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00:00This brand new smartphone in 2023 has a six and a half inch, 90 Hertz display with a hole
00:09punch cutout, a 5,000 milliamp hour battery, triple cameras, a micro SD card slot for expandable
00:14storage, a headphone jack and water resistance for 169.
00:18Nice.
00:19But what's the catch?
00:20There's got to be a catch, right?
00:23So look, I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
00:25Budget phones are getting cheap and cheap phones are getting good.
00:30And this video is going to focus on the second part of that, which is the cheap phones that
00:33are getting so good.
00:34Because this phone hit my inbox recently.
00:36It's called the Moto G Play for 2023.
00:38And he's been paying attention to what Motorola has been doing recently.
00:41They've been making a lot of really good budget phones in the background for the past couple
00:45of years.
00:46I just wanted to know personally from using it myself, how do you end up at a phone that's
00:50a 10th of the price of the ones that I've been really enjoying?
00:54So on the outside, well, it's a pretty big phone, which I like.
00:56And there's actually a 6.5 inch flat 90 hertz LCD display.
01:01Now, it's not the best looking screen you've ever seen.
01:03It's only 720p.
01:04So I can literally see pixels sometimes and it doesn't get very bright.
01:08You know, viewing angles are pretty bad if you get off axis.
01:10And of course, the bezels you can see are slightly thicker, especially in the chin.
01:14And there's this little bit of light fall off around the hole punch camera at the top.
01:18But the thing is, like, can you really pixel peep at this price?
01:21Like this is plenty of screen for texting, web browsing, navigation, you know, flipping
01:26through apps, scrolling through social media, the classic stuff you want to do on a phone.
01:29Mission accomplished.
01:30You know, it's a big screen.
01:32So that's not the catch.
01:33But what about the build?
01:35You've probably picked up that it's a pretty big phone, but it's also made of plastic.
01:40But honestly, the layout is perfectly fine.
01:43Like you've got the port and the speakers at the bottom.
01:45There's a headphone jack at the top and you have bonus expandable storage alongside the
01:49SIM card tray right where it belongs.
01:51And on the back, yes, that is a decently fast fingerprint reader right in that classic Motorola
01:57dimple spot.
01:58So it's laid out well.
01:59It absolutely does not bend or creak or anything weird like that.
02:03Plus, you might have heard plastic is absolutely not the end of the world when it comes to
02:07a smartphone build.
02:08Obviously, the premium ones will really like to feel more premium and heavy.
02:13And so glass will do that.
02:14But this is often more durable than glass if you drop it.
02:17And some people like a lighter weight phone when it is this big.
02:20Also, it is still water resistant.
02:23I can't say waterproof.
02:24It's IP52, but it's water resistant.
02:27So the build, that's not the catch.
02:30So okay, what about the battery?
02:31You might be wondering.
02:32Cheap phone.
02:33It's excellent.
02:34Perfectly, unironically, not exaggerating.
02:37It's excellent.
02:38Which actually shouldn't be a surprise given the spec.
02:40It's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery powering a phone with a 720p display.
02:44So you're good for a day and a half easy.
02:47Two light days is no problem with seven hours of screen on time.
02:51Now it's only up to 10 watt charging, which is pretty slow and there is no wireless charging.
02:55But I'm not going to consider that a gotcha at this price.
02:57Again, it's like you can just charge it up overnight every night like a normal person
03:01and battery life will be fine.
03:03And even the software is really good.
03:05It's virtually the same experience as their thousand dollar flagship edge phone, which
03:09is to say near stock Android with a little moto extra features sprinkled on top.
03:14So at its most basic, it'll kind of feel like a pixel when you dig through like quick settings
03:18and notifications and the launcher.
03:20But then you get some Motorola widgets tucked in, you know, you get a couple extra settings
03:23in the settings app, but then you get this moto app that lets you dig into your extra
03:27gestures and features that they've perfected over the years.
