Moto G22 Review
This recently launched smartphone claims to offer a lot on-paper. It also includes a 50MP quad camera, 5000 mAh battery and 90Hz display. The price of the phone is Rs 10,999 and it realme c31 (Review) and Redmi 10 Prime (Review) Competes with smartphones like. This phone offers a lot for those looking for more features in the budget segment, but is its performance equally good? Let’s find out.
Moto G22 price and variants
Moto G22 It comes in a single variant in India in which the company has given 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. Officially, the price of the phone has been kept at Rs 10,999 but I have also seen it listed at Rs 9,999 on Flipkart and Motorola’s own online store.
Design of Moto G22
The style of smartphones in the budget segment has now changed. Now more premium design and build is seen in this segment. Talking about Moto G22, its back panel is made of plastic which looks quite attractive. I especially liked its cosmic blue color which I had. The phone is also available in Iceberg Blue and Mint Green colors, which look quite good in the photo.
Instead of Motorola’s typical design with a curved back panel, it has a flat design as we see in the iPhone 12. There are fingerprints on the phone but they are more visible only when viewed from a particular angle. The feel of the phone in the hand is good and the edges are not sharp, so the phone remains comfortable in the hand even when used without a protective case.
phone does not remain stable
The quad camera setup in its rear has a slightly different finish from the rest of the back panel. It has a metallic texture but it blends well with the overall body design, at least in its black variant. The camera module is slightly protruding from the panel due to which the phone does not remain stable when kept on a flat surface.
The phone has a long display which has a hole-punch cutout for the front camera. The bezels are quite thin on the sides but in the top portion it eats up some part of the screen. The bottom chin is also a little thick. The phone is light in terms of size and weighs 185 grams. The weight is very well balanced and there is no problem in using it with one hand.
Its power button and volume rocker are on the right side. A 3.5mm headphone jack is provided at the top. In the bottom part you get USB Type C port, speaker grill and primary microphone. The SIM tray is on the left side of the phone, which has space for two Nano SIMs and a microSD card up to 1TB. In the box you get a protective case and TurboPower 20W charger.
Specifications and software of Moto G22
Moto G22 has MediaTek Helio G37 SoC which is based on 12nm fabrication process. It is an octacore processor clocked at 2.3GHz. It also has IMG PowerVR GE8320 GPU which has a maximum frequency of 680MHz. It supports a 90Hz refresh rate which is put to good use by its 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD display. ,
For connectivity, it supports dual band Wi-Fi ac, 4G LTE, GPS/A-GPS, and Bluetooth 5. There is no official IP rating given in the device but the company says that it has been water resistant coating, due to which the phone cannot get damaged easily in light splashes. The device has a 5,000mAh battery with which 20W charging feature is available.
Inspired by Xiaomi and Realme
Motorola is known for its near-stock Android software and the same applies to the Moto G22. The device comes with Android 12 out of the box, which is not seen much in this price segment. My review unit was given the June 2022 security patch. The company promises three years of security updates for the phone.
The Moto G22 comes with bloatware in the form of apps like Josh and Dailyhunt, but you can prevent these from installing during setup. Inspired by Xiaomi and Realme, Motorola has also brought the Glance wallpaper feature but it can also be disabled from the Settings app.
Moto
I always like a clean user interface (UI) experience and this is possible with the Moto G22. You can easily navigate through the entire UI and it is quite easy to find anything. The home screen and lock screen can also be customized with the Theme Engine. This allows widgets and app icons to pick up the theme color of the wallpaper, which looks great and blends into the UI.
Motorola smartphones are known for their classic gestures, including a karate chop action that activates the flash light. Screenshots can be taken with the help of three finger gesture and camera can be launched with the help of twist gesture. You don’t get a dedicated Gallery app in Moto G22, so you will have to either use Google Photos app or download some other third party app.
Moto G22 performance and battery life
Both fingerprint scanner and facial recognition options have been provided for phone security in Moto G22. The fingerprint scanner is placed inside the power button which is easy to access. The fingerprint scanner successfully unlocked the phone every time but it was taking a while. The tactile feedback of the phone’s buttons was good. Face recognition was sometimes working, sometimes not, even if the lighting was adequate. Even after recognizing the face, the phone took several seconds to unlock.
The Mediatek Helio G37 SoC is an energy efficient chip but despite the Moto G22’s light and slim UI, it was not able to handle simple tasks well. Apps like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook were also running with mild lag. Even after setting the display to 90Hz, it still didn’t provide the smooth scrolling experience I like.
