Motorola One 5G unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard McNeil, and today we're unboxing the Motorola one 5g uh Motorola one is Motorola's brand for android one smartphone, so they have a pretty stock android experience. Although honestly, it's not all that different from the rest of their smartphones because they always have that. You know that near stock experience, all their special features comes from the motor app. So you know it is what it is. So these are the the one series. A lot of them are kind of what I would call specialty phones, you know um so like they have the one macro and so like that has a macro camera, and that's that's the big thing with that one.

You know um. So this is the one 5g, and it's all about 5g at a lower price point. You know, so it's its all about coming in at under 500. You know so like it's like um. There aren't many 5g phones right now for under 500, but this is one of them so um they actually did this with the edge and like.

If you look at the specs of this device, it's actually kind of similar to what the edge originally was, because when they like, they announced the edge and the edge plus earlier this year, and that was like their triumphant return to flagship devices, because Motorola hadn't made one in so long and um the edge plus, you know had 256 gigs of storage, 12 gigs of ram, you know totally specked out, and then you look at the edge like in the edge plus is Verizon only so if you weren't on Verizon, you had to get the edge and like that thing was supposed to have four gigs of ram and 128 gigs. So I'm like a third of the ram, so they ended up uh, boosting it to six gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage. Before launch. Now this one actually has four gigs of ram and 128. Gigs of storage also has a snapdragon 765, just like the edge it has a 6.7 inch, 90 hertz display just like the edge um. So, there's a lot that's similar there and when they launched the edge by the way they launched it at 4.99, it's a 6.99 phone, but it was on sale for 4.99. So now this one is under 500 right.

It's got four cameras, uh 48, megapixel, main sensor, f, 1.7, and then it's got an 8 megapixel ultra-wide, and then it's got a 5 megapixel macro lens and a 2 megapixel uh depth sensor. So the macro lens actually has a ring around it with a light and the idea behind that is that if you're, if you're, trying to take a picture up close to something you go like this, you might be blocking the light by getting that close. So, so now it has a light on it which is kind of cool and then of course, the 2 megapixel depth sensor is uh useless. It's one of those things that uh it's its a cheap way for Motorola to say that it's a quad lens camera. This is an ATT model.

This uh device is coming to ATT and Verizon and um. You know um, so I'm not gonna. Be able to use it on my personal phone number Motorola does a lot of device exclusives these days, you know like the edge plus was Verizon exclusive. Last year's racer was Verizon, so they do a lot of Verizon exclusives actually, like, I think, the motor z3 Verizon exclusive, probably even the motor z4. You know they love.

They love Verizon um, this one. I don't think it's available unlocked um. You know the new racer is 18 t and t mobile, and they have an unlocked model like you know, and when there's no, when they don't send me an unlocked model, it makes it super hard to do my job. You know, because I have to carry this around with me, but I also can't put my sim card in like. If I get a phone to review, I want to live in the device like.

I want that's going to be the phone that I carry around for the entire time that I'm reviewing it the only phone I carry around. You know, but that's not the case here. In fact, it can't even be my primary phone because it's not an unlocked device um, you know, Motorola does tend to make it very hard to do my job, probably more than any other uh company that sends out hardware. You know so anyway, let's get this open all right, so this one is blue. This is oxford.

Blue is the color um that might be the only color it comes in. Actually I'm not sure um they. Oh, that's! Actually, quite nice, you know what's what's interesting. They sent me an uh, a Netflix gift card. I don't even know how much it's worth it doesn't say, but they sent a Netflix gift card along with this one, and it's meant to make it easier to uh um.

You know like to test out the display. Here's a little gift that came uh the last. With the last unit that Motorola sent me they. It came with a Spotify gift card, so yeah, that's kind of fun. Take a look at the device here, it's quite nice.

It's uh. It actually kind of reminds me of the edge that had that. That has the rainbow-colored reflections in it. Okay, so we can actually boot this up. In the meantime, it doesn't have a fingerprint sensor on the side.

So that's one thing that it doesn't have is a in-display fingerprint sensor. So it's not the exact same display panel as the edge and edge plus. Well, it's booting up. We take a look at what else is in the box. All right.

I did already try to unlock this device. Sometimes a company sends an ATT unit, and you get lucky, and can unlock it through ATT's portal, but um. That's just not the case here um. So we do have a charger in the box. I don't know what TH there's a two uh yeah, I believe, there's a 20 watt charger.

So maybe that's what this uh means. I don't I don't know it's either 20 or 18. So who knows anyway, uh there's also, obviously a charging cable in here, and we're going to leave this stuff in the box, because why not? I don't think any of it is particularly important. A little of paperwork there all right- and this should be booted up all right, so we're just about ready to go here. I'm just setting this up and there's a bunch of uh app suggestions here that we don't want.

Oh, are you going to make this hard? Okay, um? I don't know if this is from at tor Motorola, but it's bad okay. So I'm guessing it's a t all right! Um transfer content! No, thanks! We have actual services for that got. All this ATT garbage is just garbage. You know, let's set up and transfer. Can I deny this? I'm going to deny this stuff.

It needs the following permissions because we're going to skip it yeah. I mean it's just this. That kind of stuff reminds me of the old days when, like you remember when that, when uh 18th and Verizon had their own uh GPS, apps um, I see this is the other thing. I hate how we have to have tutorials for navigation, because I've used the phone before um, but yeah, okay, but um yeah. These type of remember, like vs Gavin, you have to pay.

