The Moto G6 is well built and beautiful to look at. The sleek design is backed up with high-performance from its 1.8 GHz octa-core processor and despite the speed, the 3,000 mAh battery lasts all day long. When its time to recharge, the TurboPower 15W charger gets you out and on the road in record time. Durability is key when carrying the phone in your pocket or on your handlebars, so you’ll come to appreciate the Gorilla Glass enclosure.
The phone runs with the Android 8.0 Oreo operating system on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor with a 1.8 GHz octa-core CPU and 600 MHz Adreno 506 GPU, with either 3 or 4 GB of RAM.
If you travel a lot and need to switch networks or carriers, you’ll be in great shape as the Moto G6 takes any Nano sim card and works on LTE, UMTS, CDMA and GSM networks.
Photo quality
Reduced from the 12MP rear camera, but no editing involved.
Compare the HDR results of these next shots taken with the G6 and my iPhone6.
The dual cameras will be popular with amateur photogs – shooting 12 megapixel and 8-megapixel images with the rear cameras and 8-megapixel images with the front camera. Actually, the rear camera shoots with dual lenses so you can defocus the background, adding snap to your portraits.
To my delight, I discovered the “Twist phone to open camera” feature, making it so much faster to get to the camera without missing that great Kodak moment. Two quick twists of the wrist while holding the phone opens the camera – ready to shoot – even without unlocking the home screen. But don’t worry, all other functions other than the camera are still locked so no one will be able to do anything but take a photo without your knowledge. (They will be able to see any popup notifications on the home screen, but unable to interact with them. )
If silly filters are your thing (bless your hearts), the Moto G6 has them as well. Some work better than others, but I can’t even bring myself to show samples. You’ll also enjoy shooting “active photos” and timelapse videos in 4x, 8x, 16x or 32x speeds.
For those who want to create original art with their photos, then you can experiment till you drop with spot color, selective black and white and selective focus. Really serious, switch on manual mode and you can experiment with ISO speeds, white balance, and exposure compensation.
Group selfies come into their own with this unit, including an easy-to-use “group selfie” setting for the front camera, where you merely pan across the group for a really wide angle shot. Additionally, the Panorama setting lets you take far-reaching wide angle shots with the rear-facing camera.
Pano held horizontally
Pano held vertically
For the perpetually curious, the Moto G6 integrates Google Lens with its landmark and object recognition. Point it at the Washington Monument, and it will bring up its history. Point it at an ordinary object like a wireless mouse and it will tell you what it is and where to buy one. Scanning a QR code or barcode enables you to find more product information.
A feature I did find extremely useful was the Text Scanner function. Point it at anything printed, and then you can paste it into emails, messages, notes and more. Scanning business cards is also convenient, even adding the person as a contact if you like.
Storage – if you shoot a lot, or love to carry movies to watch on your phone, you’ll appreciate the MicroSD card slot in the Moto G6, taking up to a 128GB card. Internally, you have your choice of 32GB or 64GB storage. If you can’t have too many apps, like me, or you take lots of videos – be sure to opt for the 64GB model. You can select either the phone or the memory card for your photo’s destination.
Speaking of videos, the picture quality is terrific and the sound through the Dolby Audio front port speaker is quite decent.
The list just keeps coming with all the other features, like face unlock and a fingerprint reader that does more than just the unlocking function. You can also use it to revisit the most recent apps or take you to the home screen.
My only problem to date is trying to take photos in the sun, and not being able to see the screen, which unfortunately is common to many LCD screens.
If you haven’t upgraded your phone in a while, chances are there will be tons of features that aren’t immediately apparent on this phone. You really need to devote some time to reading the instructions, which also aren’t immediately apparent. Here are two suggestions:
- Check out the Online Users Guide for a hyperlinked list of features and benefits you might otherwise miss.
- Check out the app on your phone appropriately named Device Help (with the big question mark icon). It will not only describe some of the better features of the phone, but also adequately illustrates how to use them.
There’s a lot to like, so check out the Moto G6