Motorola G31 4/64GB - Mineral Grey

Product Information

Low-light pictures are very good. Sure, there’s an increase in visual noise and the colours look a little warm, but I liked what I saw – the Nokia G21’s comparatively soft, watercolour-like nighttime images don’t look good at all. Video capture is sadly limited to 1080p at 30fps and there’s no form of stabilisation whatsoever, meaning footage looks quite wobbly. Motorola Moto G22 review: Verdict Finally, the main camera, while decent enough in good lighting, can’t handle night photography, and is saddled with a pretty weak macro secondary lens. Still, if battery life is the most important thing to you, the Moto G53 5G has it in spades, and the negatives are few enough to be forgivable at this price. This isn't really a phone for multitasking, but it can do it in a bind. Similarly, heavy-duty gaming can take a while to get going, and the phone can get quite hot when doing so, but it works. It's possible to buy the Moto G31 in either 64GB or 128GB varieties, with the latter costing a modest amount more. Battery life Even without these benchmark figures, the Moto G22 feels sluggish in use. The onscreen keyboard struggled to keep pace with what I was typing, and scrolling the settings menu in the camera app was an infuriatingly juddery experience.

In the market for a new smartphone? Consider the newly launched iPhone 15–the latest addition to the range. The iPhone 14 is also a great option for people who want hi-end tech for creating videos and managing their work. Apple has brought some of the great features of previous iPhone models and made them even better. With a rear camera with 12 megapixels, a 6.1 inch display, and up to 20 hours of battery life, it's an excellent choice if you're looking to upgrade. Or how about the iPhone 14 Pro? With an innovative dynamic island, 48 Megapixels and fast A16 Bionic chip, this iPhone is sure to give you the best of media and technology. The phone's 6.4-inch AMOLED display looks bright and vibrant most of the time, even if it misses out on having a refresh rate any higher than 60Hz. The rest of the build is fairly standard, with volume, power, and a fingerprint reader all on the right edge of the phone. Of course, as you’d expect in this price range, there are some compromises. First of all, as much as the battery life impressed, so too did the charging speeds underwhelm, with the bundled 10W charger needing around two hours to take the battery from empty to full. The display’s 720p resolution feels a little dated, too, but it is at least paired with a zippy 120Hz refresh rate. In our Geekbench 5 tests, the Moto G31 achieved a single-core score of 345, which is pretty low but beats the likes of the ageing Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. The multi-core score was slightly better sounding at 1,311, but could still only beat the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. In terms of brands, users of Android phones have the luxury of choice. The devices of two notable companies, Samsung and Google, are hugely popular options. The Google Pixel is renowned for taking great quality photos and comes with Google Assistant and Chrome OS. Amongst Google phones are the Google Pixel 7 Pro and Google Pixel 7a which allow 5G connectivity and an incredible storage stage up to 256 GB. The range of Samsung phones is vast, with the Samsung S21, Samsung S21 Ultra 5G, Samsung S21 +5G, and Samsung A12s as their offering. Amongst many improvements, this has an increased battery life and are 5G enabled. Some options also have PowerShare, which lets you use your phone as a wireless charging pad. More SIM free phonesLike the Flip 5, the Razr 40 Ultra also gets a new full-size external display, but once again, the Motorola gets the better deal. The 3.6in AMOLED panel has a stronger 1,066 x 1,056 resolution and a much faster 144Hz refresh rate. Not everything gets an update, and using last year’s processor sees the Razr 40 Ultra fall behind in performance speeds, but otherwise, this is Motorola’s best flip phone yet, and one of the best you can get on the market at large. Compared to the Nokia G21, I prefer the overall look of the Moto’s images. There’s a smidge more detail and less handshake blur, while the colour capture is a bit more refined. The Nokia’s images had a bit of an orange tint to them, too, which I didn’t like. Fellow Motorola phone, the Moto G9 Power, comes in about the same at 311 and 1,371, but it's also older. The Moto G31 uses the MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, which is fine. Just plain old fine. It's supported by 4GB of RAM so it's far from a speedy phone, but it's also not the slowest either. If you’re after a high-performance phone, this list has better options around the same price, but if you live an outdoorsy life or you’re just a bit clumsy, then the Motorola Defy is a great fit for your day-to-day needs.

