There is a direct competition in the market of Motorola phones priced at Rs 13,999 between Realme 5 Pro and Samsung Galaxy M30s (review) is caused by. Not only this, Redmi Note 8 Pro (review) is also available in this price segment. What Moto G8 Plus Are its features and performance better than other smartphones in this price segment? Let us know…
Design of Moto G8 Plus
The design of Moto G8 Plus is exactly like Motorola One Macro (review), especially the arrangement of camera sensors on the back panel of the phone. The polycarbonate body looks good in the Cosmic Blue color variant. Apart from this, there is also a Crystal Pink color variant of Moto G8 Plus. The back panel of the phone looks like glass.
This phone is not very heavy but it is more than 9.09 millimeters thick. The sides are glossy and sometimes seem a little slippery. The textured power button is placed correctly but the volume button is placed a little higher. The SIM-tray is on the left side of the phone which supports two Nano-SIM cards and the other slot supports a microSD card up to 512GB.
The headphone jack is provided in the upper part of Moto G8 Plus and USB Type-C port is provided in the lower part. The earpiece and bottom speaker work together to create a stereo effect. Motorola has given a 6.3 inch LTPS IPS display in Moto G8 Plus, Panda Glass has been used for scratch protection.
The Moto G8 Plus comes with full-HD+ (1080×2280 pixels) resolution and 19:9 aspect ratio. The panel is vivid and displays colors accurately. Even when used outdoors, the brightness remains good and the viewing angles are also good. You’ll find an option for basic color adjustments in the Settings menu.
The bezels around the display are not very thin. There is a waterdrop notch on the front panel in which the selfie camera has got a place. The Moto G8 Plus features Moto Display which is an ambient display mode that will show you missed notifications, battery level and time on the lock screen.
Talking about Moto G8 Plus Camera, the rear camera at the back of the phone is slightly raised. The fingerprint sensor has got a place in the Moto logo on the back panel. You can also use the face unlock feature, it works well in sufficient light. In the retail box you will get 15 watt turbo charger, SIM eject tool and Type-C cable.
Moto G8 Plus Specifications and Software
Moto G8 Plus is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 655 processor. The same chipset is used in Realme 5, Xiaomi Mi A3 (review) and Redmi Note 8. Only one variant of Moto G8 Plus has been launched which is equipped with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage.
In the phone, you have been supported with dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth version 5, dual 4G VoLTE, NFC and three satellite navigation systems. Motorola has claimed that the Moto G8 Plus is water resistant, although it does not come with an official IP rating.
The software is quite clean and very close to stock Android. There is no bloatware on the phone and the default apps will not bother you by sending spammy notifications. The Moto G8 Plus comes with Android 9 Pie and our review unit runs the September 2019 security patch. Digital Wellbeing and standard Android gestures are present.
The Moto app gives you the option to select a Moto action and set a Moto display. Moto Actions are shortcuts and gestures used to quickly turn on the camera and flashlight and take screenshots quickly.
There is also a Dolby Audio app that boosts the volume and quality of sound coming through speakers, wired and wireless headphones. In the phone you will get some Google apps like Slides, News and Sheets.
Moto G8 Plus performance and battery life
Talking about day-to-day usage, Moto G8 Plus manages everything well. Multitasking was also quite easy and we did not face any heating problem in the phone. Due to the large display in the phone, there may be some difficulty in reaching the upper part of the screen, but many gestures given in the phone will help you. The phone did get a little warm during gaming.
The benchmark numbers for the Moto G8 Plus are also very good. The Moto G8 Plus scored 170,004 points on AnTuTu, while it scored 34fps on GFXbench’s T-Rex test. Due to Dolby Audio in Moto G8 Plus, the sound from the speakers in the phone is quite good.
Like the speaker at the bottom of the phone, the earpiece is also quite loud. Motorola 15W Turbo Charging feature is supported in Moto G8 Plus. In our battery loop test, the Moto G8 Plus lasted 14 hours and 10 minutes. With normal usage, which included playing games, using the camera and surfing the internet.
The phone lasted for more than a day. The turbo charger that comes with the phone charges the Moto G8 Plus battery from 0 to 36 percent in half an hour, up to 70 percent in an hour, and fully charges in about two hours.
Moto G8 Plus cameras
There are three rear cameras at the back of Moto G8 Plus, the primary sensor is 48 megapixels, its aperture is F/1.8. It will be supported by a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera. The phone also has a 5 megapixel depth sensor. The Moto G8 Plus also has a laser autofocus module and LED flash.
The camera app is easy to use due to its simple layout. Apart from the main shooting modes, additional modes like Portrait, Panorama and Night Vision are given in separate menus. You will also get some fun modes like Spot Color and Cutout in Moto G8 Plus.
In daylight the primary camera sensor captures good landscape shots and close-up shots. It also handles HDR well, besides balancing the light exposure properly. Colors appear vivid but do not appear to be over boosted and details are also captured well.
The phone saves 12-megapixel photos by default, the handset doesn’t have the option to shoot at 48-megapixel resolution. RAW files can also be captured in manual mode. Close-up shots were good and details were captured well.
Colors were vivid and sharpness was also good. Close-up shots taken in low light also turned out good. You will also get night vision in Moto G8 Plus. Colors were captured well but there was not much improvement in details. If you view the photos without zooming, you will see the photos better.
The depth sensor does a good job of detecting the edges around the subject and blurring the background. The blur effect can be adjusted before and after taking the shot. The 16-megapixel action camera can only be used for video shooting and not stills, which is a bit disappointing.
In video mode, near the shutter button you’ll find a button to access the wide-angle camera. Videos taken with the wide-angle action camera on the Moto G8 Plus came out stabilized at 1080p 30fps, but not at 60 frames per second. Video quality was good in daylight and electronic stabilization also works well.
The video quality was not very good in low light, grains were visible in the video. When switching to the primary camera, you can set the resolution up to 4K at 30 frames per second but without stabilization. Video came in 1080p resolution and electronically stabilized at 30 frames per second, and the footage looked good with good color reproduction. For your information, let us tell you that the quality also decreased slightly in low light.
Moto G8 Plus has a 25-megapixel selfie camera, if you want, you can capture selfies even at full resolution. Selfies came out well in daylight, colors and details were captured well. You can enable a face beauty mode that smoothes skin textures.
Image quality was below average in low light. Details were also not captured properly and noise was also visible. While shooting with the selfie camera, you will get many shooting modes such as spot color, group selfie, portrait and slow-motion video.
our decision
Good features have been provided in Moto G8 Plus, stereo speakers are also good. The battery life of the Moto G8 Plus is also quite strong and the camera quality was above average when shooting in daylight. Motorola One Macro, which comes under Motorola One series (review), Motorola One Action and Motorola One Vision (review) smartphones fall in this price segment, compared to these handsets we chose Moto G8 Plus for its better display and faster processor.
Compared to Realme 5 Pro and Redmi Note 8 Pro available in the market, the processor given in Moto G8 Plus is not very powerful. Other smartphones in this price segment come with more powerful processors. Talking about the camera of Moto G8 Plus, you cannot capture wide-angle photos with it and the camera performance in low light is also not very good. The Moto G8 Plus is not the best all-rounder phone but has a good display and good stereo speakers.