Motorola Moto G32 Review: An affordable companion for all your daily needs

Moto G32 Review Summary:

Editor’s rating: 3.5/5

Motorola has been launching new smartphones every week in the Indian market. Adding to their G Series, the brand has launched the Moto G32 device which is an addition to their budget catalog in the country. The smartphone comes at a very affordable price and promises a good combination of specs like a triple camera setup, 90Hz refresh rate, 5000mAh battery, 33W charging, Clean UI, and more. I got a chance to lay my hands on this device and here’s what I feel about it.

Moto G32 Review: Design

At first look, the Moto G32 looks like any other standard Motorola smartphone. This does not mean it looks bad, it means, the phone looks simple and minimal. It comes in 2 colors and I received the Mineral Grey color for review purposes. I liked the color and feel of the device in my hand. It has a curved back panel made of plastic, almost slippery to touch. The back has Motorola branding and logo along with a small square-shaped camera module in the top left corner. The module has triple lenses and an LED flash.

Although the back of the Moto G32 feels slippery, its frame is made of a different texture which makes hand holding it comfortable. The tall display makes it almost impossible to operate the device with one hand but the phone doesn’t feel heavy in your hand ever. It weighs 184 grams.

The front of the device has a 16.51 cm display with slight bezels on the sides and top and a thicker one on the chin. There is a selfie lens in the middle on top of the screen. The right edge houses the power button as well as volume rockers whereas the left side has a dual SIM tray. The top edge features a microphone whereas the bottom edge is filled with a 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone, USB Type-C port, and speaker grille. The buttons on the right edge are tactile and there is a separator between the volume rockers. The tray can house 2 SIM cards and a micro-USB card to expand memory up to 1TB.

Moreover, the Moto G32 is IP52 rated for water and dust resistance so the external protection department is also covered.

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Moto G32 Review: Display & Audio

The display is one such element that is very important to gamers as well as binge-watchers in today’s times. This is the reason that even budget smartphones come with huge displays. Moto G32 is no less as it sports a 6.5-inch FHD+ display that promises to give an immersive viewing experience while watching videos and gaming. The display comes with a 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate and this can be felt while scrolling as the experience is fluid and seamless.

The display is externally protected by Panda Glass 3 (equal to Gorilla Glass 3) and during my usage, there were no scratches on the device though it did slip out of my hand once. Watching content is an ok experience as the colors look a little boosted especially reds. Viewing angles were strictly ok and could have been better. The peak brightness of 600 nits proved to be an issue when the sunlight was too bright, but otherwise, it was ok. The smartphone comes with support for Widevine L1 and I tested it with HD movie playback on both Amazon and Netflix.

Coming to audio, it features a stereo speaker setup with support for Dolby Atmos. The speakers are loud at max volume, but the audio lacks depth. The back panel starts vibrating when the audio is turned to 100, which can be annoying. This is mostly due to the plastic body.

Moto G32 Review: Camera

The Moto G32 has a triple camera setup on the back. It includes a 50MP main sensor with an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 2MP macro sensor. There is a 16MP selfie lens as well.

The photos captured with the main sensor in daylight were well lit and had a good amount of details. Subjects or highlights were not overexposed and shadows were fine as well. Far-off objects lack detail but otherwise, the images are fine.

The 8MP ultrawide camera, on the other hand, covers a good field of view but the images have very little detailing and a lot of noise. There was distortion at the edges and the colors were washed out.

The 2MP Macro lens does not support much of a purpose as it gives hardly any use. The images have no details and are sometimes blurry as well. It is better to not use this lens unless needed for extreme close-up shots. The edge detection is weak as well.

Low light photography with the main camera is strictly average. Indoor shots under good lighting looked decent but were soft. Photos in poor lighting conditions were not at all good. There was loads of noise with little details. The 16MP selfie camera took ok selfies against a bright background while the ones taken in the dim light were blurry and distorted. Switching to HDR mode helped improve the quality of selfies as using HDR gave the images a little bit of detailing on them.

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Moto G32 Review: Performance

The Moto G32 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset along with Adreno 610 GPU. The processor works well in combination with 4GB RAM. The apps load swiftly and run seamlessly in the background.

Although the device can handle almost all apps and games, the problem arises when you try to switch between heavy games and social media apps. Less RAM is the sole reason behind this flaw and one needs to close all the apps in the background if they want to play a heavy game like COD: Mobile or Free Fire. Otherwise, apps like Google, Twitter, and Whatsapp can run well simultaneously too. I ran some benchmark tests and the results are below-

In terms of gaming, heavy games can be played with smooth graphics and normal frame rates. Too high frame rates or HD graphics might not work for the phone with limitations related to GPU and thermal system. The phone warms up after about 20 minutes of playing, so avoid long gaming sessions.

Coming to the software, like all recent G Series devices the G32 is also driven by Android 12 out of the box. The company gives Android 12 with My UX skin on top and thus it gives a clean UI experience free of adware and bloatware. During the time of setting up, it asks about installing apps like Josh and Moj, but you can easily deny this and stop these apps from loading onto your system. There are options for customization and personalization as well. Android 13 update has also been promised on the G32 device.

In terms of connectivity, the smartphone has support for Bluetooth 5.2, dual-band WiFi, FM Radio, 4G LTE, and more. There is no 5G, so the device is not future ready and even the WiFi is not stable as it got disconnected on its own quite a few times.

Motorola allows you to take 3 finger screenshots and flick your wrist to open the camera, all thanks to its Gestures feature. The peek feature allows you to see our notifications from the Lockscreen.

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Moto G32 Review: Battery

The Moto G32 has a 5000mAh battery which is pretty common in this price segment these days. The device lasted for over 7 hours of screen time when I binge-watched content, scrolled the internet, and clicked some photos. Depending on one’s usage, the battery can last for over a day on a single charge.

It comes with a 33W fast charger inside the box. This is pretty good for this price range as most of the devices under 15k come with either 10, 18, or 20W adapters. The 33W charger charged the device from 0 to 100% in about an hour and 10 minutes.

Moto G32 Review Verdict: Should you buy it?

The Moto G32 worked perfectly well as a primary device in day-to-day life. It comes with a minimal design factor but has a large battery life with fast charging. The RAM and ROM are on a lesser side and there is no 5G connectivity, but then you can’t expect everything to be top of the line in a 12,000 rupees smartphone. If you are looking for a device that can handle heavy games, then Moto G32 can not be your choice but if you need a basic device for daily needs, then the Moto G32 can be an option for you. 90Hz refresh rate and triple camera setup are welcome features in this smartphone but if you need higher RAM and ROM, then go for Vivo T1x 4G or Samsung Galaxy M13 4G.