Moto G9 Plus — Review & Full Phone Specifications
motorola has really been focusing on their budget and mid-range phones for the past couple of years and they’re continuing this tradition with the moto g9 plus so why the plus moniker well aside from the fact that it’s larger than many of its predecessors it also improves on them in a lot of ways however you will find some downgrades here like in the camera department and there is a switch from stereo speakers to a single downward facing one what does this all.
the moto g9 plus wouldn’t stand out on a 2020 phone lineup except for the very light moto logo on the back it has a wider camera bump than last year and ours isn’t the indigo blue color despite the fact that it might look like glass the phone has a unibody plastic chassis that’s an absolute smudge magnet the lack of gaps and sharp edges makes it comfortable to hold but if you want to use it one-handed the size makes it a bit unwieldy the g9 plus is also a wide phone and at 223 grams
it’s rather hefty too there’s no iterating here or water repellent coating and the front doesn’t have any special protection either so it’s just plain glass on the sides there’s a Google assistant button the volume buttons and the power button which doubles as a fingerprint reader it works reliably but we wish it was a little faster we’re not huge fans of side mounted fingerprint readers because they’re really easy to bog down with accidental touches and more often than not we had to enter our pin manually
because the fingerprint unlocking was disabled due to too many bad attempts on the front the ips lcd is a large one at 6.8 inches and it has a 1080p resolution there’s no hdr10 support or high refresh rate though the bezels around it are slim except for the one on the chin which is a bit thicker and there’s a hole punch in the upper left corner since it is an lcd you’ll notice some halos around the hole punch on brightly colored backgrounds its brightness isn’t class-leading with max of 522 units in auto but this is more than enough for good sunlight legibility
Specifications of the Moto G9 Plus
whites were bluish and colors were inaccurate in the saturated mode but natural mode provides a much more accurate option on the audio side of media consumption we weren’t odd you’ll find a headphone jack on the top of the phone and supports fm radio which is a nice inclusion that said it only comes with a single downward facing speaker instead of stereo speakers loudness isn’t impressive bass is lacking but at least generally there was good sound clarity
the phone has a snapdragon 730g chipset which is no slouch it’ll handle most games and day-to-day tasks nicely all the same it comes with four gigabytes of ram which is a little low in this day and age and there’s no higher memory configurations should you want it at least as far as the other type of memory is concerned it comes with a generous 128 gigabytes of base storage
and an expandable card slot you should also know that the moto g9 plus has nfc for contactless payments which isn’t always a given on budget and mid-range devices since the g9 plus has a power efficient chipset and a massive 5000 milliamp hour battery and we were not disappointed the phone got an excellent 136 hour endurance rating in our test routine thanks to the 30 watt fast charger topping up the phone was a breeze too you’ll get zero to 54 in half an hour and a full charge takes around an hour and 15 minutes
one of the reasons motorola fans stay loyal is the software moto usually offers a clean ui with android as google intended this time around it’s android 10 and hopefully it’ll be updated to android 11 in the coming months there are a few more options than usual to take advantage of first are the moto gestures which include classics like twists to launch the camera but you’ll also find some new gestures like double tapping the power button to bring out a pop-up window with your favorite apps you can also customize the looks of your ui from the accent color
Camera Features of the Moto G9 Plus
the font to the shape of your icons this year the g9 plus has a quad camera setup but since it is a budget device two of those cameras are more important than the others namely the ultrawide cam and the main sensor the main camera has a 64 megapixel quad bayer sensor and an f 1.8 aperture the ultrawide has been downgraded from 16 megapixel to 8 but it’s also no longer an action camera so you can actually use it to take stills the other two cameras are a macro cam and a depth sensor during the day
the g9 plus captures shots that have slightly above average quality colors are punchy and the dynamic range is wide enough sharpness was just the right amount and we saw plenty of detail the ultra wide on the other hand was disappointing moto’s quirky camera app insists that it shoots in 16 megapixels and images are soft and muddy with anemic colors and a general lack of detail at least the dynamic range was good thanks to the hdr portraits had convincing bokeh and when there was enough light shots came out sharp and detailed skin tones
are also nice unless you find yourself in a darker environment the macro camera has autofocus which made locking focus onto a subject much easier it definitely doesn’t disappoint provided there’s plenty of light low light shots with the main camera were on par with what the competition has to offer sometimes we noticed a bit too much noise but at least detail was retained switching on night vision significantly helped things photos were sharper there was significantly more detail in the shadows clip highlights were fixed and light sources looked better overall noids was also much reduced without smoothing out detail
considering it doesn’t take long for the night vision mode to stack all the images you’ll be much better off using it instead of the regular photo mode we do wish that there was a night vision option for the ultroid camera too but sadly you’re stuck with the regular photo mode and the results were not great photos were muddy they lacked detail colors were washed out and the dynamic range was narrow the phone can shoot stabilized videos up to 4k at 30fps
Moto G9 Plus Summary
we were expecting sharper 4k footage with a wider dynamic range colors could be more lively and contrast could be higher the stabilization worked well though so we would just leave it on perpetually the 16 megapixel camera on the front did a good job though here the photos were outputted in 4 megapixels because it’s a quad bayer one selfies were sharp and detailed and worked
well to keep the subject’s face nicely exposed even in challenging conditions so is a moto g9 plus a good buy well that depends on your market the moto g9 plus will have difficulty thriving in places where challenger brands are reshaping the budget and mid-range segments but come to think of it motorola is also a challenger brand in a way sure they have a glorious past and mobile history
but right now they have yet to establish themselves as a major player and they’re laser focused on that mid-range segment with some aggressive pricing but the competition is fierce and they won’t have it easy still if you’re a stock android lover and you want a phone with a big screen on a budget you should definitely check this one out.
Originally published at https://www.technews20-21.in on May 23, 2022.
