We have been huge fanboys of Motorola phones since its inception in India, more than two decades ago. The Moto RAZR series was one of our favorite at the time and no one came close to it when it boiled down to premium looks and thin bezels. Couple of decades later the game has changed and smartphones have taken over the world. Moto too has changes its strategy, but has seen some turbulent times. They recently launched the Moto G6 in India, after its debut in Brazil. We ran our usual tests on this smartphone and this is how it fared on our review bench.

Design and blueprint

Let’s start with the aesthetics. The Moto G6 is inspired by the Moto X4, you will find a lot of similarities between the two starting from the watch dial like dual camera cluster at the back to the all glass rear panel and curved edge design. Being inspired sometimes is taken in the negative sense, but in this case it is good. Since the worthy stuff from the more expensive Moto X4 has come down to the budget smartphone Moto G6.

Dressed in midnight blue, the Moto G6 sports an aluminum band around the edges, which has the power button and volume rocker key on the right, a curved dual SIM tray on top and USB type C charging port along with a 3.5 mm audio jack at the bottom. There is no speaker grille on this mobile, you ask why? Because the ear piece doubles up as the loud speaker. This is both a good and bad thing, you can enjoy media better with a front firing speaker, but at the same time chances of it getting ruined are higher and your call quality might go down.

The front of the smartphone has a large 5.7-inch display with 75.4 percent screen to body ratio. This is accompanied by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which protects it from dust and thuds. The touchscreen is FHD+ (1080×2160 pixels resolution) and has an aspect ratio of 18:9 with 424 ppi density. On top of the screen users will also find couple of sensors like the proximity one, under the screen the company has placed its logo and a haptic touch sensitive button.

Users can enable the one touch button control, after which the bottom nav bar on the screen disappears. So, how does one navigate then? By using finger gestures on this haptic button. For example, to go back to the previous page on the browser you can swipe left on the button. Swipe right and the OS will show the list of open apps.

Performance, camera and features

This is a place where Moto G6 left us with a mixed bag of feelings. While we loved the camera performance, sound quality and the excellent display, there was the occasional speed issue with the device that was off-putting. But first, let’s talk about its specifications. The Moto G6 comes in two variants one with 3GB RAM and 32 GB storage, and the other with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. We were using the 4 GB RAM version.

With it the device has Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 Octa core SoC supporting 1.8GHz clock speed. Graphics are powered by Adreno 506 chipset and the Moto G6 runs Android 8.0 not 8.1 like the other devices in this price bracket. The memory can be upgraded by up to 256GB using a microSD card and the phone has two nano SIM slots with it. Everything on paper seems fine, except that eye hurting Snapdragon 450 CPU. Frankly, in this price range its competition has much better chipset options.

Because of the same, we experienced occasional slowdowns while switching between apps and when browsing (when multiple tabs are open). Graphical game performance is not super either. Yes, the display does full justice to the device, but you cannot play graphic hungry games like PUBG on it properly. We ran the AnTuTu benchmark on it, where it scored just 61,496 points. On Geekbench 4’s compute test it got only 2,295 points, while on the multi-core CPU test it got 3,147 marks. All of it showcase subpar performance.

Moving past that, there are some good features of the smartphone besides its superior looks. We loved the movie watching experience on it and it got better with the ear plugs that come in the box. The cameras work well with the rear powered by a 12MP primary plus 5MP secondary sensor that adds depth (bokeh effect). They are just a step behind the competition, but do have features that will give the opposition a run for its money. One in particular we loved is the spot colour mode, where the user can select a colour on screen and only that colour stays and rest of the picture turns grayscale.

The shots during the day were nice and crisp, in low-light or at night the edges did lose some of its sheen. Videos too were bright and nice, but we have defiantly seen better from the Honor’s and Xiaomi’s in this price bracket. Front camera is powered by a 16MP sensor with LED flash. This the company says is one of Moto G6’s main features. The images here are good and become better when using the LED flash. The front camera can also record video at 1080p. A better resolution is always favoured these days on social networks and the Moto G6 front camera delivered a good close to life colour experience for that.

Battery lasted for more than 22 hours for us, even though it has just 3,000 mAh of it. We used the phone nominally with mixed use of WiFi and 4G. Our usage also included playing few YouTube videos during the day, voice calls and a game or two here and there. For heavy users the battery life will drop further, but keep the charger handy as it can turbo charge the phone in minutes.

The Moto G6 comes with Android 8.0 not 8.1 on it. Which does not take away from the experience, but one would want the absolute latest in terms of OS when buying a new device. Moto actions do play house in this smartphone and all the lovely features come here. Like a quick twist of the hand opens the camera app and if you chop twice the torch is enabled. Also, if you want to take a screen shot just press three fingers on the screen and the device will take a screen grab.

There is no dedicated button for the app drawer on the Moto G6, but one can swipe up on the home screen and the list of apps will be shown. There is no bloatware on it too, which does give it an additional star on our rating sheet.

Verdict and final thoughts

All in all, we liked and disliked the device. We absolutely love how it looks and feels in the hand, even though the rear panel is a fingerprint magnet. We just cannot get over the price bracket it is in and the kind of chipset it offers here. If you are looking for a trendy phone with a great selfie camera and a great screen in a budget, the Moto G6 could be your best buy. But if you are looking for extreme performance, you might want to look elsewhere.

