Motorola Defy 2021
In a world of broken screens and cracked backs, this rugged phone may just be perfect for your needs
SCORE ★★★★ PRICE £233 (£279 inc VAT) from motorolarugged.com
More than a decade has passed since the Motorola Defy stormed onto a nascent smartphone market. The first of its kind, the Defy was a compact, rugged smartphone with the unusual ability to shrug off the bumps and scrapes of everyday life.
Despite many plaudits for its rugged design, phones like the Defy haven’t taken off. Sure, we’ve seen the occasional hardy handset from construction firm Cat, and Motorola itself has attempted to revive the idea of a rugged handset with its Force range; but these faded into history as well.
With the relaunch of the longdormant Defy brand, could Motorola finally persuade customers that rugged smartphones are cool again?
■ Hard as nails
The first question to ask is whether the Defy still has a place in 2021. In a market stuffed with sleek, all-screen, glass-sandwiched handsets, the Defy’s rough, rugged exterior stands out like a bodybuilder at an accountancy convention.
But, of course, that’s for good reason. Not only has it achieved both IP68 and MIL-SPEC-810H certifications, but it’s also quoted as being able to survive extreme temperatures between 55°C and -25°C, as well as repeated drops from heights of up to 1.8m onto a steel surface. Motorola achieves this via a partnership with rugged electronics brand Bullitt. The Defy has a “dual-sealed body housing”, which means the phone is wrapped in two casings: the inner casing is fully waterproof, helping the phone withstand dunks in up to 1.5m of water for 35 minutes, while the outer is designed for impact protection.
That’s not all. Motorola says that the Defy has a structurally reinforced PCB on the inside, and the screen is coated in a 0.7mm layer of Gorilla Glass Victus.
A lot of attention has clearly been paid to the Defy’s overall design, too. It’s made of plastic, but the crisscross textured rear has plenty of grip, while the central fingerprint sensor is located in a suitable position.
I particularly like the lanyard loop at the bottom-left corner, allowing you to attach it to a bag or your wrist for extra security. The bonus, programmable button on the right
edge is yet another thoughtful touch; this can be assigned to launch a specific app or even used as a push-to-talk button.
The only downside (aside from the inflated price) is that the Defy’s drop-friendly exterior adds a noticeable amount of weight and thickness to the handset. At 232g, the Defy is heavier than most non-rugged phones and its 10.9mm thickness means it feels a lump in the hand as well.
■ Muted display
The rest of the Defy’s attributes aren’t much different than what we typically see from Motorola’s budget smartphones. This starts with the display, which beneath that rough, tough exterior is a bog-standard 6.5in, 720 x 1,600 IPS panel.
Unfortunately, it’s not much to look at. Despite three display modes to select from in the phone’s settings, they all offer pretty much the same viewing experience. The most colour accurate of the three (but only just) is the phone’s “Natural” setting, which covers a disappointing 89% of the sRGB colour gamut, with a total volume of 97% and an average Delta E colour difference score of 2.31.
Overall, colours look muted. Maximum brightness is also on the weak side, with a measured peak luminance of 399cd/m2 , which isn’t ideal for an outdoorsy phone.
■ Mid-range speed
An equally humdrum Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor powers the Defy, alongside 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, which can be expanded up to an extra 512GB if you insert a microSD card.
This delivers largely the same level of performance as the £180 Moto G9 Power ( see issue 318, p72), which employs the same combo of core hardware. Android 10 feels nippy but compared with the £279 Google Pixel 4a ( see issue 313, p60) and the £249 OnePlus Nord N10 ( see issue 317, p65), the Defy lags behind, as the Geekbench 5 graphs above show.
The same goes for gaming performance. The embedded Adreno 610 GPU did a good job with the older GFXBench Manhattan 3 onscreen test, returning an average frame rate of 33fps, but struggled with the newer, more demanding, Car Chase benchmark, chugging along at only 13fps.
Motorola would no doubt argue that a fairer comparison is with Cat phones, and the Cat S42 is the cheapest of the bunch at £229. It isn’t in the same league as the Moto Defy, however, since it uses a weaker quad-core MediaTek Helio A20 chipset with only 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (we haven’t tested this ourselves, but online results show Geekbench 5 scores of around 125 and 450).
The good news is that the Defy’s battery life is excellent, with the chunky 5,000mAh battery helping the phone last 20hrs 54mins in our video-rundown test. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to squeeze two days’ worth of runtime from this phone with conservative use.
■ Solid cameras
The Motorola Defy has a triple-camera array on the rear, which consists of a main 48MP (f/1.8) camera and a pair of 2MP (f/2.4) macro and depth-sensing units. The absence of an ultra-wide-angle lens is unusual, especially when you consider that the Moto G30 has one and it costs £130 less.
Still, what you do get isn’t bad for the money. The main camera captures 16MP pixel-binned images by default and images snapped in well-lit environments are packed with intricate details. The colour palette is nice and neutral, too, and I was impressed with the phone’s blurred background portrait images. As a final plus, the phone’s HDR option is effective at taming overly bright highlights
The Defy isn’t as good in dark conditions, however. Images are noisy and there’s a noticeable drop in detail.
There isn’t much in the way of video options, either, since the Defy is limited to Full HD at either 30fps or 60fps.
■ Slam-dunker?
The Motorola Defy is no ordinary handset. It can take one heck of a beating and if that’s the sort of smartphone you’re looking for then there’s no better place to spend your money. It has an impressive battery life, too, and looks that set it apart from most rivals.
Whether you decide to buy a Defy or not, therefore, is entirely dependent on whether you can stomach its many compromises. With uninspiring internals for the money, a so-so camera array and a bang-average display, it’s far from being a slam-dunk of a recommendation.
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 2GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chipset 4GB RAM Adreno 610 graphics 6.5in IPS screen, 720 x 1,600 resolution 64GB storage microSD slot triple 48MP/2MP/2MP rear cameras 8MP front camera Wi-Fi 5 Bluetooth 5 NFC 3.5mm audio USB-C 5,000mAh battery Android 10 78 x 10.9 x 170mm (WDH) 232g 2yr warranty
“It can take one heck of a beating and, if that’s the sort of phone you’re looking for then there’s no better place to spend your money”