The Moto G series of Android phones has often been considered

the best bang for your buck when it comes to budget friendly smartphones. The

2022 version of the Moto G Power steps things up with a 50Mp (kind of) camera,

and a new texture on the case's plastic, as well as a different layout of the

cameras on the back. We've also got a storage bump with the 64Gb on the low end

and a 128gb option for $50 more. The 3 day battery life is the big seller

on the Moto G Power series though, and that's a huge advantage over those iPhone

users that we often see begging for power outlets at the restaurants.

What's in the Box

Source: Pocketnow

The included accessories for the Moto G 2022 is minimal as usual these days,

but not so minimal that it doesn't include a charger, thank goodness.

You'll also get a SIM card tray removal tool.

Battery

We're going to start with talking about the battery on the

Moto G Power 2022 because that's the big stand out feature. The 5,000mAh

battery will get 2-5 days of battery life. My first charge only got about

2 days probably because it was installing a lot of apps. Subsequent

charges lasted a lot longer, but the usage was less as well. This is similar to

the Moto G7 Power, though I think it's a bit less than the battery life of that

model.

I like to complain about non-removable batteries on phones since the ones that are removable are so easy to simply pop-out and pop-in a fresh one to keep the phone going for the rest of the day. With the Moto G Power 2022, I can kind of forgive the non-removable battery, except for the fact that

I've seen numerous Moto G Power phones with expanding batteries that push the

back open and cause cracks on the sides; something that would be easily fixed

with a user-replacable battery, but will destroy the entire phone when it's

glued inside the plastic. Will that happen with this model after a year or two?

We don't know, but you probably won't be able to inexpensively fix it if it

does.

Source: Pocketnow

Specs

The Moto G Power 2022 has a MediaTek Helio G37 processor with 4Gb of RAM and

64gb or 128Gb of built in storage. There's a MicroSD card slot for upgrading the

storage up to 512Gb. The dimensions of the phone are 167.24 x 76.54 x

9.36cm and it weights 203g. The screen is a 6.5" HD+ 1600x720 pixel IPS TFT LCD

display with 269ppi and a 90Hz refresh rate. There's a 5000mAh battery

that supports 10W charging. For water resistance, it has an IP52 rating.

The phone radios support 4G LTE Cat 13, UMTS/HSPA+ 3G and GSM/EDGE 2G on the

following bands: AT&T/Cricket:

4G: LTE band 2/4/5/12/13/14/30/66/29 | 3G:

WCDMA band 1/2/4/5/8 | 2G: GSM band 2/3/5/8

T-Mobile/Sprint/Canada/MVNO/Retail/(Comcast)/Verizon:

4G: LTE band

1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/25/26/38/41/66/71| 3G: WCDMA band 1/2/4/5/8 | 2G: GSM

band 2/3/5/8.

Hardware and Design

The 2022 Moto G Power isn't especially impressive in terms of

hardware. It is meant to be a budget friendly device after all. The plastic

certainly doesn't feel premium, but it's totally fine.

Source: Pocketnow

The back has a new wavy texture which looks good and hides

the fingerprint grease marks.

Source: Pocketnow

The "M" logo on the back is a fingerprint scanner for

logging into the device and turning it on. There's a really nice option that

you can turn on which will show the notifications listing if you swipe down

on the fingerprint scanner. I think that should be on by default, but

it's an easy option to set.

Source: Pocketnow

The bottom edge has a USB-C port along with the microphone

hole and speaker grill. This does not have high-speed charging, so

you'll have to remember to schedule your charging time twice a week.

Source: Pocketnow

On the top edge we actually have a 3.5mm headset jack,

which is great. You can actually plug headphones into this device! The

headphones can also be used as an FM radio antenna for the FM radio software

included on the device. It's great to be able to listen to the radio for

free without having to stream it over the internet sometimes.

Source: Pocketnow

The right edge is where the power button and volume rocker

are of course. The power button nicely has a different texture to it so that

you can feel the difference without having to look at it with your eyes or

feel for its position relative to other buttons. This is the smart way to do

buttons.

Source: Pocketnow

On the left side is the SIM card tray which also includes

a space for a MicroSD card in order to expand your storage. This is another

thing that's nice to see as many phones have been losing that feature

capability as well.

Source: Pocketnow

Performance wise, the Moto G 2022 is totally acceptable. It will handle all of the basic smartphone tasks without issue. Web browser, movie watching, streaming, emails... all have no problems.

Software

The Moto G Power 2022 comes with a mostly stock Android 11 and all Google

Apps. There aren't any custom email programs, music programs, or browsers that

you might get with other brands.

There are a few customizations from Motorola though and they're good ones that genuinely improve the Android interface.

Motorola adds their nice gesture controls such as "flip for do not disturb",

"Pick up to silence", "Fast flashlight", "Quick capture - twist to launch

camera", etc. One annoying thing is that the Moto G Power's version of Android

11 launches with the awful sausage button at the bottom for touch gesture

navigation. The classic three button interface is much easier to use since it

requires less muscle movement and less cognitive energy for memorizing invisible

gestures. It's much easier to associate the visible square, triangle, and

square buttons with specific functions since they're visually there all the time

and only require a simple tap. Of course, using actual words as buttons

require even less cognitive energy since all humans learn to read words at a

very early age.

Peek display is still here and that's great. It's similar to Nokia's old Glance Mode where it will just show a little information on the screen in a very low-power mode so that you can quickly see things like the battery level, date, time, and even some little notification icons which you can tap & hold for more details and response actions.

When I first inserted a T-Mobile SIM card, the phone started automatically

installing T-Mobile software. During this process, things crashed a few times

and the phone shut down without warning. After all of these aparent mandatory

software installs finished, it was back to a more stable state.

Camera

Source: Pocketnow

The Moto G Power 2022 has a 50Mp f/1.8 camera on the back along with a 2Mp

f/2.4 Macro camera, a 2Mp f/2.4 depth sensor, and LED flash. The 50Mp camera is

quad pixel, so that's really only about 12Mp of actual ouput data.

The included camera software is fine, but it doesn't save photos in RAW DNG

format, so I installed "Open Camera" to have some more professional grade

features to use with the 50Mp camera. The dynamic range on the 50Mp camera is

very narrow, clipping highlights fairly often. That means you're going to

have to be very selective about lighting in order to get good photos.

Source: Pocketnow

The depth sensor is just about as useless as it is on all of the other

phones. The background filter masking is messy with plenty of mistakes, but to

be fair that's the same problem with all of the phones that try to do this.