Motorola Moto G100 Review (Ring Flash Camera Phone + Snapdragon 870 CPU) By GSMDome

Hi guys this is json. com, and I'm here with a review of the Motorola motor g100. It was unveiled last month, and it's still a pretty fresh device which is priced at 499 euros and offers you two front cameras and a quad camera at the back side, with a special ring flash around the ultrawide and macro shooter. This is not the only thing this device can also serve working purposes as it becomes a desktop replacement once it's connected to a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. It's got a brand-new CPU inside the Qualcomm snapdragon 870, and that's quite the powerhouse. Now, let's get the review started and first, the device has a plastic back and a plastic frame.

The good news is that it's water repellent, and it's pretty good. Looking as you can see, it catches the light in a nifty fashion, much like the Huawei honor phones did back in the day and goes from blue to purple quite fast, okay, so it's made of plastic. I would say it's quite massive. At the same time, it adopts the narrow format which Motorola inaugurated with the Motorola one vision. The format is 21 to 9.

It measures a beefy, 9.7 millimeters in thickness and a heavy 207 grams. In spite of being so long and narrow, it's not exactly very easy to wield with a single hand, because it's a long, long handset. I also found that the power button isn't either flat enough or protruding enough. It's pretty much the same size as the rest of the frame. It should have been either more in-depth or more protruding.

If you ask me, sometimes it's pretty hard to find it just by feeling my way here. Aside from that, the phone is pretty solidly built, I'm liking this color, but it's also a bit slippery, so you may want to use the bundled case you saw in the unboxing we're done with the design, and I think it's time we talked about display. This is an IPS LCD, 6.7 inch, 90, hertz, full HD, plus hdr10, all the works, quite big bezels, as you can see, and also pretty big chain at the bottom. The cutouts are okay for my taste, similar to the ones we've seen on the motor g5 g plus. Now, as usual, we have a video to play to show you the prowess of the display.

This is it those two little holes here for the dual selfie camera may pull you out of the immersion for sure. But overall I was happy with the brightness, the color calibration, which is a bit more realistic. It's not overflowing like the sleds, we have pretty solid horizontal view angles. The vertical ones didn't impress me as much, and the contrast was, I would say, decent in the sun. If it's a really sunny day, you may find the contrast not sufficient for your needs.

The pixel 7 RGB stripes arrangement, typical for an IPS LCD, and when we measured the brightness, we achieved a level of 455 lux units. This is a pretty good result. Anything above 400 is good, and it goes above several other phones like, for example, the Xperia one mark ii, galaxy s20 or the iPhone 3 pro max. It's almost the equal of the Galaxy Note 20 ultra, which is a compliment. I would say it's still below phones at the galaxy s20 fan edition 5g and the Motorola edge, for example, also below the galaxy a51.

Of course, if you want to do some tweaks for the screen, you got your dedicated options and the most interesting one has related is related to colors. You got your brightness, you got your dark team. Adaptive brightness! You got your styles full screen pick display once again. This is the one that matters colors, natural, boosted or saturated as delivered from the factory. This is the display.

Refresh rate can be set to auto 60hz or 90hz. So there you have it a pretty good screen, and now we go inside the phone for a bit of a surprise. This is our first contact with the Qualcomm snapdragon 870 processors is basically the 865 plus it's the plus version, with an extra kick for the uh frequency, so higher frequency rate. It's a seven nanometer outscore chip with the arena 650 GPU and in this case it's bundled with 8 gigs of ram and 120 gigabytes of storage, pay attention, it's UFS 3.1 for the storage and, I sure hope it's lpddr5 for the ram there's micros here, and I'm happy to inform you. There is no trace of lag no matter what you're doing running, installing or updating or playing.

There will be no lag here, quite a powerful CPU, which is also confirmed by the benchmarks which we have here and two to eight showed us that were placed on the 11th spot, just above the Xiaomi mi 10 pro and the Nubia red magic 5g, which is a gaming phone, and this speaks for itself. We scored the below the ASUS ROG phone 3 and the before 7 pro, but those are pretty overpowered anyway. Now, when it comes to the geek bench, 5 multi-core test were placed on the 29th spot, just a smudge, just one point above Huawei p40, pro plus above galaxy, s20 plus, so you're. Getting the idea here, we're even beating the Galaxy Note 20 ultra and the OnePlus word. At the same time, we scored below the Huawei p40 pro and the Xiaomi mi 20, as well as the OnePlus 8t gamers, will be surely tempted to admire this result.3D mark slingshot, extreme BS, 3.1 8th spot, not bad with a pretty high score back in the day. This would be a crazy score above the Motorola, h, plus Galaxy Z, fault, 2 and Xperia 5 mark ii, plus a few other phones still below seven other handsets, but all of them have pretty high pedigree s21.

