Motorola has announced the latest version of its budget Moto G Power smartphone, which keeps the $199.99 starting price point and three-day battery life, but with additional camera, display, and spec improvements.
The new Moto G Power (which I’m referring to as the 2022 model for sanity’s sake, especially considering that it’ll be out sometime in “the coming months”) has a lot in common with the company’s previous model released earlier this year. The new model looks to improve on most aspects of the device in one way or another, though.
The screen is now slightly smaller, at 6.5 inches instead of 6.6 inches, but adds a faster 90Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling. RAM has been bumped up from 3GB to 4GB, and the two storage tiers have been doubled to 64GB and 128GB for $199.99 and $249.99, respectively.
Motorola has also slotted in a new processor, switching away from the Snapdragon 662 processor in last year’s model to a MediaTek Helio G37, which should provide better performance and power efficiency. The star of the spec sheet, however, is still the massive 5,000mAh battery which, while still the same size as last year, also makes the same promise of three days of use off a single charge.
Lastly, there’s the new camera system, which has a new 50-megapixel main sensor, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor on the back for adding blurred bokeh effects to shots. There’s also an 8-megapixel front facing camera (which has been centered again) with a new “Dual Capture” feature that lets you shoot with both the front and rear cameras at the same time.
Motorola isn’t announcing specific release information for the new Moto G Power at this time. We do know that it’ll be coming first to Republic Wireless and Metro by T-Mobile sometime “in the coming months,” before becoming more broadly available at Verizon, AT&T, Google Fi, Boost, Xfinity Mobile, US Cellular, and Cricket. It’ll also be sold unlocked at Best Buy, Amazon, and Motorola’s website sometime in “early 2022.”
