There’s no shortage of budget smartphones in a market such as India. While that’s a boon for consumers considering they get a lot of options, it’s also a bane as it becomes difficult to make a choice. Motorola also launched a new budget offering earlier in January, called the Moto G24 Power. Via our review of the smartphone, we’ll let you know whether you should opt for the Moto G24 Power for Rs 8,999 among plethora of other options available in the segment.
Display & Design
The Moto G24 Power sports an all-plastic design except for glass on the front. The ink blue shade we got looks less blue and more grey in some lighting conditions. Overall, it’s a muted colour but matches the minimal design of the handset. The camera array is unified with the back panel itself instead of a separate module like we see in most other devices.
The handset is on the taller side due to which it is narrow, which helps in excellent grip. Due to the plastic design, the handset also feels lightweight. While it may not feel premium, it is definitely a comfortable smartphone to hold and use. It is also IP52 rated so you don’t need to worry about occasional splashes or while using it in rain. The fingerprint integrated power button worked as it should without any issues, as the sensor was able to identify my fingerprint 9 out of 10 times with accuracy.
There’s a stereo speaker setup on the handset with the ‘Dolby Atmos’ branding on the top edge. Surprisingly, they sound quite loud with clear treble and vocals accounting for an impressive experience which I didn’t expect from a smartphone that costs this much. It does lack bass but that’s not much of an issue considering the overall quality of the speakers is excellent.
The display on the front is a 6.5-inch LCD HD+ (1612 x 720 pixels) display with a 90Hz refresh rate. This panel looks decent with colours while the viewing angles are also acceptable. However, there’s a considerable amount of ghosting effect while scrolling which makes it difficult to read text. Also, in terms of brightness, I feel it could have been better outdoors. Motorola also gives you the ability to change the colour tone between Natural and Saturated along with four different modes.
Performance & Software
The Moto G24 Power is powered by the MediaTek Helio G85 Processor paired with up to 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. The top-end model (which we got) is decent with RAM management while the overall performance is strictly average. During our review of the Moto G24 Power, there were lags and glitches across the user interface where the software seemed to be stuttering while opening apps.
It runs on Android 14-based MyUX which is actually a great skin in terms of user interface (as it lies close to Stock Android) and features as well. Motorola has equipped the device with all sorts of gestures, such as its signature chop twice for flashlight or twist twice to turn on camera, double tap to wake screen and more.
There’s also a sidebar feature that contains the apps you choose so you can open them instantly from any screen. You can also choose various colours to apply to the UI or choose from ones that coincide with the wallpaper you set. There isn’t a lot of bloatware present, except for a couple of games, and the Kotak bank account open App and the Glance lock screen, all of which is either uninstallable or can be disabled.
The system is running the January 2024 security patch which is again appreciable. We would have liked it even better if the overall animations were better optimised because even the 90Hz screen isn’t able to help with smoothness in some situations. On the other hand, connectivity performance of the device remained optimum.
Battery Life
The Moto G24 Power is backed up by a 6000mAh battery with 30W fast wired charging support. A 33W charger is included in the box. The handset takes close to 2 hours to charge while the battery performance remains exceptional. It can easily last you two days on a single charge with light usage while heavy usage which includes navigation or a lot of calling, should also last you a day easily. I could also easily get more than 5 hours of screen-on time consistently at the end of the day where it can get close to 6.5 hours also.
Cameras
The Moto G24 Power has a dual rear camera setup with a 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera and a 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro sensor. It has a 16-megapixel sensor on the front. We already have a detailed camera review for the Moto G24 Power live where we have talked about how the camera has some exposure issues due to which some scenes which have a bright background can blow out.
It does maintain a good amount of details in outdoor conditions and under artificial lighting. Low lighting shots have low detailing with some amount of noise. Selfies are one of the stronger points of the smartphone, with a decent amount of sharpness and colour reproduction. Finally, night shots were quite noisy, with below-average sharpness.
