5G for less than $500 with the Motorola One 5G, and how many cameras?

Motorola seems to be working on cornering the affordable-yet-feature-packed corner of the mobile phone market, with offerings like the Moto G Stylus, G Power, and G Fast demonstrating their capabilities. Their next phone is the Motorola One 5G, and it seems Motorola has worked out how to mix budget-friendly devices with 5G tech. All this, without the need for an add-on or mod like the Moto Z4 or Z3.

5G phones are expensive in the USA. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra costs $1,300, the OnePlus 8 Pro starts at $900 and Motorola’s own Edge Plus is $1,000. Dropping down to the mid-range of affordability with the LG Velvet, Galaxy A71, OnePlus 8, or the Motorola Edge and you’re still looking at $700ish for 5G. Getting the Motorola One 5G’s price down to below $500 dollars is a feat worth noting. The price isn’t 100% confirmed, yet, but the company has confirmed it’ll be sub-$500 for sure.

There’s not even a launch date either, although we’re told it’ll be “soon” and you’ll be able to get it on AT&T and sometime in October on Verizon. Different carriers will support a different style of 5G connectivity. With Verizon, the Motorola One 5G has its mmWave 5G whilst AT&T will offer it with their sub-6 5G. 

The specs are as appealing as those on the European version of this phone, the Motorola G 5G, but there are slight compromises on show, too. It has a 6.7-inch full HD display and is powered by a Snapdragon 765 processor, which is the same one found in the Motorola Edge, LG Velvet, and Galaxy A71. Other cool features you get include a headphone jack, a huge 5,000-mAh battery that comes with TurboPower charging, six cameras that we’ll tell you about in a minute, a 90Hz refresh rate, and NFC to allow for use with Google Pay. This last one is important – US versions on Motorola budget phones have lacked NFC until now. The OS is Android 10 and will get at least one major OS update plus security updates are guaranteed for two years. Samsung currently offers three years of updates for the Not 20 and other new Galaxy phones; Motorola might not be matching that but they’re open with what they’re offering.

Getting the price to below $500 had meant there were compromises made. Apple did the same to get the iPhone SE down to $399. For the screen, you only get an LCD display rather than OLED so the power is drained faster and the blacks aren’t really black. It only has 4GB of RAM (these days, most phones that cost as much have 6GB to 8GB). The body comes in polycarbonate, or plastic, which doesn’t match up to the premium glass look. These lower specs probably aren’t dealbreakers, reckons Partick Holland for cnet, and also note the six cameras you get thrown in. 

On the back, the One 5G gets four cameras, including a macro camera with a super cool feature. All around the edge of the macro camera is a rung flash that can light up close-ups. It’s really useful to get rid of the phone’s shadow when you’re taking a close-up shot. This type of flash has featured on the Canon macro lens on its M50 mirrorless camera, but it’s never been done on a phone before. 

The other rear cameras are made up of a 48-megapixel lens that uses pixel binning to put four pixels into one. Image noise is reduced and you get a brighter photo. You also get an ultrawide-angle camera plus a 2-megapixel depth camera to give you good shots in portrait mode. 

Front side, you get a pair of cameras, adding the camera suite up to six on the Motorola One 5G. You get a standard wide-angle camera pulse a 118-degree ultrawide-angle camera. Every one of the cameras on the phone are powered by Motorola’s AI that gives you shot optimization recommendations, smart composition, and auto smile capture.

MOTOROLA ONE 5G SPECS VS. MOTOROLA MOTO G 5G, MOTOROLA EDGE, LG VELVET, SAMSUNG GALAXY A71 5G