Winners and losers: Motorola – News GSMArena.com

It’s been a particularly eventful year for Motorola, with the company releasing over 30 smartphones covering just about every price segment. It even updated the iconic Motorola Razr, so it has its hand in the foldable market as well.

But as is always the case with big tech companies, we see good and bad decisions. We’ve rounded up the best and worst of Motorola in 2022.

Winner: Motorola Razr 2022

Motorola’s first two attempts at the foldable market had some good ideas, but ultimately fell somewhat short of expectations. Both the first Razr in 2019 and the refreshed version in 2020 were a bit disappointing.

The Razr 2022, on the other hand, is a tale of lessons learned. A true flagship SoC, with bigger and better screens, a more capable camera setup, a bigger battery with faster charging, and a set of stereo speakers. We particularly appreciated the subtlety of the fold of the foldable screen compared to other solutions on the market.

Of course, it might not be the cheapest phone on the market, nor has it sold in spades. The foldable future is still a future, but anyone who’s had the chance to play with the 2022 Razr was no doubt convinced that sooner or later we’ll get there.

Losers: The Moto G Series

Although Motorola has returned to the limelight with its successful mid-range phones, the company has gotten a little too conservative with this year’s edition of its most popular range. It wasn’t too long ago that we could recommend the Moto Gs as arguably the best value in the mid-range and now each recommendation comes with a long list of prerequisites.

It seems that several bad decisions were made at the product planning stage, causing the majority of Moto G phones to lag behind the competition. IPS LCDs are the default choice, while many rivals have switched to OLEDs. The camera experience often comes with major trade-offs.

Often the choice of SoCs means no 4K recording. And last but not least, some features found on Motorola Edge smartphones with similar hardware are missing. Market segmentation is cool and all, but only makes sense if you still end up with a competitive product.

Don’t get me wrong – the Moto G phones still have solid battery life and good performance, so it doesn’t need a full reboot to get back to the top, but a course correction is still in order.

Winner: Motorola Edge Series

Motorola certainly doesn’t make the same mistakes with its flagship lineup as it did with the Moto G lineup. The company spares no expense and tries to deliver the best possible experience with its Edge smartphones.

That’s why the Edge family makes sense as an alternative to other higher-level smartphones. They have great displays, beautiful designs, a great photo experience even from the budget Edge 30 Neo, fast charging, and a nice set of software features. And that includes the “Ready For” feature, which is a great alternative to Samsung’s much-underrated DeX feature.

Loser: Motorola software updates

For a company that almost installs Android on its phones, updating to the latest version of Android has become increasingly slow. Even high-end Motorola phones like the Edge and Razr series are still running Android 12 and the first batch of phones receiving Android 13 will be in “early 2023”.

And the list of phones with Android 13 isn’t that long in the first place. Most of the devices are from 2022 and the 2021 Moto G series is completely ignored.

Winner: US market

Even though Motorola isn’t one of the most popular brands in the world, it sure kills it at home. The US market is very limited in terms of brands present, and downright hungry in terms of budget smartphones.

And that’s why Motorola thrives there. The company offers excellent value for money in the context of the US market, with the absence of many of its China-based rivals. Not that Motorola isn’t Chinese-owned, but you get the idea.

In fact, Motorola often has US-exclusive models that we wish we had in Europe or Asia.

Looking ahead to 2023, we hope that Motorola will try to offer more competitive mid-range phones and solve its problem with software updates.