Motorola Moto G 5G (2023) User Reviews

So, in November 2023, I knew that my Samsung Galaxy A11 was just getting utterly stupid, and I was not going to be able to last until the three-year mark (January 2024) with it. Since I have, for some time, been itching to try out a "new" (HMD) Nokia, I went and picked up a cheap one on a deal... a Nokia C210 (which is not listed in PhoneArena's HMD/Nokia devices, and honestly it is just as well...). Since my Samsung was struggling at that point on 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, I figured an upgrade to 3GB of RAM, and a newer and nicer chipset from Qualcomm, should be plenty. I very quickly noticed that, while the build quality seemed great, the phone would often have an issue with the accelerometer not righting the screen after it had turned to the horizontal. Not only did this flaw surface regularly, but it could not be resolved without power-cycling the device - furthermore, the phone could not be power-cycled in this state without accessing controls that were actually, ridiculously, off screen in this orientation! And since the battery was non-user-removable, as most devices are these days (and now I prefer it that way... with any other device, it seems), the phone could not be manually reset in this manner. I was stuck trying to get to the off-screen controls for long amounts of time so I could get the phone to restart, at which time the phone screen *might* return to its normal orientation... it was unbelievable! Otherwise, it may have been a decent phone for me, but the issue was not software or hardware, other than that the phone had insufficient RAM to handle a simple function like the accelerometer getting re-oriented. So, I then, in January 2024, obtained this Motorola Moto G 5G (2023). It was pretty amazing! The internet just flew, all the time. I did not change what I was doing with the new phone, versus the old ones. I did not visit more sites, nor different ones that I am aware of, nor did I try to stream loads of videos or music that I was not doing before on a 4G-only device. I have had entry-level and low-cost Motorola's in the past, and was generally pleased with them; however, after just a couple of days into my new billing cycle, I had maxed out my high-speed data (never went past 3GB of data before in a normal month), and was throttled to 2G+ speeds for the rest of the billing cycle. Also, after a month, I noticed the screen was cracking and breaking along the edges in a sort of manner that I had not seen in any previous device I had owned, even while at the job I am at now, and also with the kinds of stressors that I have been encountering before with lesser devices. After a few months of that, in May 2024, with a very-cracked screen that was beginning to lose chunks of glass, and the data-saver ever-engaged (though still passing 5GB consumed by a week-or-two or so before end of billing cycle), I was left to recycle that device, and obtain a new one. It was... disappointing.