Motorola Moto G100 review: A capable mid-range 5G phone with desktop aspirations Review | ZDNet

Motorola’s Moto G handsets occupy a broad swathe of the low end of the smartphone market, but the Moto G100 is something of a step up. With a Snapdragon 870 5G SoC, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a price tag of £449.99 (inc. VAT), this is definitely a mid-range handset. The Moto G100 also comes with a dock that’ll hold the phone in either portrait or landscape mode, which gives it potential for desktop viewing, including use in video calls, and a USB-C-to-HDMI cable. 

The Moto G100 is available in selected Latin American and European markets (at €499.99), but has not been released in the US. 

Motorola has given the Moto G100 an eye-catching colour scheme, with the colour-reflecting back shifting between shades of blue and purple on my Iridescent Ocean review unit. A more sedate Iridescent Sky finish is also available. 

The four cameras at the back are housed in a slightly raised square lozenge on the left side, with three of the lenses surrounded by a turquoise frame. The back is less slippery than some, although it did slide off the arm of my sofa during testing.  

This is a big handset with a 6.7-inch screen sitting inside sizeable bezels all around. It measures 168.38mm tall by 73.97mm wide by 9.69mm thick, weighs 207g, and the screen-to-body ratio is a moderate 84.2%. 

The fingerprint sensor is incorporated into the power button on the right edge, which also houses a fairly small volume rocker. The left edge has a button that calls up Google Assistant, and there’s a 3.5mm headset jack alongside the USB-C charge port on the bottom edge. If you’re looking for protection against water and dust, you won’t find it here: on its website, Motorola says the G100 has a ‘water repellent design’, but there’s no formal IP rating. 

The bundled dock and HDMI cable come as part of Motorola’s new Ready For system, which is focused on sending the handset’s screen to a monitor and using Bluetooth to connect external devices such as keyboard, mouse or game controller. You can also use the handset’s screen as a touchpad to control an app running on an external monitor. Motorola suggests you can use your handset for mainstream productivity tasks, although more realistic use cases include video calling, screen sharing and media catch-up, rather than serious application-based work. 

The dock also has a much less sophisticated but important use: with the Moto G100 docked, incoming messages, rolling content,  even your social feeds, are all easy to view. The dock itself, while plastic, feels robust.

The 6.7-inch IPS screen has a 90Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2,520 by 1,080 pixels (409ppi). It’s sharp and bright, and perfectly good for watching video. The only downside is the two punch-holes that house the front-facing cameras on the upper right edge: the surrounds for both lenses are large, and very distracting.  

The phone can accommodate two SIMs, or one SIM and one MicroSD card. There’s 128GB of internal storage, 18GB of which is used out of the box, leaving 110GB free. The chipset is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 870 5G, with 8GB of RAM. Under Geekbench 5 this platform scored 969 (single core) and 2889 (multi core), which is par for the mid-range course in terms of CPU performance. 

The PCMark for Android Work 3.0 Battery Life test kept the 5,000mAh hour battery going for 12 hours and 28 minutes which is respectable. And when I asked the phone to stream YouTube video continuously for three hours it dropped 24% from a 100% charge, again suggesting battery life of around 12.5h. 

These tests were with the handset dynamically adjusting the screen’s refresh rate. If you force it to stay at 90Hz, battery life will suffer. All-day life may still be achievable, but if you habitually run demanding apps, including games, then daytime battery boosts might be needed. 

The Moto G100 has two front cameras: 16MP f/2.2 wide-angle and 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide angle (118°). Switching between the two is a simple matter of tapping an on-screen icon below the screen viewfinder, and the ultra-wide-angle lens certainly gets a lot more subject matter in. It’s nice to have more selfie options, despite the distraction of the two lens cut-outs in the screen.

The four rear cameras are: 64MP f/1.7 wide angle; 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide angle (117°); a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor; and a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor. Test shots were bright and well within the acceptable range for point-and-shoot. There’s nothing spectacular here, but photos are perfectly passable.

Motorola doesn’t go in for bloatware on its handsets, and extras are mostly limited to specific tweaks accessed via a single Moto app. This allows you to set up gesture controls, personalise gaming settings, set wallpapers and so on. You can play around with what’s on offer, but if you’re just interested in using the handset ‘as is’ out of the box, the Moto app is easily ignored.  

Conclusions 

The Moto G100is a mid-range handset that sits atop Motorola’s affordable G range. It supports 5G, has a large screen that’s easy on the eye, the two front cameras add more selfie flexibility than usual, and general use is, as usual with Moto phones, pleasantly free of bloatware. The bundled Ready For dock and HDMI cable should both prove useful too.

The key problem with the Moto G100 isn’t the handset itself, but the competition. The mid-range market is crowded, and there are plenty of alternatives to choose from. None come bundled with a dock and desktop-mode capability, but some might have that little bit of pizazz you’re looking for.

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