03:30The double chop for the flashlight, the three finger screenshot, you know, the peak display
03:34feature that gives you a peek at your new notifications and even swiping down on your
03:38notification panel from the fingerprint reader on the back.
03:42Basically everything minus the double twist to quickly open the camera, probably because
03:45the camera is not one of those things that you really look forward to on these super
03:50cheap phones.
03:51Oh wow.
03:52Look at the light fall off.
03:53You can see it on camera.
03:54But either way, I'm happy to report that this camera is functional, which is like, that's
03:59what you would hope for at this price, which is, yeah, it's, it's functional.
04:03I'm just not a huge fan of the triple camera layout here.
04:05Like I know they're trying to look premium and triple cameras looks premium, but the
04:09top one is a two megapixel macro camera and the bottom one is a two megapixel depth camera
04:13for portrait mode.
04:14So I'm mainly just looking for this main 16 megapixel camera to be able to capture
04:18scenes, documents, you know, take photos and videos without problems.
04:22And it does, especially if you give it enough light, uh, it's not going to win any comparison
04:25tests that's for sure.
04:26But Hey, we ask a lot of our phones, like the fact that this $169 gadget can already
04:31make phone calls and send text messages and navigate you around the world and also play
04:36games and also browse the web.
04:38And it can also take decent pictures and 1080p videos.
04:41And that's solid.
04:43I initially had my suspicions about whether or not it was going to actually use this depth
04:46camera when I take a portrait mode photo, but it did yell at me when I covered it and
04:51tried to take a portrait mode shot.
04:52So it's paying attention to it at least.
04:55But when I took the photo and turned up the background blur, this is the cutout shape,
05:00which if you zoom in just a little bit is truly bizarre.
05:04It's really bad.
05:05I've never seen anything this bad in my life.
05:08It really just said, yeah, we'll just save a little processing power here and use the
05:11zigzag cutout method from those scissors from preschool to make this work.
05:15But see, that's the thing that is the catch.
05:18It's not the build quality.
05:19That's fine.
05:20And it's definitely not the battery life.
05:22That's great.
05:23It's not the cameras and it's certainly not the software.
05:26It's that this phone is slow, really slow.
05:30So this one has a MediaTek Helio G37 chip inside and three gigabytes of RAM.
05:36Other phones with this chipset include the Tecno Spark 9, the Infinix Hot 12, and the
05:41Honor X7A, all of which retail well under $150 US.
05:46So clearly it's a cheap chip, right?
05:48And that's how it ended up in this phone.
05:49For some context, the Geekbench score of the iPhone 14 is this, and the Geekbench score
05:54of the Moto G Play is this.
05:56So when I say it's trying to save processing power by not really doing detailed portrait
06:01cutouts, I actually mean that, like it absolutely lacks any meaningful processing power.
06:05And I'm not nitpicking about like maybe it's just slow on some high-end games or something.
06:09No, this phone is slow all the time.
06:11It's slow to scroll and just like move around the UI.
06:14Now remember I mentioned at the beginning that this phone has a variable 90 Hertz display,
06:18but I'll be honest, it would have taken me a while to tell because it is almost never
06:22anywhere near 60 Hertz.
06:24It's constantly hanging up and stuttering everywhere.
06:27It's slow to unlock.
06:28It's slow to open apps, not just huge apps, just normal apps.
06:33Even the settings app takes an embarrassingly long time to open and even longer to search
06:37through things.
06:38Some of this is like speed of storage as well, to be fair.
06:41So I don't want to put it all on the chip, but like the point here is it's absolutely
06:45the catch.
06:46This phone is slower than average to take pictures.
06:48It's slow to type stuff, to browse around, and just to do anything like high-end gaming
06:52or photo editing is kind of out of the question.
06:55It might be the slowest phone I've ever used, and I'm constantly reminded of it, which can
06:59make it quite unpleasant to use.
