Motorola Moto G31 Review: Is this well rounded offering from Motorola worth considering in the budget segment?

A budget Motorola smartphone that does all the basics right!!

When it comes to Stock Android, there are very few manufacturers that provide such software experience. The biggest benefit you get is no bloatware and ads present here as present on some other user interfaces. Out of these few manufacturers, Motorola is one of them which provides a clean Stock Android experience. 

Motorola has seen quite a big success this year especially with the Edge series that brought in new design philosophy for Motorola and had some very good specifications out of the box. Now they are back with their G series lineup that has been the key strength of Motorola in the budget and the mid-range segment. Now recently the Moto G31 has been launched and it provides some very good specifications for the price.

It is the very first smartphone in the G series from Motorola that comes with an AMOLED display compared to other G series smartphones that have an IPS LCD display. Other than this, the smartphone packs in a Mediatek Helio G85 chipset, a 5000mAh battery, and a good set of cameras. So is this worth buying considering this highly competitive budget segment which has the likes of Xiaomi, Realme, etc.? 

Moto G31 Design:

The Moto G31 sports the same design as we have seen in many budget Motorola smartphones as you get a polycarbonate back with no flash design as such but you do get some eccentric lines that do shine when light strikes at it in different angles. The back also has the embossed Moto logo which also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner that is very fast in unlocking the smartphone.

The back has a triple camera setup with a LED flashlight. This polycarbonate back does take away the feeling that we get with a glass back. As a result, the smartphone feels lighter and weighs around 181grams which makes it easy to carry. Another thing with the design is that the smartphone is very much curved around the edges as well as the back which fits the hands very well.

The back has an IPX2 rating as said by Motorola which makes it splash resistant against water drops but still, it cannot be taken under direct rain. Around the sides, on the left side, there is a hybrid slot for SIM card whereas the right side is cluttered with a power button, on top of it are the volume buttons and just above that is the dedicated button for Google Assistant which cannot be remapped.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grill, and a primary microphone whereas the top gets the secondary noise-canceling microphone and also a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio. The front of the smartphone has a single punch-hole display with the punch hole located at the center in the top and around the side, the bezels are thinner. The bottom has a slightly thicker bezel which is not so good-looking.

Moto G31 Display:

The Moto G31 sports a 6.47-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) AMOLED display which makes it the first smartphone from Motorola to have an AMOLED display for the G series. The display has good color reproduction and also viewing angles are great. This is one of the very few smartphones to have a Full HD+ display as most smartphones in this price range offer an HD+ display. 

However, the display has a standard 60Hz refresh rate instead of any 90Hz or 120Hz refresh rate which cannot be expected as it is a budget smartphone. There is support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HD content from OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. but still, we checked that in Amazon Prime, the smartphone was unable to play in HD, and maybe Motorola will fix this issue in the future software update. 

There is support for HDR on Youtube though which makes it a great companion for media consumption. In terms of brightness, the Moto G31 achieved a peak brightness of 700nits which is good for an AMOLED display and is plenty bright when taken under direct sunlight. The front display is protected by Panda Glass as there is no Gorilla Glass protection present. 

Moto G31 Performance:

The Moto G31 is powered by the Mediatek Helio G85 chipset which is an octa-core chipset that has 2x2.0GHz Cortex-A75 cores and other 6x1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores coupled with a Mali -G52 MC2 GPU. This is a decent chipset for daily performance as well as gaming. All tasks are handled with ease but in most of the tasks, there were some micro stutters noticed while switching between applications.

The Mediatek Helio G85 chipset is quite capable to handle all tasks but it is restricted to 60Hz only and cannot push to 90Hz or 120Hz. The Moto G31 is available in two variants - 4GB RAM with 64GB storage and another 4GB RAM with 128GB storage. The storage speeds are eMCP 5.1 which is slightly faster than the eMMC storage but still, the speeds are lower than UFS 2.1 speed.

eMCP storage is well integrated with RAM and storage. The Moto G31 handles almost all the games fine as in games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. as BGMI can run Smooth graphics and Ultra frame rate. In Asphalt 9 Legends, we could notice some lags present. Overall, the performance is good but considering gaming, it is not the perfect smartphone.

