The Moto G22 grabs some attention with its quad camera and design.
Highlights
The Moto G22 can shoot 1080p and 720p videos at 30fps.
The Moto G22 grabs some attention with its quad camera and design.
The Moto G22 does not offer a smooth experience in everyday use.
The budget smartphone segment is growing rapidly, and most manufacturers are betting on offering more features at a lower price. Motorola is one such company. Motorola has been involved in a rapid smartphone launch race for some time now. Its Moto G series has added several new handsets, one of which is the Moto G22.
This recently launched smartphone promises a lot on paper. It includes a 50MP quad camera, a 5000mAh battery, and a 90Hz display. Priced at ₹10,999, it competes with smartphones like the Realme C31 (Review) and Redmi 10 Prime (Review). For those looking for more features in the budget segment, this phone offers a lot, but is its performance as good? Let's find out.
Moto G22 price and variants
The Moto G22 comes in a single variant in India, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The phone is officially priced at ₹10,999, but I've also seen it listed on Flipkart and Motorola's own online store for ₹9,999.
Moto G22 design
The style of smartphones in the budget segment has changed. This segment now features a more premium design and build. Speaking of the Moto G22, its plastic back panel looks quite attractive. I particularly liked the Cosmic Blue color I had. The phone is also available in Iceberg Blue and Mint Green, which look quite good in photos.
Instead of Motorola's typical curved back panel, it features a flat design similar to the iPhone 12. Fingerprints are visible on the phone, but they become more noticeable when viewed from certain angles. The phone feels good in the hand, and the edges aren't sharp, making it comfortable even without a protective case.
The quad camera setup at the rear features a slightly different finish than the rest of the back panel. It has a metallic texture, but it blends in well with the overall body design, at least in the black variant. The camera module protrudes slightly from the panel, making it less stable when placed flat.
The phone features a tall display with a hole-punch cutout for the front camera. The bezels are quite thin on the sides, but they do take up some of the screen at the top. The bottom chin is also slightly thick. The phone is light for its size, weighing 185 grams. The weight is well balanced, and one-handed use is easy.
The power button and volume rocker are on the right side. The 3.5mm headphone jack is located at the top. The bottom houses the USB Type-C port, speaker grille, and primary microphone. The SIM tray is on the left side of the phone, with space for two nano-SIMs and a microSD card up to 1TB. In the box, you get a protective case and a TurboPower 20W charger.
Moto G22 specifications and software
The Moto G22 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G37 SoC, which is based on a 12nm fabrication process. It's an octa-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz. It's accompanied by an IMG PowerVR GE8320 GPU with a maximum frequency of 680MHz. It supports a 90Hz refresh rate, which is well-utilized by its 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD display.
Connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi ac, 4G LTE, GPS/A-GPS, and Bluetooth 5. While the device doesn't have an official IP rating, the company claims it features a water-resistant coating, making it less susceptible to splashes. The device packs a 5,000mAh battery with 20W charging.
Motorola is known for its near-stock Android software, and this applies to the Moto G22 as well. The device comes with Android 12 out of the box, which isn't common in this price segment. My review unit came with the June 2022 security patch. The company promises three years of security updates for the phone.
The Moto G22 comes with bloatware in the form of apps like Josh and Dailyhunt, but you can prevent them from installing during setup. Inspired by Xiaomi and Realme, Motorola has also introduced the Glance Wallpaper feature, but it can be disabled from the Settings app.
I always prefer a clean user interface (UI) experience, and the Moto G22 delivers on that. The UI is easy to navigate, and finding anything is easy. The home screen and lock screen can also be customized with Theme Engine. This allows widgets and app icons to pick up the theme color of the wallpaper, which looks quite nice and blends into the UI.
Motorola smartphones are known for their classic gestures, including a karate chop action that activates the flashlight. A three-finger gesture can take a screenshot, and a twist gesture can launch the camera. The Moto G22 doesn't have a dedicated gallery app, so you'll need to use the Google Photos app or download a third-party app.
Moto G22 performance and battery life
The Moto G22 features both a fingerprint scanner and facial recognition for phone security. The fingerprint scanner is housed within the power button, making it easy to access. The fingerprint scanner successfully unlocked the phone every time, but it did take a little time. The phone's buttons provided good tactile feedback. Face recognition sometimes worked, sometimes not, even in adequate lighting. Even after recognizing a face, the phone took several seconds to unlock.