Multitasking and switching between apps also seemed like a burdensome task for the phone. At times unlocking the phone also seemed like a headache as apps and widgets took a long time to appear on the home screen. During the review, the back panel of the phone started feeling slightly warm after using even basic apps like Instagram for 15 minutes.
Talking about benchmark scores, the phone scored only 114,222 points on AnTuTu. It scored 170 and 955 points in single and multi-core tests of Geekbench respectively. The phone scored only 5.6fps in GFXBench’s car chasing test and only 5,683 in the PCMark Work 3.0 test. These scores were well below average and I had expected higher. The Realme C31 phone available at the same price brings better scores with Unisoc T612 SoC.
Moto G22 Review
Although, the phone is not made for gaming, still, I tested some heavy and light games on it to find out the capability of the phone. In this, Legends Mobile and BGMI could not be played even on lower settings, which was not surprising. Call of Duty: Mobile ran fine on low settings. Asphalt 9: Legends was locked in performance mode and the game ran fine. The Moto G22 was able to handle light games like Temple Run and Subway Surfers with ease.
High resolution is not available in the phone but it is available at least as much as other devices in this price range. It has a 720×1600 pixel display. There appeared to be low resolution around the corners and text of each app icon. Colors look balanced on the display and watching movies and TV shows on it was a good experience.
There was no visible shift in colors when viewing the content from different angles. The display has Widevine L1 certification but Netflix did not appear to support it. Even on Amazon Prime Video, I was able to watch the movie in 1080p resolution only. For colors, there is an option to choose between saturated and natural. The speaker quality of the phone is fine.
With some gaming and streaming of some movies, its battery lasts a little more than a day. The phone lasted 20 hours and 10 minutes in our HD video loop test, which is quite impressive. With the 20W TurboPower charger supplied with it, it was charging 36 percent in half an hour and 59 percent in an hour. It took 2 hours to fully charge the phone.
Moto G22 camera
Quad camera setup has been given in the phone. The camera module of Moto G22 includes a 50-megapixel primary camera with f/1.8 aperture, 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture with 118-degree field of view, 2-megapixel depth camera with f/2.4. With aperture and 2-megapixel macro camera with f/2.4 aperture.
The front has a 16-megapixel camera with f/2.45 aperture. The camera interface is straightforward and clean. All the essential shooting modes and settings are within easy reach. It also has dual capture mode for photos and videos, which is also useful. Many types of filters and beauty modes are also provided. However, the camera app crashed several times while using it, especially while switching between modes in the UI.
The primary camera captures 9.4 megapixel photos by default. In the settings, you also get the option to select 6 megapixels or higher resolution. Photos taken with the phone looked good from above but when zoomed in, they lacked sufficient details. One thing I liked about its primary camera was that it kept the colors consistently neutral, which gives a lot of scope for experimentation in editing.
The main camera was cropping the photo a bit too much for my liking. Due to the ultra wide angle camera, the details in the photo were reduced significantly and cool tones started appearing in the image. However, there was very little distortion at the edges, which is a good thing.
Macro photos were average as they lacked details due to the low resolution lens. Portrait shots looked good and the phone was also able to lock focus quickly. The camera app also gives you the option to choose the blur level before shooting.
The main camera of the phone took average photos in low light. A lot of noise was found in most of the low light photos. The details were fine in the ultra wide angle camera but the photos were just usable. In Night Vision mode, the photo became brighter but noise had increased in some parts.
Details were good in photos taken from the front camera. In the selfie, the camera was overexposing the photo background due to the light coming from behind. Portrait shots did not turn out well every time as the camera was missing the blur level at times. Selfies taken at night were of below average quality.
The Moto G22 can shoot 1080p and 720p videos at 30fps. The video was recorded normally in daylight and details were less. Grains were visible even in adequate lighting and stabilization was lacking. A lot of noise was found in the video captured in low-light. You can record video with the ultrawide camera but cannot switch to another camera during recording.
conclusion
The Moto G22 grabs a bit of attention with its quad camera and design. Its near-stock Android experience and the promise of three years of security updates make it stand out from other devices in this price segment. The 5,000mAh battery is quite useful and the 20W charger on top of that is a bonus. 90Hz refresh rate and Android 12 are also its positive points.
Unfortunately, all these features do not compensate for its poor performance. Moto G22 does not give a smooth experience in everyday use, the phone seems to get stuck even in basic tasks. If the company had focused on providing a smoother Android experience instead of providing a quad camera, this device could have been a recommendable phone in this price segment.
If you want something as an alternative then Realme C31 and Redmi 10 Prime are good options. If clean software is your priority then you can also look at Nokia G21.