Motorola G31 4/64GB - Mineral Grey

Product Information

Predictably, the main camera is its strongest. For the most part, photos taken in daylight offer natural colors and reasonable dynamic range. At times, the HDR makes things look a little too vibrant, but it's certainly eye-catching. Although it comes with an optional transparent plastic case for added grip, it’s not really necessary, as Motorola has replaced the smooth plastic finish with one that’s finely textured, with curved thin lines cascading out from around the camera section. It’s not the kind of thing you notice unless you’re looking closely, but it’s a nice touch and extra grip is always welcome. Performance is about what I expected. That is to say it’s fine a lot of the time, but there are plenty of instances of the phone lagging – whether it’s loading an app, or something just simply navigating around the homescreens. Elsewhere, selfies come out fairly well here at least, ensuring this is a camera that's fine if nothing special.

We noticed that the device did get slightly warm in the underbelly while playing games though it must be said that only extensive use would tell us if this was just a blip or is part of its performance. The screen on offer is decent, and largely in keeping with what you’d expect these days. It’s big, bright and colourful. You don't get the very latest Android 12 with this handset, but the one before it, Android 11 – and there's no indication from Motorola as to when an upgrade might appear. Thankfully there's very little in the way of bloatware and other pre-installed apps (Motorola is usually pretty good in this regard), so when you start up the phone for the first time you're not overwhelmed with a pile of apps you don't need.

Compact phone with day-long battery

Display quality is too good and colour combination is too much better than other mobile in this price segment @-****🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 Our colorimeter confirms the huge improvement, measuring 92.6% of the sRGB gamut covered with a volume of 93.5% and an average Delta E (colour variance) score of 1.46. That means you’re getting a tonally accurate screen for the price, and as it’s OLED you’re also getting infinite contrast, which IPS can’t beat. It’s also over 100cd/m² brighter, at 440cd/m² – which isn’t always what you’d expect from a switch to OLED. We had the mineral gray model to review, and it looks quite classy. It might have a plastic body, but it doesn't look that way. Instead, it looks rather smart. There are two ways of painting the results above. On one hand, while it’s marginally slower on the multicore benchmark, there’s not enough in it that you’d actively notice the difference between the two. Overall, I wasn’t too surprised with my findings from the cameras. Detail and quality is generally decent from the main camera if you’re in good lighting conditions but it struggles when put in lower light situations – even if the 50Mp is 4-in-1 pixel binning to result in 12.5Mp shots.

Moreover, for a phone priced at Rs. 16,000, a display of 90hz refresh is a must and the Moto G31 misses on that primarily because the chipset supports a maximum of 60Hz. Looking at the competition, Moto should feel this to be a missed opportunity. Performance and Battery The Moto app on the main homescreen is where you’ll find a bunch of things to explore including gestures, display options and entertainment controls. It’s a sort of settings menu if you like but presented in a much nicer way to help you discover features. The phone's 6.4-inch AMOLED display looks bright and vibrant most of the time, even if it misses out on having a refresh rate any higher than 60Hz. The rest of the build is fairly standard, with volume, power, and a fingerprint reader all on the right edge of the phone.

Inexpensively simple and competent

There is a vertically aligned triple rear camera setup in a dual-toned camera island and the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is housed underneath the bat-wings logo. It’s not all bad, though. Battery life is truly astonishing, which makes us think that the MediaTek processor must be remarkably more energy-efficient.

Spend a little more and you’ll get a much better phone, but for those with a limited budget, the Moto G31 is a solid enough choice for basic usage.

In our Geekbench 5 tests, the Moto G31 achieved a single-core score of 345, which is pretty low but beats the likes of the ageing Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. The multi-core score was slightly better sounding at 1,311, but could still only beat the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. If you're considering spending a little bit more money and exploring the mid-range smartphone market, the main improvements you'll see over the Moto G31 will be the increased snappiness of moving between multiple apps, and the better quality of the photos and videos that you take (especially in low light). A more expensive phone will have a more premium feel, and you'll also get access to extras that the Moto G31 doesn't offer, such as waterproofing, 5G and wireless charging.