Extensive details have finally emerged surrounding Motorola's next midrange handset, the Moto G7, as the phone maker looks to grab the budget smartphone crown back from Nokia's clutches.
For years, Motorola has dominated the budget landscape with its G-series phones, which typically deliver solid features for sub-$300 prices. It's a feat few phone makers have been able to pull off — at least until the Nokia 7.1 came along. That was one of the best budget devices we saw in 2018, and it really challenged Motorola to come up with a better midrange offering in response.
What will Motorola come up with this year? Here's what we know so far about the G7.
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- An invitation to Brazilian media for a supposed Motorola event on Feb. 7 is making the rounds. Additionally, several product pages for different G7 models briefly surfaced on the company's website, but have since been taken down.
A range of models
In keeping with tradition, Motorola is planning several variants of the G7, each with different specifications, according to Gizmochina. The G7 Plus is believed to lead the range with a Snapdragon 636 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 3,000-mAh battery. At the rear, Motorola is expected to implement a dual camera system with 16- and 5-megapixel image sensors, presumably for depth effects, along with a 12-MP selfie shooter above the display.
The normal G7 will be mostly similar, save for lower-specced cameras all around, as well as a Snapdragon 632 CPU in place of the Plus model's more powerful silicon. Both will carry 6.2-inch full-HD+ LCD displays with notches.
At the lower end, Motorola is expected unveil the G7 Power and G7 Play. This pair is purported to employ single-lens rear cameras. The Power should receive a screen that is sized similarly to those in the more expensive models, though it is lower resolution. It's also likely to inherit the 632 processor of the standard G7, but will drop RAM to 3GB, Gizmochina's report claims.
However, the Power's main draw could be a 5,000-mAh battery, which would be 2,000-mAh larger than those of the other models. Finally, the G7 Play is believed to be the most compact of the lineup, with a 5.7-inch HD+ screen, and may only contain 2GB of RAM. Every version of the G7, from the low to high end, are all expected to sport notches and fingerprint sensors — though carrier-exclusive versions may differ in select aspects.
What the Moto G7 will look like
Motorola is building the G7 with a notch, according to a report from Droid Life. The photos you see here were lifted from the FCC's teardown of the lower-end Play variant of the Moto G7. And this leak is so comprehensive, it leaves almost nothing to doubt — from the phone's processor to the size of its battery and even a few pages of the instruction manual.
On the outside, the G7 Play looks very much like the current Moto G6, aside from the notch. The fingerprint sensor has now been shuffled over to the back, with a narrow chin and Motorola logo taking its place. There's still a single-lens camera, and we presume the regular G7 will receive a dual-lens solution, if Motorola's recent history is a trustworthy guide.
There's still a headphone jack, fortunately, as well as a USB Type-C port for charging and data and a microSD slot for expandable storage. The inclusion of Type-C is new for this generation of the Play line, as is the processor — a Snapdragon 632, which offers a sizable bump in power over the outgoing Snapdragon 430 in the last model.
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Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the 2,850-mAh battery, which is 1,150 mAh smaller than the gargantuan 4,000-mAh pack in the G6 Play. That device wasn't particularly fast, but the performance deficit was balanced out by the long-lasting battery. It's hard to imagine the G7 Play will come anywhere close to the G6 Play's longevity if these figures are true.
There's some good battery news, though, for a different version of the G7. XDA-Developers spotted an FCC filing for a Motorola phone with a 5,000-mAh battery. That's probably too much battery power for the standard G7, but again, rumors suggest Motorola could be working on as many as four different variations of the next G-series device. In addition to the G7, G7 Play, and G7 Plus, Motorola would also come out with a phone called the G7 Power — that's likely to be the one with the massive 5,000 mAh battery.
Finally, the FCC's G7 Play documents tell us the phone is optimized for bands common with GSM carriers, like T-Mobile and AT&T. Previous G-series products have launched on CDMA carriers like Verizon and Sprint as well, but it's possible those variants will be carrier exclusives, while this one is an unlocked model. We won't know for sure until Motorola's budget roster for 2019 is revealed, likely in the spring — so stay tuned.
