The Motorola Moto G-series has been popular for years because of its competitive price and attractive price-quality ratio. With the Moto G8 Plus, the manufacturer hopes for a new success. In this Motorola Moto G8 Plus review we find out if the smartphone is a buying tip.
Motorola Moto G8 Plus
Recommended retail price € 269
Colors Red and blue
OS Android 9.0
Screen 6.3 inch LCD (2280 x 1080)
Processor 2 Ghz octacore (Snapdragon 665)
RAM 4GB
Storage 64GB (expandable)
Battery 4,000 mAh
Camera 48, 16 and 5 megapixels (rear), 25 megapixels (front)
Connectivity 4G (LTE), Bluetooth 5.0, WiFi, GPS, NFC
Format 15.8 x 7.5 x 0.9 cm
Weight 188 grams
Other Headset port
Website www.motorola.com/nl 7 Score 70 
- Pros
- Android without fuss
- Smooth, complete hardware
- Good battery life
- Negatives
- Wide angle camera cannot take photos
- No OLED screen
- Old software and moderate update policy
- Slower charger
The Moto G8 Plus is the quick successor to the Moto G7 Plus. After nine months, Motorola apparently thought it was time for a new model, with a lower suggested retail price (269 euros) than its predecessor (299 euros). Last year we gave the Moto G7 Plus four out of five stars. Can the eighth model equal or even exceed that score? After two weeks of testing you can read my experiences in this review.
Design
If you place the Moto G8 Plus next to last year’s G7 Plus, you will see similarities and differences. The front looks a lot like each other, with a screen that has a notch at the top for the selfie camera and shows a larger border at the bottom. The back is different. Where the Moto G7 Plus uses a round camera module, the camera lenses are placed vertically in the top left corner on its successor. The camera module protrudes a bit, so the smartphone is not completely flat on the table. There is still a fingerprint scanner in the Motorola logo. It is accurate and fast.
The smartphones are almost the same size, but the Moto G8 Plus is heavier due to its larger battery. At 188 grams, the weight is still average and excellent. The Motorola Moto G8 Plus is available in two colors; blue and red. I tested the latest version and am very pleased with the color.
Motorola puts a simple plastic case in the box and that is no superfluous luxury. The back of the Moto G8 Plus is sensitive to fingerprints and scratches relatively quickly. It is nice that the smartphone is splash-proof, which means that it will not break immediately if your glass of water falls over.
Screen: good but no oled
As the almost identical dimensions suggest, the screen of the Moto G8 Plus is practically the same size as that of its predecessor. With its 6.3-inch format (compared to 6.2-inch), the smartphone is easy to hold with one hand, but it can be difficult to use the screen with one hand. The larger size means that you can type with two hands more pleasantly. Your films, games and other media also come into their own better.
The screen quality is excellent. The full HD resolution delivers sharp images, the LCD display delivers beautiful colors and the maximum brightness is high enough to read the screen on a sunny day. That does not mean that there is no room for improvement. In this price range, for example, smartphones with an OLED screen are for sale, offering better images than an LCD display. We would therefore like to see such an OLED display in the Moto G9 series.
Complete hardware
A Qualcomm Snapdragon 655 processor is hidden under the hood of the Moto G8 Plus. This chip is logically slightly more powerful than the processor in the Moto G7 Plus, although you do not notice this much in practice. All popular apps run without problems and heavy games still produce some problems. With regard to the price, that is not a disaster.
The working memory measures 4GB, which is average and large enough to switch easily between recently used apps and games. On the internal storage memory of 64GB – also average in this price segment – you can store enough media and. Nice is that you can increase the memory with a micro sd card.
As you can expect from this type of smartphone, the Motorola Moto G8 Plus has an NFC chip. So you can pay contactless with the device in the supermarket. In addition, the Moto G8 Plus takes two SIM cards (dual SIM).