Ultra 5g is just a bit above ASUS ROG phone 3, OnePlus 9 pro so only heavy heaters above this model. So when it comes to performance, you will be pretty happy and future-proof uh. When it comes to temperature in benchmarks. Things got a bit heated, 41.8 degrees Celsius, there's not a serious overheating, but a temperature worth keeping an eye on and in games 32.9 degrees Celsius. Definitely no overheating here.

As usual, Motorola is delivering us a generous battery. It's a 5 000 William hour unit which charges at 20 watts. Now we measured the video playback time, and we weren't exactly impressed with 13 hours and 9 minutes I mean uh. We may have beaten the galaxy s20 ultra or the Galaxy Note 20 ultra or there are several other phones which are higher than this now. As I said before, I'm not very impressed by this value, even though we managed to beat the iPhone 11.

, we scored below the Xiaomi mi 10 lite, the motor g5 g plus, and the galaxy a52 5g, which we're testing these days, and we'll be able to review pretty soon. Now this was the video playback. The continuous usage looks a bit better with 12 hours and 29 minutes. Now, that's okay, and we're above the galaxy 5g, which is nice by 5 minutes above the Oppo arena, 4 pro 5g and the galaxy s21 ultra a1 were below the OnePlus 8t below the Xiaomi mi 20, and the Realme 7. Pro though the charging is a bit on the long side, with one hour and 51 minutes, we definitely need shorter charging nowadays, in 2021 and after 30 minutes you're at 39 after one hour, your 71 could be a bit better.

We have special optimization features in the settings like battery saver adaptive battery and also optimization for the charging and overcharge protect. Now, on the acoustics front, we have here audio jack, the lower left side and the singular speaker right here and also three microphones, one at the bottom one here and another one here below the camera. Okay. So there are some options to apply. If you go here sound, I would say that we have quite a few of them.

These are the settings. You can either leave it to auto or choose your music movie game podcast meeting mode and each of them can be customized, so not bad. You can also add some extra punch to the base from the same area. Now, let's listen to a tune or two okay, so you probably figured out already that we have a pretty strong base. Nice volume, solid volume, pretty nice high notes and the voice is pretty vibrant and warm, but an all-around nice experience, no distortion and no strong vibrations of the case.

So too bad is not stereo. It could have been one solid pair of speakers. We measure the volume with a decibel meter, and we achieve 91.7 decibels in a sample test, an acoustic sample test which is a pretty high result. It's beating the Xiaomi mi 10 pro and the OnePlus 8t staying below the Motorola, h, plus and Realme seven pro now. When it comes to gaming check this out, 103.9 decibels uh it's going higher than the typical top 20 material. So with this 103.9 we beat stuff like the galaxy s, 20 fan editions, 5g s21 and the OnePlus 8t, not bad at the same time, we're below the galaxy a51 and then and the Nokia 8.35 g. Overall, I'm pretty impressed by the singular speaker- and I think, it's time to discuss the cameras at the front side if you've seen the review of the motor g5 g plus it's basically the same dual selfie camera, one, regular 16, megapixel camera and one ultra-wide 8 megapixel camera for your group.

Selfie needs the back is a bit more complicated. There's a 64 megapixel main shooter. There's audio zoom, there's a big flash here, and this is a flash around the ultrawide camera, which also serves as your macro camera now 64 megapixel main uh, 16 megapixel ultra-wide 2 megapixel both, and we also have an extra time-of-flight 3d sensor. It's actually a combination of uh laser focus and time of flight, so focus is pretty important here. We're shooting 6k video.

We have macro video available here. Furthermore, we have features like well spot, color, cinema graph, and you know the other typical options which Motorola offers on its phone there's. Also, dual capture, which is new and quite a few AI options. Now we go to our list of shots, we got here and let's take them one by one. Okay, so we have quite a few of them.

These are taken during the day, and one thing I noticed is that the colors are spot on with the main camera and the ultra-wide one as well main camera ultraviolet camera. The sky looks fine, usually colors are deformed in the sky area. On many phones, the focus was probably the strongest point of the phone. The focus distance is perfect. Here you can go really close, perhaps even closer than three or four centimeters okay, so we tried our hand here at some HDR shots came out.

Fine uh, and this is the ultra white one. Not bad at all. Dynamic range is pretty high, and one thing I noticed is that this is a standard regular main camera photo, while the ultrawide camera lacks a bit of detail and also seems a bit more exposed than the other one. The reds are fine, particularly the reds, and the blues were very well landed, and these objects have a very nice contour and gloss to them. These toys from the park are very well represented.

