For me it’s Motorola G72. It’s excellent for the price. The phone is super lightweight despite having a 5,000 milliamper battery. The UI is very snappy and animations are very smooth (high refresh rate). It supports double tap on the back plus all other neat Motorola gestures. The under display fingerprint scanner works extremely well.
The android community, especially on /r/android is/was intensely hostile towards Motorola for no good reason. It’s basically just a Pixel/Samsung circlejerk, anything less than a flagship from those line is spit on.
Motorola’s lines have been very solid midrange phones, shipping with near-stock android, unlockable bootloaders, and just all around respectable specs for their price. They were also shipping aux ports/SD card slots for way, way longer than the others until very recently.
And before someone says “update speed”, not everyone cares. Most just want something stable.
Because Mororola is owned by Lenovo now, and lots of people dislike Lenovo. Their questionable ethics aside, Motorola phones have now become very average, a shadow of what the phones used to be like back in their heyday. Remember the revolutionary Moto X? With the custom voice processor and voice actions that didn’t drain battery, that satisfying dimple at the back, the soft-touch customisable body, the form factor which was neither too big nor too small, the OS - it was all perfect. But ever since Lenovo took over, the phones have become very unremarkable.
As for update speed - sure, not everyone cares, but r/c Android does, because most of us are techies and we care about this stuff. Trying to claim that updates aren’t important in these circles will only get pitchforks aimed at you.
There’s pretty good reason to avoid Motorola. It’s just not great value. Getting a 6th gen Pixel a-series will give you a device with a 5-year software lifespan. Moto on the other hand abandons their devices as soon as they can. The Pixel might not be the same price but when on sale it could be pretty close. I used to recommend Moto to people who couldn’t or didn’t want to spend much on a smartphone. These days I tell them to find a cheap Pixel a-series instead.
I’d imagine that’s country-specific. Out here in India, Pixel doesn’t seem to have an official presence so all you can get is unofficially sold variants that don’t have the same warranty cover. Motorola has manufacturing plants here so they’re surprisingly cost effective. For reference, I paid the equivalent of $290 for a g82 5G brand new
Motorola was great before Lenovo bought them… Used to be a bit of a fan until they fucked me over trying not to honor the warranty. Sent my phone in for repair, they claimed the screen was broken and I’d have to pay hundreds for a replacement. I asked for proof, they sent me a photo. The phone in the photo was the entirely wrong color even. Took weeks of repeat calling and a very stern letter to finally get them to honor the warranty. Stuff like this puts companies on my “blocklist” permanently. They will never get my money again
