It’s cheap and it’s the only one of the G family that supports Boost Mobile (don’t know why the other ones don’t). It would be for a family member who may need to replace an Android 8 phone. For stupid reason I have a couple of prepaid Boost cards, so being able to use them is a plus, but the phone’s low up front price is also a big attraction. I have the G Stylus 5g and like it a lot, so am imagining the Play as a less fancy version. Is that reasonable? Thanks.
Everything about it seems usable but only 32gb of storage is a total dealbreaker imo. Android itself will already take half that space and you will struggle not filling up the dozen gb with apps and downloads. Remember, not everything can be moved to an SD card.
It’s about as good as you can get for a new phone at $100, but in this case I’d just recommend buying something second hand or spending more to get something good.
Thanks. I’m pretty sure media downloads can go on an SD card. I don’t expect this user to install many apps, but it is something to keep in mind. My old phone (Android 7) had 32GB and it was enough for me, but Android 12 may burn more space than Android 7 did.
A used Pixel 5 is less than $150 these days, and work on any provider as far as I know.
I’ve been a fan of the Moto G series for a while. I think they’re solid phones but maybe a year or two behind in features compared to their peers. The biggest gripe of mine is that their midrange phones don’t, or didn’t used to, have NFC capabilities. I dearly miss the Moto Actions though. Chopping to turn on the flashlight is amazing!
Thanks. I picked the G Stylus 5g for myself partly because it has NFC, though it turns out that I like the stylus too (it is nice for picking tiny UI elements). This person won’t be using NFC though. Wireless charging would be really helpful for him, but that is only on quite expensive phones from what I can tell. More ram might also help.
2nd to this. Recently got rid of my Moto G Play and I still find myself trying to chop my phone to turn the flashlight on!
3gb of ram is always going to deliver a sub par experience. Set your limit at phones with 4gb ram as a minimum.
Having said that, Motorola has traditionally done a lot with the available ram on their devices, its just that Android is becoming more ram hungry with each successive iteration.
Ehhh, they’re okay.
They’re prone to lag and janky transitions. The kind of phone you get when you can’t get something better, then end up regretting not just using your old one and saving up another twenty or thirty bucks for something else
That being said, if you’re locked into using a specific carrier, and that’s the only real and affordable option, you could do worse. You should see the shit phones that are handed out for the subsidised phones by tracfone. Shitty nokias that are barely usable for calls and text. Good luck trying to fill out online forms on some of those; the g play is better than that. And better than most of the “burner” phones you can get cheap.
Supposedly, the 2022 version is a tad better than the 2023 version, though I can’t tell much of a difference myself. I end up doing the whole debloat thing for friends and family members. Plenty of them are using budget options by default, so I’ve handled a dozen or so of them now.
