Motorola announced their latest phones in the G6 series in India, the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Play. The Moto G6 comes with 5.7 inch Full HD+ display and is powered by Snapdragon 450 Octa core processor with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM and 32 or 64GB of storage. The device also comes with dual camera similar to Moto G5S Plus and a front facing 16MP camera. The phone runs on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. So how good is the Moto G6 in terms of pricing and performance in this price segment? Let’s find out in the detailed Moto G6 Review.
Here is the video review of the phone.
Design and Build:
The Moto G6 has the same design language as the Moto X4 which was launched last year. Motorola has done a pretty good job with the design and build quality of the Moto G6. It flaunts a glass finish front and back panels in an aluminum chassis. Since it is a 5.7-inch device, it is easy to hold. The rear panel has a curved finishing and at times the glass back panel is slippery and also attracts a lot of fingerprints.
The power and volume keys are on the right side. The top panel has the SIM tray slot which is a hybrid one. The left side does not have any openings. The bottom section has USB type C port and 3.5mm audio jack. The rear panel looks gorgeous, especially with the projected camera unit. The camera unit looks like a watch dial under lights and has the dual camera along with dual LED flash. The front panel has the speaker unit, 16MP camera, flash and the 5.7-inch display. The navigational buttons are on screen but you can also navigate using the fingerprint scanner located below the display.
Overall, if you are looking for a premium looking smartphone in this segment, without doubt, the Moto G6 is probably the best we have.
Display:
The Moto G6 has a 5.7 inch Full HD+ resolution display with 2.5D curved glass. The display quality is pretty good with vivid colors and good viewing angles. The touch response is also very smooth and there is Gorilla glass protection offered for both front and rear glass. The outdoor visibility is adequate and overall display quality looks good. The device has 18:9 aspect ratio and the first smartphone from Moto in India with 18:9 aspect ratio.
Software:
One of the most important aspects of using a Moto device is the pure or stock Android experience. The Moto G6 comes with Android 8.0 Oreo with the stock UI. The phone comes with app drawer similar to the Pixel. The notification center and quick toggles are exactly the same as that you get on stock UI.
There is also an option to set the display color from the settings.
The only additional app on G6 is the Moto app which provides actions and gestures. Moto app provides some useful features in Moto Actions and Moto display. You can also turn off on-screen navigational button and use the fingerprint scanner.
The Moto actions include chop twice for a flashlight, twist for capture, shrink screen and more. The Moto display has night display option along with Moto display which shows new notifications on the display even when the screen is turned off. Moto Key is a new feature which allows you to login to websites and stores the password for easy login.
Overall, if you are a person who loves pure Android experience, Moto G6 won’t disappoint you and it is upgradable to next version of Android as well.
Performance:
Moto G6 is powered by Snapdragon 450 Octa-core processor with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM. Snapdragon 450 is more of a budget chipset under the 400 series and not as powerful as Snapdragon 625 or 636 available on few of the other smartphones in this price segment. But having said that the performance of the device is smooth and there aren’t any major hiccups in any department. The app performance is also fast, but the RAM management needs a bit of improvement.
The gaming abilities of the device is quite decent and even though it handles most of the games without any issues, it is not the best experience in this price segment. But there is no heating issues on the phone. The call quality of the device was good and we did not notice any signal issues. The front firing speaker unit on the device is adequately loud and has good quality as well. There is also Dolby support on the phone.
The device comes in 32GB and 64GB variants and has dedicated SD card slot in case you want to expand the storage.
Camera:
Moto G6 packs a dual camera set up with a primary 12MP camera with F/1.8 aperture and a secondary 5MP camera for depth sensing. The front camera is a 16MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture. Motorola has also revamped the camera interface on G6 and now it packs a much cleaner interface with more features including spot color, portrait, and manual modes.
Coming to the camera samples, the daylight captures had good color reproduction and good details and the sharpness levels are also good. The close-up images also have good details. One area where Moto still needs to work is the portrait mode, while there is good improvement over the G5S plus, it still needs a bit of fine-tuning. The edge detection isn’t perfect. The low light samples with f/1.8 had good details with noise controlled and were quite good for the segment. The selfie performance was also really good with 16MP shooter providing great clarity and colors in the selfie shots. But the camera again misses out on the portrait mode in selfie camera. The video recording has 1080p support and also EIS offered and the video quality is really good. Here are some of the camera samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
The phone comes with 3000mAh battery and the battery performance is quite decent. You can get through a day of battery life with moderate usage and which is quite acceptable for a 3000mAh capacity battery. The device also offers 15W turbo charging which is one of the highlights of the phone and definitely a great feature to have as not too many phones offer fast charging below Rs 15,000 price segment in India.
Verdict:
Priced at Rs 13,999 for the 3GB RAM variant and Rs 15,999 for the 4GB RAM variant, the Moto G6 offers good design and build, a great pair of cameras, stock Android experience, and good performance. But when it comes to hardware to pricing ratio, Moto G6 definitely seems overpriced with Snapdragon 450 when we have most of the devices in the sub 15k price segment running on Snapdragon 6XX series. But having used the Moto G6 for quite some time, we can say that it provides a good overall experience if you are not really worried about the processor.
