Moto G22 Review: Performance is a mistake!

The budget smartphone segment is growing rapidly and most manufacturers are betting on offering more features at a lower price. One such company is Motorola. For some time now, Motorola has been involved in the race to launch smartphones rapidly. Some new handsets have been added to its Moto G series, one of which is the Moto G22.

The recently launched smartphone promises a lot on-paper. It also includes a 50MP quad camera, 5000mAh battery and 90Hz display. The phone is priced at Rs 10,999 and competes with smartphones like 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 equally good? Let’s find out.

Moto G22 Price and Variants

Moto G22 comes in a single variant in India in which the company has given 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. Officially the phone is priced at Rs 10,999 but I have also seen it listed for Rs 9,999 on Flipkart and Motorola’s own online store.

Design of Moto G22

The style of smartphones in the budget segment has changed now. Now more premium design and build is seen in this segment. Talking about Moto G22, its back panel is made of plastic which looks quite attractive. Especially its Cosmic Blue color which I had, I liked it a lot. The phone is also available in Iceberg Blue and Mint Green colors, which looks very good in the photo.

Instead of Motorola’s typical curved back panel design, it has a flat design like we see in the iPhone 12. The phone is fingerprint-resistant but they are more noticeable only when viewed from a certain angle. The phone feels good in the hand and the edges are not sharp, so the phone is comfortable in the hand even when used without a protective case.

The quad camera setup at the rear has 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 its black variant. The camera module protrudes slightly from the panel, which makes the phone not stable when placed on a flat surface.

The phone has a tall display with a hole-punch cutout for the front camera. The bezels are quite thin on the sides but in the top portion it eats up some part of the screen. The bottom chin is also a bit thick. The phone is light in terms of size and weighs 185 grams. The weight has been balanced quite well and there is no problem in using it with one hand.

Its power button and volume rocker are on the right side. A 3.5mm headphone jack is provided at the top. You get a USB Type C port, speaker grill and primary microphone in the bottom part. The SIM tray is on the left side of the phone, which has space for two nano SIMs and a microSD card up to 1TB. You get a protective case and TurboPower 20W charger in the box.

Moto G22 Specifications and Software

The Moto G22 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G37 SoC which is based on the 12nm fabrication process. It is an octacore processor clocked at 2.3GHz. It is accompanied by the 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 Plus IPS LCD display.

For connectivity, it supports dual band Wi-Fi ac, 4G LTE, GPS/A-GPS, and Bluetooth 5. The device does not have an official IP rating, but the company says that it has a water-resistant coating, so that the phone cannot be easily damaged by light splashes. The device has a 5,000mAh battery with 20W charging feature.

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 is not seen much in this price segment. My review unit was given 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 also prevent them from installing during setup. Inspired by Xiaomi and Realme, Motorola has also introduced the Glance wallpaper feature but it can also be disabled from the Settings app.

I always love a clean user interface (UI) experience and the Moto G22 makes it possible. You can easily navigate throughout the UI and finding anything is quite 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 good and blends into the UI.

Motorola smartphones are known for their classic gestures including a karate chop action – this can be used to activate the flash light. Screenshots can be taken with the help of a three-finger gesture and the camera can be launched with the help of a twist gesture. You do not get a dedicated gallery app in the Moto G22, so you will either have to use the Google Photos app or download another third-party app.

Moto G22 performance and battery life

Moto G22 has both fingerprint scanner and facial recognition options for phone security. The fingerprint scanner is placed inside the power button which is easy to reach. The fingerprint scanner successfully unlocked the phone every time but it took some time. The tactile feedback of the phone’s buttons was good. Face recognition was sometimes working and sometimes not, even if the light was sufficient. Even after recognizing the 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 thin UI, it was not able to handle simple tasks well. Apps like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook also ran with slight stutters. Even after setting the display to 90Hz, it did not give the smooth scrolling experience that I like.

Multitasking and switching between apps also felt like a chore for the phone. Unlocking the phone was also a headache at times as apps and widgets took a long time to appear on the home screen. During the review, the back panel of the phone started to feel slightly warm after using even basic apps like Instagram for 15 minutes.

