Motorola brings Android 11 updates to a nice pair of affordable mid-range phones
In terms of software support in general and major Android updates in particular, we've come to expect very little from Motorola in recent years. The Lenovo-owned brand may have become profitable of late thanks to an extensive portfolio of affordable mobile devices with excellent specifications, many of which just so happen to support the latest standard in cellular connectivity, but this newfound success hasn't changed much on the OS promotion front... yet.
Ironically, while Android 11 hasn't begun to roll out to a single 5G-enabled Moto handset around the world, there are at least three different 4G LTE-only models already capable of leaving OS version 10 behind in select global markets.
The early 2020-released Moto G8 and G8 Power are reportedly following the slightly newer Moto G Pro on the Android 11 bandwagon as we speak, at least in South America.
While the three phones share the same mid-end Snapdragon 665 processor, 6.4-inch screen real estate, and a few other key specs and features, we must confess we're pretty surprised to see a modest product like the "regular" G8 (with its 1560 x 720 display resolution and 16 + 8 + 2MP triple rear-facing camera system) beat the high-end Motorola Edge+ and upper mid-range Motorola One 5G to the Android 11 punch.
Those are just two of the many devices confirmed back in December 2020 for a massive upgrade "in the coming months" that's not taking off on a very wide scale for some reason. That being said, it's genuinely impressive to see the low-cost Moto G8 and G8 Power bumped up to the latest stable Android build with (relatively) new February 2021 security patches sprinkled on top already.
There aren't a lot of comparable Android 11-powered phones we can think of right now, and although the over-the-air delivery doesn't appear to have expanded to the US by the time of this writing, we fully expect that to happen in the very near future as far as the Moto G Power (aka G8 Power) is concerned. Unfortunately, the Moto G8 is not a US thing, and worst of all, the hot new Moto G Power (2021) and G Stylus (2021) are still running Android 10.
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