Motorola has been more active in the Indian market over the past year or so when it comes to launching smartphones than it was before. The company has released products in both the budget and mid-range segments, with the new Moto G64 priced at Rs. 14,999 for the base model and Rs. 16,999 for the higher model. Let’s try and see what this Moto device brings to the table:
The Moto G64 features a matte textured finish back that doesn’t catch fingerprints and smudges too quickly. The front has a 6.5-inch 20:9 aspect ratio display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 on top. The corners are curved, and the sides are made flat. The bezels aren’t too thick, but the bottom one (chin) is significantly thicker than the others on the sides, which doesn’t kind of stand out, sadly. The right side carries the volume buttons and Power/lock key, both of which aren’t exactly the most clicky buttons seen on a budget smartphone. The left side locates the dual SIM card plus microSD card hybrid slot tray near the top. The top only has the secondary mic with the Dolby Atmos branding, while the bottom houses the 3.5mm audio jack, primary mic, USB Type-C port, and one outlet for loudspeakers (the other one being next to the front camera). The phone is IP52 water and dust-repellant and weighs under 195 grams. It isn’t too heavy nor slippery for a phone with a 6,000mAh battery unit. It comes in Ice Lilac, Pearl Blue, and Mint Green (the one I tried) colour options..
The 6.5-inch full HD+ (1080x2400) IPS LCD display is a pretty good display, delivering well-calibrated colors and able to handle high-resolution videos and images without sacrificing quality. It’s a 120Hz higher refresh rate display that’s also bright enough to be usable under direct sunlight outdoors. It doesn’t have the deep, rich black levels of a nice AMOLED display, but it’s still a good LCD panel in itself for the price tag.
The back has the dual camera system on a protruding rectangular cutout – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera (with OIS) and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performance has been pretty decent but nothing outstanding, in my experience. The shots are consistent and there’s no oversaturation seen on most occasions on daylight shots. For low-light shots, Night mode does help in retaining details and exposure but you might have to retake your shots to cut down on noise in the photo. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.4) takes about okay shots even in suitable lighting conditions and isn’t something much to write about for your selfie needs.
The phone is the first to be powered by MediaTek’s 7025 chipset (up to 2.5Ghz octa-core processor and IMG BXM-8-256 GPU) and also comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB UFS2.2 internal storage (also comes in 8GB + 128GB configurations). The phone’s UI looks quite close to how it’s on the Pixel devices but it’s pretty different in use. Firstly, Moto has added quite a few third-party apps pre-installed out of the box. Most of which can be uninstalled without much fuss. There’s also something called Family Spaces 2.0 where you can share your device’s screen selected content with somebody to get assistance or remotely control another supported device. MotoHub allows you to customize themes, widgets, homescreen, and lock screen from a single place quite conveniently with a lot of options to choose from. The phone handles day-to-day tasks, watching YouTube videos, scrolling inside Instagram, messaging across multiple apps while having some Chrome tabs opened in the background without any major issues albeit a few frame drops here and there. It can handle low-intensive games okay, but games such as BGMI or CoD show a lot of stuttering and is clearly not meant to be played on medium to highest settings on this device. Powered by a 6,000mAh battery unit, the phone ships with a 33-watt Turbo charger and is PD3.0 compatible. The Moto G64 comfortably lasted me a day almost every single time and frequently had a bit of juice left for the next day, too. The bundled charger charges the device from 1% to full in about 90-95 minutes in one go.
The physical fingerprint scanner mounted on the power/lock key is reliable and quick enough to be used daily. The loudspeakers are decently punchy for gaming as well as videos, although they aren’t the loudest in this price range. The 5G reception on the device is really good, providing reliable network reception for usage on the go for your continued work. The call quality, WiFi, and GPS performance of the phone didn’t show any issues throughout my usage.
All in all, the Moto G64 comes across as a reliable device for those who want to have a reliable and stutter-free experience when it comes to calling, messaging, watching videos online, or playing music in the background while surfing the web. This isn’t a gaming-centric device by any means, where other devices such as the realme P1 seemed to perform better. Additionally, with a few pre-installed apps out of the box, the Moto G64 is a pretty good option for your first 5G device under 15k.