Battery life and charging
The battery of the Moto G7 Plus is not large at 3000 mAh and I noticed that at the time: at the end of the day I had to charge the smartphone, sometimes even earlier. Not good, and that’s why it’s nice that Motorola has placed a considerably larger battery in the Moto G8 Plus. Thanks to the capacity of 4000 mAh, the device will effortlessly last a long day. I expect that most users can squeeze out of the battery for one and a half to two days. Nice, but for unclear reasons, the manufacturer delivers a slower TurboPower charger than with the Moto G7 Plus. It charges with 27W, the Moto G8 Plus with 15W. It therefore takes longer to charge the battery. After half an hour the battery has climbed from 0 to 37 percent. That is slightly below average, although it didn’t bother me. Because of the good battery life, I charge the smartphone in the evening before I go to bed and I’m not in a hurry.
Wireless charging is not possible; a logical cut on this type of smartphone.
Cameras
There is a triple camera on the back of the Moto G8 Plus. Most often you take photos and videos with the 48 megapixel main camera, which photographs in 12 megapixels as standard because pictures in this resolution are sharp enough and take up less storage space. A so-called quad-bayer technique must improve photo quality, especially in the dark. That’s right, although the quality is still not very good. For social media, the photos and videos are usually fine. If you look at the images more critically – and on a large screen – the colors are sometimes unrealistic and a gray sky can look too white. The biggest problem is that the camera regularly has trouble with movements, so that photos are out of focus.
The second camera on the smartphone is a wide-angle lens that has been rotated a quarter turn. That sounds crazy, but makes sense. With this camera you capture a wider image than with the normal camera and the twist allows you to make horizontal videos while holding the Moto G8 Plus vertically. Other telephones make a vertical film in such a situation, which is not handy when you view the images on your computer or television. Motorola solves a known problem with this camera setup and that is to be praised. Unfortunately, the implementation could have been better. For unclear reasons, the camera cannot take photos – something that is technically possible. A pity, because like many others, I like to take wide-angle photos of buildings and landscapes, for example. Hopefully Motorola will release a software update that adds photo support. By the way, the video quality of the wide-angle lens is average and comparable to the Motorola One Action, which has the same camera.
A depth sensor (5 megapixel) and laser autofocus help the Moto G8 Plus to shoot photos with a sharp foreground and blurred background. These portrait photos are generally excellent, although the results are of course less good than those of much more expensive smartphones such as the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Software
The Motorola Moto G8 Plus ran at its release in October on Android 9.0 (Pie) and not on Android 10, which had already been available for two months. A pity, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. Nice is that Motorola uses a barely modified Android version and only supplies a few apps. So you use the Android software almost as Google “m intended. Fortunately, Motorola’s few adjustments really add something. You can activate the flashlight by shaking the smartphone twice and start the camera by turning the device twice. These functions have been in Motorola devices for years and have now more than proved themselves.
Motorola Moto G8 Plus updates
Unfortunately, the Motorola update policy is not that good and vague. You notice this for example by the fact that the Moto G8 Plus is still (February 2019) not updated to Android 10. We know that a Moto G device gets at least one version update, but in this case that would mean that the smartphone from Android 9 to 10, while version 10 was already out when the Moto G8 Plus was presented. But whether this means that the phone also gets Android 11, the manufacturer does not want to say.
It is also unclear how often and for how long the Moto G8 Plus receives security updates. Google releases such an update every month, but Motorola usually only rolls out an update to Moto G phones once every three months. This is unfortunate because you will be unnecessarily vulnerable to security issues for longer.
Conclusion: Buy Motorola Moto G8 Plus?
The Motorola Moto G8 Plus is a great smartphone that does nothing wrong, but also excels in no way. With a view to the user experience and competitive price, you can’t afford it and that’s good to know. However, the Moto G8 Plus does not seem to be the best choice in its price segment. Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi and Realme sell smartphones with a better price-quality ratio and the Samsung Galaxy A50 is also a formidable competitor.
However, the Moto G8 Plus also experiences in-house competition. Consider the Moto One Vision and Moto One Action, but especially the new ones Moto G8 Power. It is tens of euros cheaper, has practically the same hardware, supplemented by a faster charger and an extra camera. The biggest plus is the considerably larger battery, which makes the smartphone last a day longer on a battery charge. The Motorola Moto G8 Plus is therefore a great buy, but not recommended.
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