I’ve had a Motorola for decades now, several motoG and now a midrange Edge and I’m less and less satisfied every year. The hardware is really good, but Motorola is just coasting on their reputation for not installing junk, the latest Android 14 phones are full of shit you need hours and some back and forth to weed it out.

There’s Moto, then Moto App Manager that actively pushes unwanted shit games and apps as if it’s a cute discovery feature, Moto Secure, Moto Unplugged, Moto Widget, Motorola Notifications (fucking spam), Lenovo ID, Meta App Installer, Meta App Manager, Meta Services, Moto AI Services (fucking die Lenovo), Moto Camera Content 3 (funny, I thought camera content is for me to provide), Moto Experience Hub, Moto Feedback, Moto Feedback Assistant (are you fucking kidding me), Moto Thinkshield, another Moto Apps, MotoSecurityHubExt and so on. You can uninstall SOME OF THEM only with ADB and an usb connection, or disable them.

Regarding battery life, it’s not that good out of the box. Most of those apps really want to be resident in memory and are hungry for internet access - I have to force all connections through Rethink to block almost everything on a per-app basis. Once you uninstall what you can, block what you can’t and deny internet access for 80% of what’s left, battery life is good, I get 48 hours normal usage from it. But if you expect to purchase a phone, log in and have a good experience, good luck, it’s way too shit already, Motorola is pretty cooked.

The 2024 razr base version is honestly the perfect phone. I rarely open it. I use basically all functions on the square front screen. It’s satisfying the “small android phone” itch I’ve always had.

I have mid range Motorola Edge phone (Motorola edge 50), it has almost clean android experience there are some moto apps that can be removed without much issue. The display is the best part with this phone with 144hz refresh rate, the camera is also good. Battery is average, with 5G on it will last even less though. I miss 3.5mm jack for which I have to adjust with a converter for my wired IEM. The hardware is good for the price. There is a guaranteed 5 year update but so far the updates are usually a bit late (currently on A15, January patch), there was a specific update which degraded the camera but they fixed it in about 2 months time. Overall it’s good as phone you could use for normal purpose, that is its not suitable for emulation, heavy gaming.