07:01So the longer I use this phone, the more it had me thinking about one big question,
07:04which is, is it better to get a brand new cheap phone like this or an older, formerly
07:11expensive flagship one?
07:14Like this phone, this is 169 brand new, right?
07:16This phone here, this is the OnePlus 7 Pro.
07:19You might remember it.
07:20It's one of my favorite phones ever.
07:21This was the phone of the year in 2019.
07:24So this was 669 back when it came out, but it can be had easily for well under $200 right
07:29now secondhand.
07:30So this is just one example of a phone like this.
07:33This phone, if you compare dollar for dollar with the Moto, is just so much better of an
07:37experience across the board.
07:39Obviously it'll have a much better chip set.
07:42So the Snapdragon 855 is a few years old, but it's much more capable and part of an
07:46overall smoother, better performance profile with faster storage and more RAM.
07:51It has a much, much nicer OLED screen, which is sharper, brighter, and actually hits the
07:5690 Hertz refresh rate all the time.
07:58It has way more built-in storage, although it's not expandable, and it has a much better
08:02set of cameras.
08:03It's a primary plus an ultra wide and a zoom.
08:05And it's built from glass instead of plastic, which feels rock solid.
08:08And it has a 4,000 milliamp hour battery, which is probably the only hardware line you
08:13can call it a draw or maybe even a win for the Moto phone.
08:16But we can't forget that warp charging that OnePlus was famous for.
08:18So this old flagship will do 30 Watts of wired charging.
08:22So it's seeming pretty unanimous here, but one distinct advantage of the budget phone
08:28is because it's new, it will get software updates further into the future than the old
08:34phone.
08:35Now this is theoretically, of course, like Motorola does not have the best track record
08:39here.
08:40So it depends on what phone we're talking about.
08:41But the Samsung A14 5G, for example, has a pretty similar spec sheet and a similar price
08:46point, and that'll probably get more software updates than the Moto.
08:49But the idea here is even if a flagship phone is promised three to four years of software
08:53updates and the budget phone is only getting two, as soon as that flagship phone is more
08:58than about three years old, it doesn't have that advantage anymore.
09:01So the OnePlus 7 Pro is probably about done with software updates while we probably have
09:05a few in the tank for the Moto.
09:06It is also funny though, sometimes how I hear people talk about software updates, like some
09:09people don't think about software updates at all.
09:13They avoid software updates.
09:15Don't do that by the way, the security patches are actually pretty important, but yeah, it's
09:19just one of those points that has to by default go to the newer phone.
09:23But the final straw in favor of the older phone is actually the environment, just because
09:29buying an older phone that's built to last and getting an extra two, three, four years
09:33out of it potentially is better for the environment overall.
09:36You buy less new things, it's less e-waste.
09:39So that's something that's a feather in the cap of the old phone over the new one.
09:44So my general thought as I've looked at this landscape and all these options with old flagships
09:49versus new budget phones is the lower the price of the phone, the more I would actually
09:55want to buy the older phone.
09:57So at $169 for example, based on the experience I've had with this phone, I would definitely
10:01rather have actually the older flagship phone.
10:04There's a lot of flagships you can get at about 200 bucks.
10:06You could get this one, you can get a Pixel 5, secondhand phones are really good.
10:11Now if you go up to like 400 bucks, then it's a little more debatable.
10:15There's still some things that would still point me towards the formerly flagship phone,
10:20but then you get to like 600 bucks and it's like, oh, there's really good brand new $600
10:24phones that I would take today and still have the advantages of the software updates.
10:28It's not a lot that's better than the Pixel 7 right now.
10:31So that's the theory.
10:32So there you have it.
10:33At this price point, I'd prefer prehistoric premium over presently pleasantly priced.
10:42Thanks for watching.
10:43Catch you guys in the next one.
10:44Peace.
10:45Pleasantly presently.
10:46That's a lot.
10:47Pleasantly present.
10:48Presently.
10:49Pleasantly priced.