On camera. We got really close to the toys to see what the macro camera can do and once again we got closer than usual much closer. So this is probably the best macro camera I've seen in a while, and it's not even a micro camera, it's an ultra-wide one, which also serves that purpose. Okay. So now we have a series of selfies here, but don't read too much into them.

There was the beautifying option, enabled so not hugely impressed, and also these are four megapixel shots. Uh, it's a 16 megapixel camera which combines four pixels in one producing four megapixel shots. Now the both is able to cut me from the background pretty fine, but we have another set of selfies where there is no beautification, so those are more properly aligned, excellent shots here, I'm talking about the color and the texture. Look at the crispness of this flower petal very crisp, and the focus can really do amazing things for you on this device. Once again, a combination of both camera face detection, autofocus laser focus time of flight and solid sensors.

With this, it's no wonder you can achieve such photos. Okay, and even the digital zoom was fine by me, so at around 3 or 4 x should be fine. We have one shot here at the maximum level of 8x, and even this one is passable which I didn't expect now these are the selfies where we deactivated the beautification modes. I think so this should be a regular shot, they're a bit lacking details. If you ask me and a bit too exposed, this is the ultra white one, a bit darker than the others, which is a phenomenal I've, also seen on the motor g5 g, plus an amazing shot of a flower which is even more amazing if you get up close and one of the better shots.

I've taken with this phone aside from a huge amount of colorful toys always were represented, is what I would call a combination of moss and mushrooms on the bark of a tree check this out. It's quite amazing. So this is what it looks like from a distance. This is the tree here and it's growth. You can actually barely see it, but if you really get closer and closer and activate the flash around the macro ultraviolet camera, this is what you get, and I even use the video which is pretty impressive again now.

This is a column with some microscopic organisms on it as well. So if you want macro, this is the phone to get okay. So that's pretty much it. I would say it's pretty much on par with the Motorola edge, with a bonus of 10, maybe 15, added by the micro camera and the colors in general. This is daytime.

Let's go to the low light photo capture. Now I was a bit disappointed by these low light shots the only time the camera shines during the nighttime is when you activate the special night mode, the ultraviolet photos are distorted, and they create two big light sources and actually, in general, the light sources were a bit too big for my liking. It's only when the night mode kicks in that the things are a bit more decent, so a no-no and a yes, yes, and even though the hues are a bit deformed, I've seen better than this, even on Motorola phones. So if you're on top level stick of night mode, otherwise you may be a bit underwhelmed compared to what Motorola usually delivers on higher end phones. Luckily, we also have the AI and the possibility to fix the lighting okay, so this was pretty much it as far as the photos are concerned.

Let's talk about videos, okay, so it's video time. Let's go to the dedicated app from here. We have 14 videos, we even shot 6k, and I think I'm going to start with the stabilization test, which is done in full HD with the special stabilization mode activated- and I would say it's doing fine, even though the full HD clip has some over brightening of the colors here. The green is too intense compared to what I actually saw, but the stabilization happens in a pretty efficient manner. So a pretty effective stabilization, I would say, and let's go further and see what the camera can do when it comes to the focusing.

This is the focus test moving from the foreground to the background it takes an extra third of a second maybe compared to flagships, but it's still within the range of high performing phones. Now one thing to remember here is that you're catching a pretty wide array of colors, especially this video here, which, from what I remember should be 6k, has a huge dynamic range and it's so large, I would even say it invents artificial colors. So to say it tends to flicker a bit in the exposure department, switching from dark to bright in the top area for the sky, but the palette of colors is quite large and generous, even though some of them feel a bit artificial and stabilization is, of course lacking at this level.6K doesn't come with that. Now the 4k videos were pretty spot on a lot of details. The image is very crisp.

You can shoot 4k, 60 frames per second or 30 frames, there's a bit of whiteness on the top of the image, but it gets cleared up pretty fast. If you point the camera in the right direction, loving the color of blue and red we got here. This is a selfie video which is actually not bad. The details are pretty limited, but the texture and the focus are there and a pretty solid microphone as well uh. One last video is this one here, there's a macro video of that strange organism that combo of moss and mushrooms on the tree.

Looking mighty impressive, I never! You just saw the ring flash activated. I never used the macro video feature, but this time actually went ahead and used it pretty impressive. So these are the daytime photos and those are the daytime videos and, I would say, uh we're going past the level of the galaxy a51 and a71 uh we're also going past the Motorola edge series by 10 percent as an upgrade. So that's that maybe the zoom is the only drawback here and the fact that there's a bit of extra over exposure here and there, but nothing major, well believe it or not. The nighttime videos are also not bad.