Talking about benchmark scores, the phone scored only 114,222 points on AnTuTu. It scored 170 and 955 points respectively in Geekbench single and multi core. The phone scored only 5.6fps in GFXBench’s car chasing test and only 5,683 in PCMark Work 3.0 test. These scores were much below average and I expected more. The Realme C31 phone available at the same price brings better scores with Unisoc T612 SoC.

Although the phone is not made for gaming, I tested some heavy and light games on it to find out the potential of the phone. Legends Mobile and BGMI could not be run even on low settings, which was not surprising. Call of Duty: Mobile ran fine on low settings. Asphalt 9: Legends was locked on performance mode and the game ran fine. The Moto G22 was able to handle light games like Temple Run and Subway Surfers with ease.

The phone does not offer high resolution, but it is at par with other devices in this price range. It has a 720×1600 pixel display. The low resolution was evident around the corners of each app icon and text. The colours on the display look balanced and watching movies and TV shows on it was a good experience.

There was no shift in colors when watching content from different angles. The display has Widevine L1 certification but Netflix did not seem to support it. I was able to watch movies in 1080p resolution on Amazon Prime Video as well. There is an option to choose between saturated and natural for colors. The speaker quality of the phone 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 for 20 hours and 10 minutes, which is quite impressive. With the bundled 20W TurboPower charger, it was charging to 36 percent in half an hour and 59 percent in an hour. The phone took 2 hours to fully charge.

Moto G22 Cameras

The phone has a quad camera setup. The camera module of the Moto G22 includes a 50-megapixel primary camera with f/1.8 aperture, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture with 118-degree field of view, a 2-megapixel depth camera with /2.4 aperture and a 2-megapixel macro camera with f/2.4 aperture.

There is a 16-megapixel camera on the front with f/2.45 aperture. The camera interface is straightforward and clean. All the necessary shooting modes and settings are within reach. It also has a dual capture mode for photos and videos, which is also useful. Various filters and beauty modes are also provided. However, the camera app crashed several times while using it, especially when switching between modes in the UI.

The primary camera captures 9.4 megapixel photos by default. In the settings, you also get the option to select 6 megapixels or high resolution. Photos taken from the phone looked good from the top but there was a lack of sufficient details when zoomed in. One thing I liked about its primary camera was that it was constantly keeping the colors neutral, which gives a lot of scope for experimentation in editing.

The main camera was cropping the photos a bit too much for my liking. The ultra wide angle camera reduced the details in the photos and the images started to have a cool tone. However, the distortion at the edges was very less, which is a good thing.

Macro photos were average as they lacked details due to the low resolution lens. Portrait shots looked good and the phone was able to lock focus quickly. The camera app also gives you the option to choose the blur level before shooting.

In low light, the phone’s main camera took average photos. Most of the low light photos had a lot of noise. The ultra wide angle camera got good details but the photos were just usable. In Night Vision mode, the photos became brighter but noise had increased in some parts.

The details in the photos taken with the front camera were good. In selfies, the camera was overexposing the photo background in the light coming from behind. Portrait shots did not come out well every time as the camera was missing the blur level many times. Selfies taken at night were of below average quality.

The Moto G22 can shoot 1080p and 720p videos at 30fps. Daylight videos were recorded averagely and details were low. Grains were visible even in adequate light and there was a lack of stabilization. Videos captured in low-light had a lot of noise. You can record videos with the ultrawide camera but cannot switch to another 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 make it stand out from other devices in this price segment. The 5,000mAh battery is quite useful and the 20W charger on it is a bonus. The 90Hz refresh rate and Android 12 are also its positive points.

Unfortunately, all these features do not compensate for its poor performance. The Moto G22 does not offer a smooth experience in everyday use, the phone seems to stutter even in basic tasks. If the company had focused on giving a smoother Android experience instead of giving a quad camera in it, then this device could have been a recommendable phone in this price segment.

If you want an alternative, the Realme C31 and Redmi 10 Prime are good options. If clean software is your priority, you can also look at the Nokia G21.