Introduction
Motorola Moto G 5G Plus (yep, that’s its real name) is now official. It features a dual-punch-hole display design and Android 10 OS. The Moto G 5G Plus (with Snapdragon 765G SoC, 5,000 mAh battery, and quad-camera setup) is one of the best cheapest 5G phones. The phone is priced at €349 for the 64GB version and €399 for the 128GB version. It will go on sale in Europe tomorrow and Motorola has promised it will be announced in the UAE and Saudi Arabia soon. At that price the Moto G 5G Plus is the cheapest 5G phone available in the UK, beating the Huawei P40 Lite 5G which previously held that title with its £379 (around $475, AU$675) price. The Motorola phone’s low cost makes it recognizably a member of the budget Moto G Line, as it certainly won’t break the bank. Unfortunately, the US will not be getting it. However, there will be another Motorola phone with a price tag under $500 launching there later this year.
Design and display
The Moto G 5G Plus has a dual punch hole in its display for two selfie cameras. Unlike other phones we have seen that have a large pill-shaped hole for their dual front-facing cameras, the Moto G 5G Plus has two separate holes. The phone also tries to keep the bezels slim. On the back of the phone is a squircle camera setup that is home to four camera sensors. There is also a long LED flash designed like a Xenon flash on the back panel. The Motorola logo sits in the middle but it doesn’t double as a fingerprint scanner in this case. The Moto G 5G Plus comes with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner that is buried under the power button. On the left edge of the phone, there's a dedicated Google Assistant button, which you don’t see on too many phones nowadays.
On the bottom edge of the device, there's a USB-C port as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack for wired headphones. The phone comes in Surfing Blue with a beautiful diamond-patterned finish on the back and a water-repellent design. Moto G 5G Plus has a 6.7-inch CinemaVision FHD+ (1080 x 2520) display. The screen has a 21:9 aspect ratio so it’s pretty long and thin, and it also has a 90Hz max refresh rate and HDR10.
Front and rear cameras
The Moto G 5G Plus has six cameras, if you count those on the front and back, which is a pretty huge number for an affordable phone. On the rear of the handset there’s a 48MP main, 8MP ultra-wide, 5MP macro, and 2MP depth-sensing camera, then on the front there’s a 16MP main and another 8MP ultra-wide snapper for solo and group selfies respectively. The camera app is packed with lots of features such as best shot, manual mode (for front and back cameras), sample color, live filter, night vision, portrait lighting, and Google Lens integration. There is also a Smart Composition feature (in which the handset takes two pictures when you press the shutter, and automatically crops one using the rule of thirds to try and deliver a better snap).
Software, processor, and battery
Under the hood, the phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. There is also a 6GB RAM version with 128GB of storage. The phone has a dedicated MicroSD card slot for storage expansion. The phone is 5G-compatible too, as you can probably tell from the name. The Moto G 5G Plus runs on Android 10, and it’s a mostly stock version of the Google-made operating system, not a custom overlay like most companies use. It feels pretty slick to use, with a design familiar to most people who use Motorola, Nokia, or Google Pixel devices.
Motorola has brought some variations to the device though, in the form of My UX. My UX lets you customize the way font, font color, and icons look, as well as including a range of Moto Actions like shaking your phone to turn on the flashlight or twisting it to open the camera. There's also one new software feature in the Moto G 5G Plus. You can now tap twice on its side-mounted fingerprint sensor, when the device is on, to bring up a range of shortcuts. There is a 5000mAh battery under the hood that should last up to 2 days depending on usage. It supports 20W TurboPower fast charging via a USB Type-C port.