Watch: Motorola Unveils G6 For Penny-Pinchers
Budget-minded mobile phone users have cause to rejoice: Motorola’s sixth-generation G series handset — the aptly named Moto G6 — is about to launch, and it’s carrying a full payload.
Aggressively priced at a suggested $249 retail, the phone offers the kind of feature set more commonly found in flagship phones selling for hundreds of dollars more. Encased front and back in Gorilla Glass 3 in either black or deep indigo, the G6 offers an 18:9, 5.7-inch IPS LCD screen with 1080 Full HD+ resolution and a water-repellent nano-coating. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack, front port speaker with Dolby Audio, and bottom-bezel home button that doubles as fingerprint reader and mouse.
The phone also packs a 3,000 mAh quick-charge battery with USB-C connector; GSM and CDMA radios covering all popular LTE bands; and is driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 450 processor, featuring a 1.8 GHz octa-core CPU and 600 MHz Adreno 506 GPU.
On the photo front, the phone carries dual f/1.8 aperture 12-megapixel and 5-megapixel rear cameras, allowing for a blurred-background portrait mode, while AI functionality provides object recognition. Video can be shot in up to 1080p resolution at 60 fps, and options include time-lapse and slow-motion modes.
An 8-megapixel front camera allows for group selfies, and also films at up to 1080p, albeit at 30 fps.
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The G6 comes out of the box with Android 8.0 Oreo, and shares the same set of proprietary Moto gestures and shortcuts as the top-of-the-line Z series, like wave-of-hand wakening, karate chop flashlight activation and a double wrist-twist to turn on the camera.
Unlike the Z series, however, the G line, Motorola’s most successful platform to date, does not accept modular attachment accessories, which includes speakers, 360-degrees camera and mini-projector.
Two versions will be offered: the $249 step-up model comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB of onboard, while an expected sub-$200 variant ships with 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage. Both models are expandable to 128GB via micro SD card.
The phone will be released later this spring through major carriers, and unlocked models will be sold direct and through retailers.
In addition, Motorola, which Lenovo acquired from Google in 2014, will release a down-spec’d G6 Play for $199, which nonetheless out-powers its series mate by packing a 4,000 mAh battery, and is rolling out two new additions to its opening-price-point E line.
The Moto E5 Plus outdoes even the G6 Play with a weekend-lasting 5,000 mAh battery, needed to light up its 6-inch HD+ IPS LCD display, while the E5 Play, with its 5.2-inch screen, offers many of the same features in a more diminutive package.
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