Motorola casually trots out third UK release in as many months: This time it's a 'Lite' take on the Moto G8 Power

Hello again, Moto. In the past month, the Lenovo-owned mobile maker has announced three new smartphones for the UK market. The latest is the Moto G8 Power Lite, which retails at £149.99, and offers a surprising amount of battery life for your buck. As the name implies, this handset is a somewhat pared-down version of the Moto …

[Stratman]

Ooh, a replacement for my Windows phone I thought. Simple, long battery life, reasonably priced etc. Then I saw it has 6.5" screen. I don't really want to walk around with a small television in my pocket, so what phone do I want? I'm not interested in the camera, I've got a camera for that. I'm not interested in streaming endless pop videos or hilarious youtube pranks. Make one of these with a 4.5 or 5 inch screen and I'll buy it

[Piro]

I couldn't agree more.

There's nothing on the market for you these days.

[David Beck]

Agreed, I'd like NFC and a removable battery like my G5 too.

[Cuddles]

"Then I saw it has 6.5" screen. I don't really want to walk around with a small television in my pocket"

Screen size doesn't actually mean anything. People seem to like mocking any mention of bezels and screen-to-body ratio, but they're really quit important. A Moto G8 with a 6.5" screen is about the same size as a Moto G5 with a 5.2" screen. Other brands also available in similar sizes.

Obviously if you already thought a 5" phone was too big then you may struggle these days. But if you're just assuming the phone must be massive because screens are bigger than they used to be, you're way off. A 6.5" screen today comes in a phone the same size as a 5" screen did three or four years ago, and a 4" screen a couple of years before that. A Nokia Lumia with a 5" screen is only a few mm smaller than a Moto G8.

[Dave559]

Screen size

And as screen sizes diverge ever more from 16:9 proportions (let alone 4:3 for which the measurement was first devised), "screen diagonal" becomes an ever more pointless and unhelpful way to attempt to describe screen size.

It seems that even Americans can cope with phone thickness being decribed in mm, why don't we just go the whole way and describe screen sizes as x × y mm, which better indicates how wide and tall the screen really is?

[Anonymous Coward]

My old phone is better than your new phone

"the generous 5,000mAh battery, which Motorola Mobility claims can endure three days between charges"

My 6 year old OnePlus One has only a 3100mAh battery but can last eight days (actually 12 days if the radios are all turned off but then it isn't a phone). That wasn't always the case with the supplied software but replacing it with LineageOS finally nuked the preinstalled tracking apps. That's the worst thing about new phones, they're only affordable because of massive tracking and advertising and expensive ones aren't guaranteed to be free of the cruft either. If you flash the ROM of an old phone you save yourself a bob as well as saving the landfill and you get software updates for life.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That's the worst thing about new phones

the worst thing about new phones is not the tracking software it's the fact you can't unlock the bootloader to nuke this software and "take back control" :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: bootloader

It's worse than that, Pie onwards on many phones uses some sort of compressed or dedupe file system and using root to delete an apk doesn't work as /system is mounted ro

So, it's either hack a factory image, and of course OTA update will reinstall them all, or find an alternative ROM like Lineage

[phuzz]

Re: That's the worst thing about new phones

Fortunately Motorola allows the end user to unlock the bootloader on most of their phones, even the G8 (use this page). It voids your warranty, but that's the fun part imo.

From what I hear they generally don't stray too far from vanilla Android on their phones, but I'd install a custom ROM just as a matter of course.

[Martin an gof]

Re: My old phone is better than your new phone

My original G5 (on which I am typing now) used to manage 10 days with GPS, WiFi, data and BT turned off. Still usable for calls and texts. It still manages three quite easily and four or five if I'm lucky, and all this with a now 6 year old 2100mAh (IIRC) battery. Just think what the same regime could do with 5000mAh! A fortnight?

Even just being able to leave WiFi and mobile data on to receive emails and still get a week or so would be brilliant.

I was looking at a G7 Power until the G8 Power came out and all the G7s disappeared from the shops. This more affordable 'light' version could be what my wife is looking for - she has already said she needs a bigger screen but doesn't want to charge up every day. 6.5" might be a bit too big for me, but it is tempting and even the USB port isn't a deal breaker. It no doubt comes with a 10W or even 15W charger, and if not we have several lying around.

I'm running Lineage on the G, it has stopped receiving updates. The range of phones with Lineage ports is large, but not comprehensive and while some Motos have ports, the other line I'm considering - Nokia - doesn't :-/

M.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: My old phone is better than your new phone

On my G7 Power I usually manage 5 days, wifi, gps, data and BT turned on.

I normally check emails a few times a day and average 2 calls per day.

[ske1fr]

Noted

Ooh, a replacement for my E4Plus. But then I thought, hang on, battery on that is 5000 mAh , still will go 4-5 days on my standard daily usage if necessary, has a 3.5 mm headphone socket for those times when Bluetooth just won't connect in a busy office WiFi environment, uses MicroUSB so easy charging, has MicroSD up to 128 GB, And it's a 5.5 inch screen. So unless my numbers come up tonight or my E4Plus conks, I'll make a mental note and meh. Not all of us want more lenses than a spider's eyes and no headphone socket.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Noted

Read the article again - this phone does have a headphone socket, it has microUSB and it does take an SD card. Probably 512MB+ but I'm not at a computer to check the Motorola website. The screen is an inch bigger which may, or may not, be a problem for you and has 'enough' pixels in my opinion - about the same density as your E4+. It has more RAM than your E4+ which will make app-swapping more pleasant and double the inbuilt flash. Just treat the camera as a single 13Mpix snapper, which is similar to your E4+ and if you don't want to use the extra lenses for photo effects, you don't have to.

I'm going to have to check, but the one downside for me would be if it didn't do 5GHz WiFi. Some people would also find (lack of) NFC a deal breaker.

M.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Noted

Bit late, but I had a look.

SD card is up to 256MB.

Camera is 16Mpix (+ depth sensor), not 13Mpix.

Charging is 10W (I'm guessing the battery is 3.7V ≅ 18Wh so it'll take around two hours for a full charge)

Video capture is only 1920x1080 - no 4k here (not a problem at this level)

No NFC

WiFi is 2.4GHz only (why do they do that when as someone else has pointed out, the G5 - which was a similar price when launched - has 5GHz?)

M.

[David Beck]

Might be useful with a 5" screen

I have a G5, without suffix, 5" screen, 32GB/3GB, removable 2800mAh battery, 5gHz wifi, missing NFC. In fact I have two of them, and two addition batteries. Can someone suggest why I might want this monster? I agree with stratman, make an upgrade to the G5 and I'll take an interest.

[tiggity]

I quite like MOTO devices

Cheap and cheerful, OK spec without excessive camera quality (as someone who does not really use mobile camera (DSLR for proper photos) then don't need a great one (as long as it can tape a half decent snap just in case something I need to record out and about sans proper camera), would sooner have a cheaper phone) make a decent effort to keep providing security patches / OS upgrades compared to many vendors.

Moto also don't add too much crud to their phones compared to some vendors, so not as vital a need to root them as with some phones.

Great they are still keeping headphone socket, and as for micro-USB - no issues with that, plenty of spare micro-USB cables around for replacements which is a bonus (unlike USB-C where not yet accumulated a decent stock of "spares" for cable deaths)