget smartphone. The Motorola One is the second phone in the Vision series and it offers an attractive package for bing-viewers and photographers alike. How does it fare against the competition? Find out –
Performance and battery
Surprisingly, the Motorola One Vision is powered by a Samsung Exynos processor. Exynos 9609 must be precise. It seems to be the only smartphone powered by a 7-Series Exynos processor. The octa-core CPU has four Cortex-A73 cores at 2.2GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.6GHz. These are of course consistent with impressive numbers and competition. However, benchmark analysis reveals that Motorola One Vision is a bit slower than the competition, which includes Realme 3 Pro, Redmi Note 7 Pro and Galaxy M30.
Having said that, you probably won’t notice a big difference in performance when using the phone as a daily driver. During this review, I used the phone to binge on Stranger Things on Netflix, played PUBG mobile and even used it to write essays on the go, and the phone never slowed down all the time. Now there is a slight gap in launching apps which is only noticeable if you keep Realme 3 Pro or Redmi Note 7 Pro side by side, but you probably won’t notice it. The clean, minimalist stock Android interface also helps to smooth things out and reduce the hassle of less bloatware. There’s 128GB of storage by default with the option to expand via microSD card, so there’s plenty of room for your apps.
Although Motorola One Vision does not advertise the gaming capabilities, we have found PUBG Mobile to run quite smoothly for a mid-range device. At GameBench, we’ve clocked 37 median FPS, which is more than you’ll find in a popular mid-ranger, with an impressive 92 percent FPS stability. On the Asphalt 9, we clocked 27 medium FPS clocks that were very close to the maximum that could go, and the FPS stability was again at 92 percent. It also looks good on graphics, especially on the Asphalt 9, due to its wide display and sharp colors. Although we are not sure if HDR capability is effective here.
The Motorola One Vision also does a lot with a small battery. Capacity is only 3500mAh which is 500mAh less than what most mid-range smartphones nowadays offer, but combined with the 10nm manufacturing process and the power efficiency of the stock Android interface, the phone lasts about a working day, usually from 9am to 8pm. We clocked about 8.5 hours in the Geekbench battery test, while the 15-minute PUBG mobile battery emitted 8 percent and the 30-minute Netflix battery emitted 10 percent.
The camera
The camera is the reason for the existence of the phone, as the name implies. The phone offers a 48MP Samsung GM-1 sensor with 1/2-inch sensor size and 1.6um effective pixel pitch after charging. Sitting in the middle of 2019, this is nothing new and groundbreaking. Several devices below Rs 20,000 offer the same camera and performance, though admirable, has some issues. For example, shooting in 48MP mode results in blurry photos of itself, and Moto’s way is to completely remove the ability to shoot at 48MP. You can only shoot at 12MP from the rear camera and this results in fairly sharp photos. One of the major disadvantages of the One Vision camera is the white balance that stays out of the mark when taking pictures during the day, especially when the HDR is on. Compared to the Galaxy M40, Honor 20i and Redmi Note 7S, we have compared the camera, the Motorola One Vision was able to output sharp details but was far from color reproduction. There was a significant amount of halo around the object when using HDR mode, as a result of poorly applied algorithms. The phone also has a slow shutter response and has an annoying wait time of about one second after you press the shutter.
In low light, however, the Motorola One Vision does an admirable job. When using Dedicated Night mode, the phone takes multiple shots to get proper exposure and this results in some pretty sharp low-light images. You can check out our detailed camera comparison with Motorola One Vision to get an idea of how the camera leases against its competitors.
Design and display
The Motorola One Vision looks quite different from other phones at that price. It is long and narrow, making it easy to use with one hand. One Vision uses a 21: 9 aspect ratio display that is shot in most movies and is slightly wider than the 19.5: 9 aspect ratio that comes with most smartphone displays. The advantage is that when the aspect ratio is supported by a movie, the experience is quite immersive. The content covers the whole area, leaving only a thin black bar at the top and bottom. But when that doesn’t happen, there’s thick pillar boxing all around that makes it look really bad. Games like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9 scale up to support the display, but we’re not sure about other games.
The phone also has a punch hole camera drilled in the upper left corner of the display. The punch hole is bigger than other phones with the same technology, and you can’t ignore it when you see something on the screen. But it does give the impression of using an edge-to-edge display. The display is HDR-rated but you can only view HDR content on YouTube and not on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Likes. When turned on, HDR visuals pop out, but it lacks Netflix certification which reduces the experience.
In addition, the back panel of the phone is made of polished polycarbonate. Motorola Copper uses a subtle gradient shade that distinguishes the phone from a multi-gradient design in the name of modern design. The back has a mounted fingerprint sensor that is quite fast and sleek and the rest of the rear panel is seamlessly stored for the dual camera module in the upper left corner. Minimal and clean. Exactly how we like it.
The last row
In short, the reason for the existence of Motorola One Vision is the camera and that’s where we found the most number of errors. The camera’s ability to take sharp pictures in low light is offset by the low white balance and a slow shutter, making it one of the best you can get. But no one buys a phone just for a good low light camera, and unless a software update is issued to fix the existing problems, Motorola One Vision loses against more powerful rivals. Its not great to write about its performance at home, but everything works fine without any lag or crash. In the case of displays, it takes a while to get used to and finding content that matches the panel is still a task, but we opted for the ergonomics it offers because of the narrow form-factor. At Rs 20,000, there is a lot of uncertainty about the camera performance of the phone and cheap phones offer better performance, we do not see the way to buy this smartphone.