The new Moto G takes on the impossible task of competing with the Pixel 5a

Motorola is making even more mid-range phones. Moto G Stylus 5G (2022) for $499 and Moto G 5G (2022) for $399 are coming to the US in the next few weeks. Don’t confuse today’s $499 Moto G Stylus 5G (2022) with the $ 299 Moto G Stylus (2022) ; the “no 5G”version was only announced in February and is not being replaced.

The $499 Moto G Stylus 5G does some work to stand out, with a 6.8-inch 2460×1080 120Hz LCD as the main attraction. Like the $282 OnePlus Nord N20, the Motorola phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC. It is a 6nm chip with two 2.2GHz ARM Cortex-A78 cores, six 1.7GHz Cortex-A55 cores, and an Adreno 619 GPU. The Moto G Stylus 5G also has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of onboard memory and a 5000 mAh battery.

The Moto G Stylus 5G also has an NFC chip. No other mid-range Motorola phones support NFC, so users cannot use the click-to-pay feature. This is one of the biggest problems with current mid-range Motorola phones.

There’s a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, a USB-C port, a headphone jack, a microSD slot, and, of course, a stylus of the same name. Motorola notes that the device has an unspecified “water-repellent design”that is meant to be splash-only, not submersible. The rear cameras include a 50MP main sensor, an 8MP wide-angle sensor, and a 2MP Macro Vision depth sensor. Front camera 16 MP.

The second option is the Moto G 5G, which will retail for $399. This phone has a 6.5 inch 90Hz LCD display with 1600×720 resolution and MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor. The SoC is very close to Qualcomm 695, with two 2.2GHz ARM Cortex-A78 cores and six Cortex cores -A55 at 2GHz, built on 7nm process. The phone has 6GB of RAM, a surprisingly large 256GB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery. Like other mid-range Motorolas, there’s no NFC here, but you do get a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, a microSD slot, a USB-C port, and that “water-repellent design.”

In the US, both of these phones are in the same price range as the excellent $449 Pixel 5a (and likely the upcoming Pixel 6a), so they’ll be hard to sell. Motorola is only promising one major update for both of these phones, and they’re shipping Android 12 right now. Part of what makes the Pixel A series so compelling is the included three-year Google updates, so Motorola hopes you’ll enjoy the better raw specs in comparison. with a safe modern device.

The Moto G Stylus 5G will go on sale on April 28th and the Moto G 5G on May 19th.