Moto G31 Software:

The biggest speaking feature of the Motorola smartphones is the Stock Android experience that you get. The Moto G31 runs on MyUX built on top of Android 11 out of the box. You get no bloatware or any ads with minimal applications and on top of it, you get Moto gestures like a karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight, twist to open the camera, swipe from the edge, and back opens the split screen, etc.

Other Motorola features like Peek Display and Attentive Display are present. There is also the ThinkShield security which works in between both hardware as well as software for better security. In terms of software updates, you will get Android 12 and another two years of security patches. However, you miss out on a dedicated Gallery application and you are stuck with Google Photos. 

There is a Dolby Atmos application for enhanced sound profiles. The clean Stock Android experience feels really great on the Moto G31 which makes it stand out in the budget segment.

Moto G31 Cameras:

The Moto G31 sports a triple camera setup that consists of a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. On the front, there is a 13MP f/2.2 camera. The images from the main camera come out with good dynamic range and the colors look natural with no such oversharpening. However, there is a lot of noise present. 

At night, the main camera does a better job in terms of color which is close to natural and the dynamic range is quite good. The details look soft and also there is a lot of noise present but you do a get Night Vision mode which does improve the details thus reducing noise and also it improves the dynamic range to a large extent. 

The 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range which is decent and the colors look washed out but there is some oversharpening in the background. The details in the images look soft and also there is a lot of noise present. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with average dynamic range, there is a lot of noise and the level of details come out average.

The third camera is a 2MP macro camera that takes decent macro shots as it is a fixed focus camera that can go as close as 4cm only and the images come out with a lot of noise, the colors look washed out and the dynamic range is just average. In terms of portraits, you do have good edge detection but when you zoom in, there is quite some noise present and also the dynamic range is above average.

In terms of selfies, the Moto G31 impressed with good dynamic range but you do have oversharpening taking place and the skin tones are not color accurate. There is quite some noise present and the field of view could have been wider. The portrait selfies come out with good details and proper edge detection though they do suffer from oversharpening.

In terms of videos, both the main rear camera and the front camera can record videos at 1080p at 30fps which is the highest resolution video supported by the Mediatek Helio G85 chipset. The videos come out with a good dynamic range and EIS works well on the main camera. The front camera lacks EIS which results in videos suffering from noise and also the dynamic range is average.

Overall, the cameras are decent for the price at which it is offered.

Moto G31 Battery Life:

The Moto G31 sports a larger 5000mAh battery that can easily last for two days with normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media for 2-3 hours, and playing some games, the smartphone easily lasted for two days and more with some charge left. With heavy usage, the smartphone easily lasted for one single day.

The presence of Stock Android provides slightly better battery life as the battery is very well optimized and also the display is AMOLED which means it will consume less power compared to other IPS LCD panels. You do get a 20W fast charger bundled inside the box that can easily charge the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent in 1 hour 30 minutes which is very slow though.

Moto G31 Audio Quality:

The Moto G31 sports a single downward-firing speaker which is adequately loud and clear. However, still, it does miss out on the bass and feel of the stereo speakers present on the other smartphones. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack present and the audio output through it is quite good. 

Verdict:

The Moto G31 makes up for a good complete package that consists of a good AMOLED display for media consumption, the Mediatek Helio G85 provides decent performance whether it is multitasking between applications or playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. and also you are getting a great software experience that does not have any bloatware or ads present.

The cameras are decent both in terms of images and videos but still it does offer a dedicated ultrawide camera which most of the budget smartphones do not offer. When it comes to battery life, the Moto G31 can easily last for two days and also you get a 20W fast charger inside the box to charge the smartphone faster. 

Overall, if you can skip the great camera setup, audio experience, and gaming performance, then you are getting a great budget smartphone that provides a Stock Android experience and is a good companion for media consumption.