Pros: Good Screen, great looks, decent cameras

Cons: Mediocre performance, Android 8.0

Honor is one brand that has been launching smartphones one after the other, recently. Right after we saw the launch of its flagship Honor 10, the company rolled out two budget smartphones – Honor 7C and 7A. We spent some days with the bigger sibling Honor 7C to see what’s good in it and what all it lacks. Read the rest of our review to find out more about the phone:

Design and Blueprint

We’ll first talk about the design of the smartphone. For a mobile that falls in the budget range, the look and feel of the phone is very pleasing.  Honor 7C has premium looks, with a metal back panel and a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS LCD display and 2.5D curved glass dominating the front.  Above and below the display are the front facing camera and Honor branding, respectively.

The phone is very sleek and has a minimalistic design. It comes without any antenna lines on the metallic back-panel, which also has the Honor branding on it. The back panel of the smartphone also sports dual cameras and a fingerprint sensor. The top and bottom inserts on the back panel are made of plastic, but that doesn’t hamper the looks of this device in any manner.

Honor 7C comes in three colour options – Black, Blue and Gold – and the one that we got for review was dressed in Blue.  We are really impressed with the build quality of the smartphone and it feels solid to hold. In spite of this, the phone is not very heavy at 164g and one-handed usage is not a problem at all.

The side edges of the smartphone are where the SIM card and microSD card slots along with the volume rocker keys are placed. The bottom edge stocks the 3.5mm jack, microUSB port and speaker grille.

Coming to the display of Honor 7C, the smartphone sports a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS LCD screen and has an aspect ratio of 18:9. Although we were thoroughly impressed by the design of the smartphone, the same cannot be said about the display. There were a few good points, but some things were just average. The colour reproduction was accurate and vibrant, but we found the display to be reflective. We have seen phones with better sunlight readability.  On the upside, viewing angles were just right. Considering that most of its competitors have a full HD display, it was also slightly disappointing to see Honor 7C to come with just a HD+ touchscreen.

In a nutshell, Honor 7C’s display left us with mixed feelings and we felt it definitely could have been better.

Performance, Camera and Features

Before we begin speaking about Honor 7C’s performance, we’ll take a minute to take you through its specifications. The Honor 7C is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor and comes in two storage variants – 3GB RAM/32GB onboard storage and 4GB RAM/64GB internal storage. The one that we are using is packed with 4GB RAM. Users can add a microSD card of up to 256GB, too. Coming to think of it, Honor 7C and 7A are first smartphones from the company to ditch its Kirin processors. For imaging duties, there is a 13MP+2MP dual rear camera setup and an 8MP selfie camera.

The smartphone houses a 3,000mAh battery and runs Android 8.0 Oreo skinned with EMUI 8.0. The software of the smartphone is extremely feature rich and some interesting ones include the ability to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile network automatically. The smartphone does so by detecting which network is stronger. There is a Ride Mode for those who travel on motorcycles, too. Over that, a number of things can be done via the fingerprint sensor including answering phone calls, taking photos, videos and stopping your alarm clock.

While these were some things that we liked, one thing that we really didn’t was bloatware. And Honor 7C has plenty of it. There are a number of gaming apps on it and the phone also has Truecaller, UC Browser and Netflix pre-installed.

Coming to the performance, the smartphone was good in performing daily tasks. We used multiple tabs of Chrome and opened various apps to put the phones multi-tasking ability to work. Honor 7C mostly performed well, although we did encounter an occasional lag in launching some heavy gaming apps, but it was negligible. We observed a delay only in launching these apps; the functioning was not affected by it.

One thing we liked a lot about the Honor 7C is that it did not heat up even once, even when we were gaming or browsing the net for a long while. The smartphone from Honor survived all kinds of games – from Super Mario to Asphalt 8. We just loved the experience.

But, the best thing about Honor 7C is definitely its Face Unlock feature. It worked instantly each and every time without any exceptions. It is a feature we were thoroughly impressed with.

We were quite happy with the battery life of the smartphone, too. It lasted us an entire day in spite of usage that included watching YouTube videos, using Maps for navigation and social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. If your usage isn’t heavy, it can last you more than that.

Skipping over to the calling experience. The call quality of the smartphone was good. We never encountered a problem with making or receiving calls even in areas like elevators and basements.

As for the cameras of this smartphone, they mostly just did an average job. The colours seemed slightly dull in most pictures and the objects seemed abnormally sharp. Shots taken at night were particularly unclear and grainy; the ones during the day weren’t bad but looked like they could do with some improvement.

The case was similar with the selfie shooter. The shots taken during well-lit conditions were decent enough, but the ones taken in low lit conditions were not up to the mark.

We ran a few benchmark tests on Honor 7C. It scored 782 and 3,989 in single and multi-core scores of Geekbench 4 and got 70,506 in Antutu benchmark test. Both showcasing decent performance when it comes to this segment of smartphones.

Verdict and Final Thoughts
Honor 7C has its ups and downs. The design is sleek, the built is solid and the battery is long lasting. The bloatware and the average cameras are the downsides of the phone. At a price of Rs 11,999, the smartphone is a decent buy, but we have seen other smartphones in the same price range like Xiaomi Redmi 5 and Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 that are better when it comes to overall performance.

Pros – Good built and design, Accurate face unlock, Lasting battery
Cons – Bloatware, Cameras