Motorola kicked off the new year by announcing a slew of new mid-range, affordable smartphones.
The Moto G Play, G Power and G Stylus are all new additions to the company’s low-cost ‘G’ line, while the new Motorola One 5G Ace offers a huge display and battery for an affordable price. Of the four devices, only the G Stylus won’t come to Canada — Motorola confirmed to MobileSyrup that the other three will be available in Canada in the “coming months.” Since Canadian pricing wasn’t available at the time of writing, we included U.S. pricing with each device below.
Moto G Play
Starting with the Moto G Play 2021, it sports a 6.5-inch ‘Max Vision’ HD+ display, a 5,000mAh battery and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 system-on-a-chip (SoC). Around the back is a 13-megapixel dual-camera system.
The G Play comes in a lovely ‘Misty Blue’ colour that fades from dark blue to black, features a waterdrop notch for the selfie camera and a fingerprint scanner. In the U.S., the G Play will cost $169.99 (about $216.28 CAD). You can learn more about the device here.
Moto G Power
The 2021 update to Motorola’s G Power also includes a massive 5,000mAh battery, which Motorola claims can last three days on a single charge. While we’ll need to wait and see how our testing shakes out, the battery sounds impressive.
Along with that, the G Power boasts a 48-megapixel triple camera system housed in a square module on the back of the phone. The selfie camera resides in a cut-out on the main display, which measures in at 6.6-inches with a 1600 x 720 pixel resolution.
A Snapdragon 662 powers the device along with either 3 or 4GB of RAM and 32 or 64GB of storage, depending on which version you get. Prices range from $199.99 USD ($254.45 CAD) for the 3GB RAM/32GB storage model to $249.99 USD ($318.07 CAD) for the 4GB RAM/64GB storage variant.
You can learn more about it here.
Motorola One 5G Ace
Finally, the Motorola One 5G Ace offers a higher-end mid-range experience with a FHD+ display, 5G and more.
For the display, Motorola included a 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution 6.7-inch screen with a 20:9 aspect ratio. Like the other G phones, the One 5G Ace sports a 5,000mAh along with a Qualcomm 750G 5G processor and up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Around back, it sports a 48-megapixel triple camera system and a plastic rear in ‘Frosted Silver.’
Overall, the One 5G Ace seems like the more exciting of the three phones coming to Canada and could be competitive with other mid-range devices available in Canada, such as the Pixel 4a and 4a 5G. Perhaps the biggest drawback is the One 5G Ace ships with Android 10 out of the box.
Motorola confirmed to MobileSyrup that all three devices will receive one OS upgrade and security updates for two years, but didn’t confirm the timing of an Android 11 update. The company also pointed out that essential apps can be updated via the Play Store faster than a yearly Android upgrade. While true, the fact that these phones ship with Android 10 means the one promised OS upgrade will be to Android 11 and will come months after Android 11 became available.
Update 01/09/2021 at 11:06am: Added more details about software updates.
You can learn more about the One 5G Ace here.
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