The Mediatek Helio G37 SoC is an energy-efficient chip, but despite the Moto G22's light and sleek UI, it wasn't able to handle simple tasks well. Apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook also stuttered slightly. Even with the display set to 90Hz, scrolling wasn't as smooth as I'd like.
Multitasking and switching between apps also felt like a chore. Unlocking the phone was a pain at times, as apps and widgets took a long time to appear on the home screen. During our review, the back panel began to feel slightly warm after 15 minutes of using even basic apps like Instagram.
Regarding benchmark scores, the phone only scored 114,222 points on AnTuTu. It scored 170 and 955 points on Geekbench's single- and multi-core tests, respectively. The phone only managed 5.6fps in GFXBench's car-chasing test and only 5,683 in the PCMark Work 3.0 test. These scores were well below average, and I expected higher scores. The Realme C31, available at a similar price, boasts better scores with a Unisoc T612 SoC.
Although the phone isn't designed for gaming, I tested a few heavy and light games to assess its capabilities. Legends Mobile and BGMI couldn't even run at low settings, which wasn't surprising. Call of Duty: Mobile ran fine at low settings. Asphalt 9: Legends ran fine with performance mode locked in. The Moto G22 handled light games like Temple Run and Subway Surfers with ease.
The phone doesn't offer high resolution, but it's comparable to other devices in this price range. It features a 720x1600 pixel display. A slight dimming around the corners and text of each app icon was noticeable. Colors on the display appeared balanced, and watching movies and TV shows was a good experience. There was
no noticeable color shift when viewing content from different angles. The display has Widevine L1 certification, but Netflix didn't appear to support it. I was able to watch movies on Amazon Prime Video in 1080p resolution. Colors can be selected between Saturated and Natural. The phone's speaker quality is decent.
With some gaming and streaming a few movies, the battery lasts a little over a day. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted 20 hours and 10 minutes, which is quite impressive. With the bundled 20W TurboPower charger, it charged to 36 percent in half an hour and 59 percent in an hour. It took 2 hours to fully charge.
Moto G22 cameras
The phone features a quad-camera setup. The Moto G22's camera module includes a 50-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.8 aperture, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a 118-degree field of view, a 2-megapixel depth camera with an f/2.4 aperture, and a 2-megapixel macro camera with an f/2.4 aperture.
On the front, there's a 16-megapixel camera with an f/2.45 aperture. The camera interface is straightforward and clean, with all the essential shooting modes and settings within reach. It also offers a useful dual capture mode for photos and videos. There are also various filters and beauty modes. However, the camera app crashed several times during use, especially when switching between modes in the UI.
The primary camera captures 9.4-megapixel photos by default. In the settings, you also have the option to select between 6 megapixels or higher resolution. Photos taken with the phone looked good from above, but lacked sufficient detail when zoomed in. One thing I liked about the primary camera was that it consistently kept colors neutral, which provides plenty of room for experimentation in editing.
The main camera cropped photos a bit too much for my liking. Photos taken with the ultra-wide-angle camera lost a lot of detail, resulting in a cool tone. However, distortion at the edges was minimal, which is a good thing.
Macro photos were average, lacking detail due to the low-resolution lens. Portrait shots looked good, and the phone was quick to lock focus. The camera app also lets you choose the blur level before shooting.
The phone's main camera took average photos in low light. Most of the low-light photos had a lot of noise. The ultra-wide-angle camera captured decent details, but the photos were barely usable. The Night Vision mode brightened the photos, but noise increased in some areas.
The front-facing camera had good details. In selfies, the camera overexposed the background in rear-light conditions. Portrait shots weren't always good, as the camera missed the blur level several times. Selfies taken at night were of below-average quality.
The Moto G22 can shoot 1080p and 720p video at 30fps. Daylight video was mediocre, with limited detail. Grain was visible even in ample light, and stabilization was lacking. Videos captured in low light were quite noisy. You can record video with the ultrawide camera, but you can't switch to the other camera during recording.
conclusion
The Moto G22 draws some attention with its quad camera and design. Its near-stock Android experience and the promise of three years of security updates set it apart from other devices in this price segment. The 5,000mAh battery is quite useful, and the included 20W charger is a bonus. The 90Hz refresh rate and Android 12 are also positive points.
Unfortunately, these features don't compensate for its poor performance. The Moto G22 doesn't offer a smooth experience in everyday use, stuttering even during basic tasks. If the company had focused on providing a smoother Android experience instead of a quad camera, this device could have been a recommendable phone in this price segment.
If you're looking for an alternative, the Realme C31 and Redmi 10 Prime are good options. If clean software is your priority, you can also consider the Nokia G21.