This is it. I know it may appear a bit orange and a bit colorful a bit warm, but it's actually not bad for a high mid-range phone stabilization is spot on. The image is pretty clear: there's quite a bit of light, not much noise and the colors are decent, at least in this frame, and the video actually continues quite a bit, not much zoom. I know, but overall, not bad okay, so I think we're about done with the camera. Just remember this one of the best focuses and macro around and an upgrade from the Motorola edge by 10, maybe 15.

When it comes to connectivity. This is obviously a dual sim phone, one that provides you with 5g and 4g. There is the 5g, which is of the n air and sub 6 gigahertz, also 9 bands, 4g LTE category 18 for uploads and 20 for downloads, USB c 3.1. Outputting video signal and also Bluetooth, 5.1, Wi-Fi 6, NFC, GPS and glass. The calls were pretty loud and clear, and we also did a speed test which looks like this.

So we have impressive results here, Wi-Fi six doing its job 778 mega per second in download and 566 mega per second in upload, that's Wi-Fi and on 4g 262 over um 51.9 in download and upload respectively. I think we're done with the connectivity covered pretty much. Everything is time to talk about the OS and if you know Motorola if you know anything about them, you know they serve a clear and stock android. This is android 11 and their only modification is the motor area. Here you can do a bunch of tweaks, so you got your personalization.

You can select fonts colors icon shapes layouts. Then we have your gestures. Quite a few of them three three-finger screenshot swipe to split. Then we have display with peak display and attacking display, replacing always on display, and we got the play mode with the game. Time features.

These are features for gamers meant to reduce the well disturbance of the gaming sessions. Block gestures, bulk modifications and so forth, and you can also do capture screen capture while gaming. Aside from that, you can see me using gestures here, switching between apps swiping, up and down for this and swiping to the side to go back. So that's pretty much it as far as android 11 is concerned. Now, um, let's see if we have anything special here in the settings, you got your connectivity settings battery display sound privacy, security, digital well-being for security.

We have the fingerprint scanner in the power button here. I just used it. I would say it's pretty fast, but not always 100 accurate, maybe 85 90 accurate. The apps pre-installed here are stock, all the ones you've seen added. I have added.

We have a physical Google Assistant button here, press it, and it triggers the assistant. We've got chrome drive, we've got dual docs files, fit Facebook, Gmail, google, one home, and that's about it now. I left towards the end the ready for feature. This is a special feature which lets you output, a well video signal from the USB port. If you connect a special USB cable with the video output or USB to HDMI adapter, you should be able to mirror what's on the phone to a monitor or a TV set.

Now, if you have a special dock, which Motorola provides things get a little better. So, for example, you can connect a mouse and keyboard and create a desktop environment. Do video calls put the phone in the cradle and well use it like a webcam for your PC? Only it's actually the PC, as well as the webcam, and you can even do gaming on a larger monitor with the same cradle. That's the ready for feature, that's the name that Motorola has for it, and I'm sure that at some point we'll get that cradle and do a test for you. Okay, so that's pretty much it! I think it's the end of the review.

So let's go quickly to our website and do some verdict talking now on the pro side for this phone. It's obviously the pretty looking backside solid display. As far as the colors and brightness is concerned are concerned, a pretty powerful CPU, which I mentioned before the ready for system, is welcome nowadays um, I would say that the continuous battery usage is fine. That PC mark result was pretty okay, good acoustics for the singular speaker at the bottom. The colors of the camera photo and video are fine for me.

Excellent focus, one of the best on the market, the best marker on the market for sure, solid stabilization and level of details when filming fast connectivity and stock android 11 with small modifications which may actually come in handy. Those are the pros on the cons. We don't have stereo speakers. The phone tends to be a bit slippery and a bit big and thick. There is the flat power button here, which is actually not on the level.

I wanted it to be easier to find the contrast of the screen well, I've seen better before, and the video playback time of the battery that also could have been a bit better. The charging is long. The selfie cameras here aren't exactly uh top of the line and nighttime photos aren't that impressive, and we don't have a telephoto camera. So when it comes to the zoom, things are a bit more modest. Now, aside from that, I would say that this feels like an upgrade from the Motorola edge, so it's basically a Motorola h plus, if you want it to be, it's definitely a good phone for gaming.

The CPU is there's the ram, there's the storage. Everything is going for you, it's quite future-proof, and it creates a working environment with a ready for feature. So it combines gaming and work with one of the best macro cameras around, which is also an ultra white camera and pretty decent stabilization and good details when filming so once again, gaming office, macro focus and detailed videos. That's what you're getting from this phone. If you're looking for something else like an OLED screen, stereo speakers, large zoom, you may want to look otherwise or towards other devices for macro gaming and office.

This is pretty much a solid choice at the start of 2021. This is from us bye, bye,.

Source : GSMDome