motorola launched the moto g24 power as the successor to last year’s moto g23 in India earlier this week. This power series phone from motorola is returning to India after 3 years since the g10 power launch in 2021. This has several upgrades, such as a 90Hz screen, a faster SoC, while retaining the 6000mAh battery. Is this the best 4G smartphone under Rs. 10,000 ? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- moto g24 Power 8GB + 128GB in Ink Blue colour
- 33W fast charger
- USB Type-A to Type-C cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Clear protective case
- User manual and warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
Starting with the display, the moto g24 power has a 6.56-inch HD+ 90Hz LCD screen with a pixel resolution of 1600 × 720 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of about 269 PPI. The HD screen looks good compared to HD screen from other companies. It has a slightly thicker bottom bezel, which is fine in the price range.
The display is bright, since it has up to 537 nits peak brightness, and the sunlight legibility is good. The colours are vibrant as well. It doesn’t have HDR support. Under the display options there are different options to adjust colours from Natural, and Saturated.
The phone has a punch-hole screen that houses an 16-megapixel camera. The earpiece on the top doubles up as a secondary speaker.
The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but it comes with peek display option that lets you see interactive notifications and quick information while the screen is off, but it doesn’t act as always on display present in AMOLED phones.
In terms of button placements, the power button, which integrates a fingerprint scanner, is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. The dedicated dual SIM and microSD card slot that accepts cards up to 1TB is present on the left side.
The primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top and has Dolby Atmos branding.
The phone is just 8.99mm thick and weighs just 197 grams, even though it packs a 6000mAh battery. The phone also comes in Glacier Blue colour. It has a matte finish on the back and the sides, and the phone doesn’t slip out of the hands. The phone has IP52 ratings, so that it is resistant to dust, light rain and splashes.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, EIS
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture
- 16MP front-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture
The camera UI is familiar with most Motorola smartphones that include a quick toggles between main camera and macro camera on the bottom, quick toggles for flash, timer, aspect ratio, and more. Other camera features include Night Vision, Portrait, Panorama, Scan, Slow motion and Timelapse.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots came out well with good dynamic range, thanks to Quad Pixel technology that gives you get 12.5MP output. HDR shots are better with improved dynamic range, and it is recommended to enable auto HDR. This lacks an ultra-wide camera and gets a 2MP macro camera, which is just average. The edge detection in portrait shots is good as well. Images from the 16MP camera are good. Low light images from the rear camera are decent, and the night mode helps.
Check out the camera samples
The phone is capable of recording 1080p at up to 30 fps resolution from both front and rear cameras. EIS works well. There is also Slow Motion option. You can also shoot 720p videos with the 2MP camera.
Software, UI and Apps
The moto g24 power runs Android 14 with Android security patch for January, 2024. The company has promised an assured upgrade to Android 15 and 3 years of security upgrades for the phone. As usual, it is stock with added Moto features. There is nothing to mention regarding the software in specific, since it offers stock Android 14 experience with added features.
It comes with the usual My UX with Ambient Display option and gestures such as Quick capture, Fast flashlight, Three-finger screenshot, Sidebar, Double press power key, Press and hold power button.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps, Google apps, there are some apps and games, but you can install them easily. The version we have packs 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and there is also a 4GB RAM version.
motorola has also added virtual RAM features that lets you expand the RAM by up to 8GB. This is enabled by default, but you can disable it. Out of 8GB RAM, you get 7.79GB of usable RAM, out of which about 3.4GB of RAM is free on boot with just the default apps running in the background. The phone has 128GB eMMC 5.1 storage, out of which, you get about 106GB of usable storage.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has a fingerprint sensor on the side. It immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger so that you don’t have to press it, and it is obviously faster than the in-display fingerprint scanner. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. The phone also has face unlock, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music Player, FM Radio and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default music player with usual audio effects and equalizer, which can also be directly accessed from Audio Effects shortcut app. It also has FM Radio with recording. Audio through the stereo speaker is loud, compared to mono speakers that other phones in the range offer. It also has Dolby Atmos. Audio through earphones, is good as well.
It has Widevine L1 support, so you can play HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming apps without any issues. It doesn’t have HDR support.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features such as 4G with 1/2/3/5/7/8/20/28/38/40/41 bands, dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4 + 5GHz), Vo-WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 and GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, LTEPP and SUPL.
The phone also USB OTG support that lets you connect USB drives. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud. It doesn’t have NFC support, which you can’t expect in a phone in the price range.
The moto g24 power’s body SAR is 1.40W/Kg, and the head SAR is at 0.92W/Kg, well under the limit in India which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
Coming to the performance, this is powered by MediaTek Helio G85 Octa-Core SoC that is built on the 12nm architecture. There are Dual 2GHz Cortex-A75 + Hexa 2GHz 6x Cortex-A55 CPUs. Coming to the performance, the Helio G85 handles day-to-day/casual tasks such as browsing, social media, accessing documents, video playback on YouTube easily, but with a lot of background apps multitasking might not be the best. On the other hand, the loading time of the applications isn’t that fastest, owing to the slower eMMC 5.1 storage.
There is 1000MHz ARM Mali-G52 2EEMC2 GPU. You can play casual games, but this is not a phone for graphic-intensive games. It gets a bit warm when gaming on 4G.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a huge 6000mAh (typical) built-in battery, one of the biggest in the price range. It lasts for a whole day even with heavy use with dual 4G enabled and multimedia use, and more than a day with average use. For me, it lasted for about 2 days.
The phone has support for 33W fast charging, and it took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to charge from 0 to 100%, and 0 to 50% charge took about 45 minutes using the bundled 33W fast charger.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 8,999, the moto g24 Power almost ticks all the boxes when it comes to a budget phone. It has a large HD+ 90Hz screen, capable processor to handle most tasks, good camera in daylight, stereo speakers, and a long-lasting battery. Wish the company had gone with a slightly faster Helio G99 SoC.
Availability
The moto g24 is priced at Rs. 8,999 for the 4GB + 128GB model and the 8GB + 128GB model costs Rs. 9999. There is a Rs. 750 additional discount on exchange. It will be available from Flipkart, motorola.in and will also available from retail stores starting from February 7th.
Pros
- Android 14 out of the box
- Clean UI without any bloatware or ads
- Good build quality
- Stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos
- Excellent battery life
Cons
- Helio G85 is not a powerful SoC for heavy usage
- Misses some camera and Android features compared to moto g34 5G