Two hundred and fifty dollars does not go far in today’s economy; it’s probably a budget grocery shop for a family of four, a fraction of your weekly mortgage payments, or, for those of you that can find a restaurant that’s still open these days, dining out for two. So to think that you can purchase a new phone in that price range, it seems to be too good to be true – hell, when I first heard I was reviewing two phones, one of which is less than $250, I was half expecting a flip phone that was in vogue a decade and a half ago.
But at $229 and $269 for the G05 and G15, respectively, there is fierce competition amongst the big brands for the budget (non-flip) price point of the phone market. With Motorola’s offerings of the G05 and G15, they have put their products at interesting price points: the G05 is duking it out with Samsung’s A0x series, while the G15 sits right in between Samsung and Oppo’s next models up from the below $250 price point. Both phones offer great value and technology for their respective price points, and while it’s clear neither of them are flagship models for the resurgent Motorola brand, both are great value-for-money devices.
From the outset, the packaging is a no-frills affair for both: both phones arrived in plain, inconspicuous cardboard boxes, with a basic Motorola logo and model number printed on top. Opening up the boxes, the theme continues: the devices are wrapped in protective wrap, along with a USB C charging cable, literature, case and SIM ejector tool – no power adapter for these, unfortunately. Unintentionally, it does make the devices stand out: in a cascade of cardboard and white, the deep sea green colour of the G05 and the granite-like G15 gives them a unique look over the other phones in that price range – the eco leather backing makes it look and feel just that little bit more premium than the rest of the competition.
(By the way, both the G05 and the G15 offer Gorilla Glass – this isn’t something I was expecting to see in a “budget” phone, let alone both their cheapest phones, but it is welcomed to see that Motorola is taking measures to ensure the budget price range doesn’t mean budget physical quality.)
But compromises had to be made somewhere, and for both the G05 and the G15, it is unfortunately performance: Built on the MediaTek Helio G81 Extreme chipset, their performance is in line with its peers. While closer to last generation’s chipset, it does offer steady performance and can run high-fidelity games and videos. Often, it is a case of either-or; however, as graphics-intensive games can hamper how well the devices run. Where higher-end phones (even >5 years old ones) can run them with ease, these two Motorola phones struggle, and I mean struggle, to load in a timely manner.
The biggest issue is the lack of on-board memory: 4GB of memory is nowhere near enough to properly run resource-intensive programs, and while having the RAM boost feature built in is handy, setting 4GB of storage space for memory isn’t exactly consequential – you can upgrade a car with all sorts of bells and whistles, but if it’s running a nifty fifty engine, you’re still going to have trouble improving the car as a whole.
Motorola G05’s display lacks the same pixel density as other more popular, higher-end phones, but at around 264 ppi density, it is in line with the other budget-priced phones. The display is very clear, and there was no tearing or (surprisingly) lag while watching videos on this device – the G05 performs very well when the apps that you are running are not resource intensive, or if you don’t have multiple apps running in the background. The G15 fares better, display-wise, at 392 ppi density, displaying sharper images comparatively, and supports FHD+ video playback. However, it falls to the same issue that the G05 has, where if you run a resource-intensive app, the G15 visually struggles. Surprisingly, the refresh rate of the G05 and the G15 seemed to be the other way around, with the G05 offering a better refresh rate at 90Hz, the G15 can only get to 60Hz on its LCD display.
Housing a 5200mAh battery, both the G05 and the G15 really impressed me with how long they lasted: I was easily getting a full day’s use out of them with juice to spare. While other budget-price phones have similar battery capacities, comparing it to high-end phones in years past, it’s surprising to see that the sub $300 phones these days hold up to high-end phones released a mere two, three years ago for battery life.
The onboard 50MP camera and the 8MP selfie camera on the G05 can simply be summarised as “gets the job done”. While the saturation seems overly high, casting a yellow hue at times and making darker parts of the shot harder to distinguish, it captures a somewhat clear image up close. Capturing images further away, however, the blurring effects become prevalent when zooming in, and it struggles to fine-tune the image to a sharper standard. While the G15 has an additional ultrawide lens, the other two lenses are exactly the same – you get a better panoramic shot, but any zooming will become a futile exercise in getting a clear picture from far away. For some reason, however, the G15 doesn’t have the high saturation, providing a clearer contrast and more distinct darker parts of the image.
What’s interesting about the two phones’ cameras is, while the main cameras of the G15 is better (with the inclusion of an ultrawide), the selfie cameras are different, again: The G05’s selfie camera has a marginally better aperture, and it can also shoot selfie shots in HDR – something the G15 can’t.
The differing selfie camera mentioned above seems to be a through-line with these two Motorola phones: For the most part, they are exactly the same, but in certain aspects, either of these models has the upper hand over the other. It’s as if Motorola is a mother to twins (the G05 and the G15), and when she has only one thing to give out, she does her best to make it fair for both – The G15 gets a higher display density, but the G05 gets a 90Hz refresh rate; the G05 has a better selfie camera, but the G15 gets another front-facing lens. You expect the G15 to get better features throughout, giving the elder sibling (and more expensive price tag) an advantage over the younger, but it seems like Motorola decided to make it as fair as possible between the two, with the camera lens the only notable explanation for the extra $40 price point.
Having driven both the Motorola G05 and the G15 for a while now, I’ve come down to the two schools of thinking to justify buying these two phones: If you want a better refresh rate and a cheaper price, then the G05 is the go-to. If you want to take better photos (including panoramic photos), and you don’t mind paying a little bit extra, then the G15 is the model to go for.
In either case, the fight for the budget phone price range is heating up with the addition of the G05 and G15, and along with the Moto G24 released earlier in the year, Motorola has really proliferated the lower price market with their additions, mixing it up with the likes of Samsung, Oppo, and Nokia. In either case, you really can’t go wrong with the G05 or the G15, depending on your usage. If you are budget-conscious, or you fail to see the value in the $1000+ phones, the Motorola G05 and G15 are perfectly competent devices in their price points and are absolutely serviceable in terms of features and tech. You just need to know which ones you value more and pick the model that suits your needs.
I can’t decipher which is the better one of the two.