You used to have to pay like 9.99 a month and then Google Maps came out. It was free. You know like that stuff like, like to copy your data. Like I understand a lot of people buy a new phone, and they have the salesman help copy their stuff, but, like seriously, you know everything should come over, like your contacts and your photos just come over from your Google account, it shouldn't be that deep and like that's how it works here. All my phone numbers and stuff are already on here and stuff.

You know the motor app like. I said this is good stuff over here. This is where Motorola keeps all their additional features and, of course we want to turn off uh notifications because that's a brutal, sound um but yeah so uh. This is probably my favorite part of Motorola phones because they keep their it's. It's not bloatware.

They keep it simple. You know it's. It stays out of your way. Unless you want it, you know, so we have stuff, like motor actions, motor display. You know this app actually started out with motor voice, which was a thing back when google on Motorola, and it was so good that was back before Google Assistant.

You know back when, like Google had Google now, and they didn't really have a real voice assistant, they had um Motorola had motor voice. It was so good. It also had uh early iterations of far field voice recognition. So you could say that, like okay, Moto X, you know good night, and then it would put your phone on do not disturb until the morning when you would say: okay Moto X, good morning, yeah and then it would turn it was. It was perfect, but then Google Assistant came out and motor voice kind of became a shell of what it once wasn't went away so back to what we actually have here.

Motor actions. This is some. You know um little shortcuts flip for do not disturb pick up for silence, which is a good one. By the way when you, when the ringer is on you pick it up, and it's it stops ringing. You know um, but so that that's I like that one, because I hate ringtones, any and all ringtones.

I think all I think all phones should be set to vibrate by default, and you know you should be forced to use them on vibrate all the time um you know. So you see there's a bunch of different. You know actions here, lift to unlock. Look at that's a facial recognition at the bottom. There uh we got motor display, which is some good stuff, there's not a lot there, but that peak display is useful.

It's almost like an always on display, but it kind of fades in and out it's its it's cool um, and then we have motor game time, which is actually also pretty good. If we go into settings down here, this is a bunch of stuff. I hit the wrong thing. It's not that maybe it's under learn more, but it gives you easy access to um to tools and settings that enhance your gaming experience right, there's the toolkit so that pops up when you're playing games. I believe it also blocks notifications, something that's also super useful.

When you're playing games, that's all the stuff in the motor, app and the best part about the motor app is that it just keeps all this stuff out of settings which settings are not where you want this stuff to show up and that's what, where pretty much every other OEM puts it. You see we do have a lot of ATT. Bloatware um, boom beach bubble, island 2. I, if I'm not mistaken, some of this stuff was suggested as an app to install, and I did uncheck those boxes but um yeah. That's that's what we got, and we're going to uninstall.

Oh, wait! Oh, wait! No, surely we could drag it so, okay, a lot of other a lot of other phones. Obviously just have that pop-up to say uninstall it. Sometimes it gets a little confusing going between different phones. ATT pro tech, ATT cloud, ATT, smart bleacher report call protect DC universe, device help got conquest, I guess that's Game of Thrones NBA, my a t, mobile security, Pluto TV setup and transfer visual voicemail, shutter fly, Trulia um. I believe HBO Max.

That might actually be something. I had great big story. I think 1 800 flowers, AMC theaters, that's all the bloatware that you have on this device. So Motorola does a lot of work to keep bloatware off the device and then ATT just goes and screws it all up for him. Wow, look at all that garbage and man I mean you know you just want to spend a lot of time getting rid of all of it.

Um. You know when you uh, when you set up the device, but that's uh, that's ATT for you and that's why I prefer an unlocked device, even if I'm buying uh, you know, even if it's available for my carrier, which this phone is not uh, dual front-facing cameras, which is cool, okay, um, that's always nice. You do get um a wide angle. So it's wait. We have to go through all the pop-ups which are super annoying when you on any camera but yeah.

So you can get the ultra-wide, and then they're better for group shots. But you know if you're a selfie stick type of person that makes a selfie stick a little uh less necessary and then, like I said we have that camera. You know over on the bottom um I should say the rear uh. You have the macro camera, which actually has the ring on it. So now, if I say macro here, we should be able to see it's automatic and this just lights up that that that bottom- and that tells you that's right there.

So that's the ring right on the bottom that you can use to light it up and then just the idea is that when you're, when you're covering something you might be blocking, if you're blocking your light source by having the phone so close to it. That's the whole idea of a macro shot is to have the camera close to it. So now you have that light, and that should light up your subject. That's about it! That's that's the Motorola one 5g, which is an it's a very pretty phone. I do like the idea of the ring around the macro camera, although I can't say that I often use a macro center.

A macro sensor is as many macro shots as I end up taking but um, so that that'll be interesting to play around with and test that, and of course you have that 48 megapixel main sensor that has quad pixel technology. So that's uh it. So you get a 12 megapixel image, and it combines four pixels into one and uh. You get better low-light performance for that, so you know decent camera setup, uh and really what this is all about again, 5g for under 500. It's funny.

This actually just says uh cellular network not available for voice calls um. So maybe did they actually send me a phone, that's not activated on a network. I don't use um, like I said out of all the companies that send hardware Motorola makes it the hardest for me to do my job but um. You know I'll, I'll sort that out so anyway, guys I'll have a review on this um pass. I suppose, in about a week when, when the reviews embargo lifts, so I'll have more than so stay tuned guys.

I'm rich from Edwin have a great night.

Source : Neowin