Moto G9 Play
This minor upgrade on the G8 is only notable for its battery life boost, NFC and slightly cheaper price
SCORE
PRICE £133 (£160 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
Covid-19 hasn’t interrupted Motorola’s usual barrage of phone launches. Landing just six months after the Moto G8, the G9 Play improves on its predecessor with an upgraded Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor, the addition of NFC and a £20 drop in price.
It’s also tweaked the design, with the rear cameras now neatly situated in a square in the top-centre of the phone, with a circular fingerprint reader sitting underneath. I also like the two new colour choices on offer. I was sent the “Sapphire Blue” model for review, which has a subtle gradient finish that changes from a dark blue to a lighter hue from the edges of the handset towards the middle. There’s also a “Forest Green” variant, which is just as eye-catching.
On the front of the phone, the G9 Play has a simple teardrop notch nibbling its way into the top-centre portion of the screen, which houses the 8-megapixel selfie camera. The 6.5in screen is mostly bezel-free, with slim black bars across the top and side edges, although there’s a chunky chin bezel at the bottom. The handset’s dimensions are rather brutish too, with the 9.2mm thickness and 200g heft presumably a result of its huge 5,000mAh battery and large display.
The hardy construction is reminiscent of much pricier handsets, with minimal flex or bending when under pressure. Note, though, that the G9 Play doesn’t have a protective layer of Gorilla Glass on the front or back, nor does it have any official IP-rated dust or water ingress protection.
The display feels dated. With Full HD the norm in similarly priced handsets from Xiaomi, Realme and Samsung, the G9 Play stretches a 720 x 1,600 resolution across a 6.5in screen. This IPS panel covers 84% of the sRGB gamut in the phone’s “Natural” display setting, with a total volume of o 90%. Colour accuracy is fine, with an average Delta E of 2.65, but I’d have liked a higher peak brightness than 376cd/m².
The two other display modes on offer – “Saturated” and “Boosted” – tinker with the vibrancy of certain colour tones, but these are too saturated and candy-coloured for my tastes. One saving grace, however, is that the G9 Play’s contrast ratio is excellent at 1,999:1.
A Snapdragon 662 chipset powers the phone, which is almost identical to the Snapdragon 665 inside the G8. Both are eight-core processors clocked at 2GHz and it was no surprise when they delivered almost identical scores in benchmarks – especially as they share 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage.
In Geekbench 5’s CPU tests the two were inseparable: the G9 Play scored 288 in the single-core test compared to 311 from the G8, with the roles reversed in the multicore test: 1,357 versus 1,314. That’s significantly faster than the Samsung Galaxy A21s ( see issue 312, p72). What’s most important, though, is launching apps felt snappy and I didn’t run into any problems when navigating menus or switching between applications.
“Battery life is where the Moto G9 Play truly shines: it lasted 19hrs 46mins in our test, an 8% improvement on the Moto G8”
It’s a similar story in gaming benchmarks, nchmarks, with GFXBench Manhattan nhattan 3 returning an onscreen screen rate of 33fps. Thanks to the e phone’s low-resolution 720p display, play, most games on the Google Play ay store should run fine. Battery life e is where this phone truly shines: nes: it lasted 19hrs 46mins in our r video-rundown test, an 8% improvement provement on the G8 – albeit three ree hours less than the A21s and the e G8 Power ( see issue 308, p68).
The camera “upgrades” over the G8 are more debatable. This trio comprises mprises a 48-megapixel (f/1.7) main ain unit complemented by a 2-megapixel megapixel (f/2.4) macro and 2-megapixel megapixel (f/2.4) depth-sensing unit. it. That depth sensor replaces the e Moto G8’s wide-angle camera, which hich is a shame: the option to squeeze ueeze more into a frame is surely more ore beneficial than marginal gains ns achieved by a depth sensor.
Note the main camera takes 12-megapixel megapixel still images via a process ocess called “pixel binning” and there’s ere’s no option to capture a full 48-megapixel -megapixel image. Provided you’re u’re graced with plenty of light, images look lovely for the price, with plenty of detail and neutral-looking colours. The G9 Play isn’t great at judging exposure levels, however, and I often had to use the onscreen exposure slider to boost brightness. Low-light performance is below par, with a noticeable amount of visual noise and a distractingly warm hue.
The macro unit allows you to get four times closer to your subject than the regular lens and it’s fun to use, but results are variable. Video fans should look away: the G9 Play can only record footage at up to 1080p resolution at 30fps and there’s no option to record at 60fps or higher resolutions. At least the video is fully stabilised.
With respectable performance, subtle design changes, a slightly improved battery life and the return of NFC, the G9 Play is a solid upgrade on the G8 and an attractive budget phone. Yet, it doesn’t stand out in a crowded field – and if you only recently picked up a G8, you aren’t missing out on much here.
SPECIFICATIONS
Octa-core 2GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 4GB RAM Adreno 610 graphics 6.5in IPS screen, 720 x 1,600 resolution 64GB storage microSD slot triple 48/2/2-megapixel rear camera 8-megapixel front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C connector 5,000mAh battery Android 10 76 x 9.2 x 165mm (WDH) 200g 1yr warranty