If you ask Motorola what this is, they will say this smartphone is bringing the best out of the One series into one device which is the Moto G8 Plus. It brings together the One Vision’s primary camera, the One Action video camera and the laser autofocus from the One Macro. If you ask me, we are looking for a smartphone in the end of 2019 and we want to spend only enough for a high quality experience at its basics. It’s a competitive market, every brand is launching a new phone and we are eternally confused, so in this crowd which is battling for our attention, what do Motorola’s words mean to us? Let’s find out in this Unboxing and First Impressions of the Moto G8 Plus.
Motorola is very clear and simple about its marketing on the box. It highlights the G8 Plus’ unique selling points. Btw what do you think of the price(Rs. 13,999)? Let me know in the comments below.
You then get the usual box contents with the tpu case pre-installed on the phone. A bunch of paperwork, a 15W Turbo power charger, USB C cable and never forget that SIM tray tool.
First look at the G8 Plus, it has the usual Motorola traits. Especially just after trying the One Macro, the design elements are similar, especially the logo which doubles up as a fingerprint sensor. And a 19:9 form factor, with a dew drop notch display the front.
A big speaker at the front is for the dual stereo effect which positions the G8 Plus as a multimedia phone as well.
The display is a full HD Plus 6.3inch panel and it looks really good. Be it indoors or outdoors, at any angle, up close in every way the display looks high quality for the price but AMOLED fans will still be disappointed because the LCD can never match the black levels of that technology. Nevertheless, if you are just watching videos the display looks good and the dual stereo speakers are really good as well. They’re loud and well rounded.
One of the best in the segment for sure and yes there’s Dolby support just like the One Vision.
The other claims from Motorola mainly center around the camera. In my first impressions, it is showing good promise. The main camera is a Samsung GM1 which has proven to be quite good in its Pixel binned results. It’s good in low light as well. The Action camera is a good way to capture movement and could actually be useful for vloggers. I definitely need to test it more to tell you whether the camera is good enough but right away I can tell you it is quite versatile and I like the fact that it has a focus on video. There is a 25MP Quad Pixel front facing camera as well. Let’s talk about everything in the review after an extended time of testing.
When it comes to the way the phone looks and feels. I dig the design, the cosmic blue variant I have, looks really good. It’s true that plastic doesn’t break like glass but it’s the scratches on the body I’m concerned about because of a delicate glossy finish. It’s better to use the case and even with the case the phone feels really light. The build quality overall is quite good and the haptic feedback is really good too, which weirdly enough contributes to the build quality of the device. It is punchy, very low latency and really high quality. I think everyone will love it.
Under the hood you have a Snapdragon 665 processor powering the device with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. This is good combination for a stock Android phone at this price. We’ll definitely have to test gaming as well, but so far in our testing, the optimizations for 665 aren’t here yet.
But thanks to Stock Android’s optimizations the G8 Plus handles everyday tasks very smoothly without any lag. There are only a few Motorola features added as options in the UI and there is a proprietary camera app but beyond that everything is just like stock, untouched. Which means by default it is clean, no bloatware except facebook, no ads, no lockscreen galleries, no third party keyboard, no custom skin etc. but there will be a lot less custom features too like screen recording, call recording, custom UI default apps like a multi-featured calculator for example or a voice recorder. Those who want pure performance and ok with not a lot of features, the experience on the G8 Plus is really high quality. Of course this affects the pricing too because other companies do use it as a source of their revenue.
That kind of sums up the Motorola G8 Plus. It seems like a high quality Android experience in this price segment. It’s a minimal experience and focuses mostly on the camera and the entertainment features. A few questions remain. How good is the camera system. How is the long term performance including battery of the phone. How will the software evolution be going forward? We’ll talk about these things in the full review.