Motorola’s newest Moto G Play phone is a $150 media-playing machine. It’s got a 6.5-inch display with a 90Hz refresh rate and dual speakers with Dolby Atmos support.
This 2024 edition of the Moto G Play, announced Tuesday, is cheaper than last year’s $170 Moto G Play. I found that last year’s phone hard to recommend in my review as it suffered from stuttery performance issues. It looks like Motorola is changing to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 processor for this new phone, however, instead of the MediaTek Helio G37 used in the previous model.
While we’ll need to wait to try out the Moto G Play to see if that makes a performance difference, the new phone’s main camera bumps to a 50-megapixel lens over last year’s 16-megapixel main. The front-facing camera will have an 8-megapixel lens.
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Motorola appears to be pitching this phone as a kid-friendly device, touting the screen’s Corning Gorilla 3 glass and its IP52 certification. That certification is good for light splashes of water, but I wouldn’t leave it out in the rain much less in a pool.
Motorola didn’t disclose battery capacity, but says the phone should last 46 hours between charges. The Moto G Play’s maximum wired charging speed is 15 watts.
The Moto G Play will ship with Android 13, which is disappointing since Motorola’s G series of phones typically only get one additional major software update and three years of security updates. So while the phone will be safe to use for three years, it’ll likely only upgrade to Android 14, which was released in October 2023.
The phone also ships with 64GB of storage, which is small by today’s standards but average for this price range. You get a microSD card slot for storage expansion up to 1TB and a headphone jack for audio in the box.
Despite the shortcomings regarding the operating system and onboard storage, $150 is a low price for an unlocked phone with a 90Hz display and Dolby Atmos audio support. The phone will be available first in Canada on Jan. 26 and then head to the US on Feb. 8.
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