Moto G Stylus 5G: A $399 Pen-Enabled Productivity Phone

Motorola launched its new Moto G Stylus 5G, which enters a highly competitive sub-$400 5G market with a pen-enabled phone.

The new phone comes with a huge 6.8” FHD+ “Max Vision” display which promises to be very readable and comfortable to look at. The large size lends itself extremely well for the e-Pen support, which is not common in that market segment.

Obviously, you should not expect the Pen features and precision to rival the high-end Samsung Galaxy Note handsets. Still, it seems great for the price for sketching with the Coloring Book app and taking light notes. In my opinion, the Pen support could be a sway factor for potential Motorola customers.

The Pen is garaged neatly at the bottom of the phone, and its round shape makes it easy to put back in without adjusting its rotation.

Because it is a large phone, it comes with a remarkable 5000 mAh battery, which is at the top-end of what’s currently possible and practical in the smartphone market. However, battery makers told us last year that ~5000 mAh would be a short-term ceiling for the foreseeable future, and they were spot-on.

In the back of the phone, the camera system looks quite decent. It has a 48MP f/1.7 primary camera, flanked with an 8MP Ultrawide and a 5 MP macro camera.

Macro photography is a nascent use-case that Motorola is promoting, and data suggests that there’s “some” traction there. However, macro photos are pretty rare if you look at your social media, but that’s a growing trend.

When we talked to Motorola about this phone, the company pointed out the camera app’s capabilities, and the Color Spot Video feature is a favorite of mine. The idea is to pick one color and have everything else become black & white. So if your subject wears a mono-color outfit, that makes for an assured Instagram hit.

We’ll see how well it scores with our Uber HW Camera benchmark, but looking at the high-level specifications, it seems well within striking distance of the best in that category.

The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 480, a mid-range computing platform that can handle many games and most common multimedia activities.

With 6GB of RAM, it’s probably possible to have a good number of apps installed and running. In addition, the 128GB/256GB of storage should be good enough for most users, but if not you can add another 1TB via microSD. Official product page.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: launch, moto g, Motorola