The Moto G Series has been the backbone of the Motorola lineup for some time in India, and it helped re-establish its position in the budget segment. However recently, the series was overshadowed with the One Series from Motorola, and some previous models have not scored much. To bring the Moto G series back to the headlines, Motorola has brought the Moto G9 to India, and we are the first market to get this new smartphone. So has Motorola designed this phone well to face its fierce competition? I review the Moto G9 to find out.
Moto G9 Design: tall and bright
I had already spent some time with the Motorola Moto G 9999 9, 999 at the time of its launch and you can read my first impressions of the device. The Moto G9 has a large 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel with HD+ resolution and has a 20: 9 aspect ratio for viewing content in landscape mode. However, this phone is not easy to get to the top of the display when using single-handed, and requires a quick shuffle in the hand. Motorola has kept the bezels thin at the edges but the chin is thick. We are now seeing more and more smartphones with hole-punch displays in the budget segment, but Motorola is stuck with a more traditional doordrop notch for introducing selfie cameras.
Pick up this phone and you will see that it measures more than 9 mm in thickness. The sides are squared, but they tilt backwards to give you a good grip on the device. Motorola has packed in a 5, 000mAh battery, and hence the Moto G9 has suggested scales at 200g. After using this smartphone for some time, you will see weight.
Motorola Moto G9 Review
Moto G9 is offered in attractive color options
Motorola has added a dedicated Google Assistant button which is a neat touch, but placement may be better. It is on the top right of the device and is not very easily available while holding it. The power and volume buttons on the Moto G9 are also on the right, so it’s four in total. There is only one SIM tray on the left side. Motorola could have placed the Google Assistant button to the left, exactly as it has been posted on Nokia 5.3, 12, 999(Review), which I recently tested.
With the Moto G9, the company has opted for attractive colors, and so you get sapphire blue and one green color options. I had a Sapphire Blue unit for this review, and it captures the eyeball very easily. It also has gradient color finish. The camera module is squash and has three lenses and flash so that you don’t have a separate cutout for it. Just below the camera module is a fingerprint scanner with a matte finish and contrast with a glossy back. I found that the fingerprint scanner is well positioned.
Moto G9 specifications and software: new SoC and stock Android
The Motorola Moto G9 is India’s first smartphone to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC. It is an octa-core processor built on an 11nm process, with four clocked at 2GHz and the other four cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The performance runs at a lower clock speed than those on the core Snapdragon 665 SoC, so it will be interesting to see the performance difference if there are any in the benchmark.
The 6.5-inch display has HD+ resolution, which is not the highest at this price point, and is competitive at almost the same price as the Redmi Note 9(Review) features full-HD+ display. There is a hybrid dual-SIM tray, so if you have two SIMs in the device, you won’t be able to expand storage, which can be a problem as the Moto G9 is only available in one configuration. You get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and it costs Rs. 11, 499.
Motorola Moto G9 Android10 Gadgets 360 Motorola Moto G9 Review
Motorola’s MyUX provides a near-stock Android experience with some useful features
Motorola offers MyUX on top of Android 10, which has very minor customizations. It sounds like you’re using stock Android, with some useful features sprinkled on top. Moto functions let you perform some shortcuts using gestures. The Moto G9 uses swipe-based gesture navigation by default, but you get the option to switch to the traditional three-button layout if you’re not comfortable with it.
I had a July Android security patch on the review unit. Motorola has also included Moto Gametime, which lets you block calls, information, and some moto functions while gaming to prevent distraction. I like that Motorola has kept pre-installed apps to a minimum, and all you have to do is preinstalled Facebook in addition to just a few Google apps.
Moto G9 performance: casual user pleasure
A new processor is always exciting to test, so I was curious to see how the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC performs. I did not face any lag while loading menus and stock applications in Android UI. I could also easily load multiple apps and multitask between them. However, loading heavy apps and games was largely notable.