The textured plastic body means no risk of fingerprints either, so it looks good no matter how long you've been using it for. A punch-hole at the top of the screen offers up the selfie camera lens, but it truly takes up the bare minimum of space - it's literally just the lens. The triple rear camera consists of a 50 MP main camera with f/1.8 aperture, an 8 MP ultra-wide f/2.2, and a 2 MP f/2.4 macro lens. Up front you get a 13 MP selfie camera with f/2.2 aperture. Reviewers have called the macro lens "useless". The wide-angle works in a pinch for group selfies. The main camera takes decent shots under good lighting conditions. It doesn't have optical image stabilisation, but it is equipped with phase detection autofocus. It offers a Night Mode as well, but this is far from spectacular. Budget Phones UKOne saving grace is that the battery life remains unchanged. Lasting for a total of 21hrs 36mins in our video rundown test, the Moto G22 is the longest-lasting phone we’ve tested at this price recently, beating the Galaxy A13 by over two hours and the Nokia G21 by over four in the same test. The Moto G31 comes with Android 11 as standard and is fairly bloat free. The only additions here are Motorola's Moto Actions - which are often-useful gesture controls, and a few other minor tweaks, but the additions are easy enough to ignore and don't take up much space.

The Moto G22 has a quad-camera array, made up of a main 50MP (f/1.8) unit, 8MP 118-degree ultrawide and a pair of simple 2MP macro and depth lenses. The latter three are identical to last year’s Moto G10, with the only upgrade being the main 50MP sensor (up from 48MP). A single 16MP camera sits on the front of the phone. But then there are the downsides. The biggest problem is that the Moto G22’s performance is actually worse than the previous model, but the colour issues with the display shouldn’t be excused, either. As you can see, graphical performance is a bit hit and miss, too. With a standardised 1080p resolution offscreen, the Moto G31 is marginally better than the Moto G30, but there’s again very little in it, and it’s still leagues behind the Nokia G50, Realme 7 and Poco X3 NFC. It’s a familiar story in terms of graphics processing, too. The Moto G22 squeezed out an average frame rate of just 17fps in the onscreen portion of the GFXBench Manhattan 3 test, which is a staggering 41% less than last year’s model. Something really has gone awry here. But this doesn’t tell the full story. There’s a slight but noticeable delay between pressing the shutter and the camera snapping, which can prove frustrating with timings, and this also makes it pretty easy to get blurry images, too.The Moto G22 also makes the jump to a MediaTek Helio G37 processor, replacing the Snapdragon 450 of last year’s Moto G10. This is accompanied by 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, a large 5,000mAh battery and a quadruple-camera array on the rear. This consists of a main 50MP sensor, 8MP ultrawide and a pair of 2MP depth and macro units. Meanwhile, a single 16MP selfie camera sits on the front. Performance is similarly sluggish. The Moto G31 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset with 4GB of RAM, and while it's not the slowest of phones out there it's still woeful if you expect too much of it. The Moto G31 managed nearly a full day of looped video in our standardised test, and while none of the handsets we’re comparing it to is exactly weak on the stamina front, it’s a clear win for the Moto if battery is most important for you. Motorola Moto G31 review: Camera There are two ways of painting the results above. On one hand, while it’s marginally slower on the multicore benchmark, there’s not enough in it that you’d actively notice the difference between the two. Despite that, there's a certain sense of reliability to the Moto G31. It certainly won't wow you but if you're looking for a cheap and competent phone, it does the job.

The ultrawide camera is surprisingly good, although there was a bit of a discrepancy when it comes to light capture. Take a look at the side-by-side image below: the main camera looks overcast, while the ultrawide looks like it was taken on a completely different day – both images were taken seconds apart. Our colorimeter confirms the huge improvement, measuring 92.6% of the sRGB gamut covered with a volume of 93.5% and an average Delta E (colour variance) score of 1.46. That means you’re getting a tonally accurate screen for the price, and as it’s OLED you’re also getting infinite contrast, which IPS can’t beat. It’s also over 100cd/m² brighter, at 440cd/m² – which isn’t always what you’d expect from a switch to OLED. But it’s better to do three cameras well than four badly, and the specs of the Moto G31’s setup are still pretty promising. The main 50MP camera features an f/1.8 aperture, and it’s supported by a 8MP wide lens with a f/2.2 sensor. The final 2MP lens is for macro photography, and while the specification sounds limited, in truth it’s not the kind of thing you’re likely to use much.There's also minimal water resistance, with a mere IPX2 rating meaning you don't want it anywhere near water if you can help it. Display Night Mode, Macro, HDR, Panorama, Portrait Mode, Pro Mode, AI Features, Smile Detection, Burst Mode, Slow Motion, Time Lapse Yet again, I’m impressed with the Moto G22’s images. In well-lit environments, you’ve got a camera that can take decent, detailed pictures. Just take a look at this image of a particularly moody cat. There’s a lot to like here, with plenty of fur detail, and the eyes, in particular, are captured beautifully. The Moto G31 has a battery of 5,000mAh, which means it lasts a good couple of days without too much trouble, unless you're using it a lot. It’s not all bad, though. Battery life is truly astonishing, which makes us think that the MediaTek processor must be remarkably more energy-efficient.