Motorola Moto G52 Review: Budget-Friendly smartphone to meet all your needs?

Tech giant Motorola has added Moto G52 4G to its G Series line-up in India. With the 5G rollout still some distance away, Motorola is eying this win back some old G series fans who in recent years have migrated to Redmi or Realme in the absence of a good value for money G series phone.

With the Moto G52, the company has finally managed to offer what looks like a capable 4G phone without making a hole in your pocket. It comes in 2 storage variants which are both priced under Rs. 18,000. Is the Moto G52 4G worth your money? Let’s find out. 

Moto G52 Review: Design

Motorola has launched Moto G52 in two elegant colors- Charcoal Grey and Porcelain White. I was loaned the Charcoal Grey variant and the first thing I felt about the Moto G52 is its lightweight build and feel in hand. The device is actually one of the lightest phones in its category weighing only 169 grams.

Motorola has made the back panel with plastic which feels smooth to touch and looks premium. The back panel has a matte finish but does tend to glow under sunlight. The smartphone is sleek (7.99mm) and can easily be operated with one hand, which is good.

The right side of the device has volume rockers and a power button cum fingerprint sensor whereas the left rim sees the SIM tray. The bottom edge of the device houses a USB Type-C port, speaker grille, and 3.5mm headphone jack whereas the top side has another speaker.  The back panel has a triple camera module at the top with 3 lenses and an LED flash.

The camera bump is very minuscule so much so that one might not even notice it. The middle of the back has an ‘M’ symbol whereas the bottom side has Motorola branding. The front has a 6.6-inch plastic OLED display with very slight bezels.

I found only 2 small issues with the design of the device. The back panel is so slippery that the device did not stay put on any surface easily, this is problematic as there was always a worry that the device might slip and fall. Another one was that the back panel attracts not only smudges but dust too very easily. I found this annoying. Otherwise, the device is IP52 rated for splash resistance, which is a relief. All in one, the Moto G52 has a good-looking design but slight nitty-gritty issues which can be ignored.

Moto G52 Review: Display

The Motorola Moto G52 has a 6.6-inch Plastic OLED FHD+ display with almost no bezels. The display size is big which meant large visuals while watching content. The colors on the OLED panel were cheerful and bright, way better than what’s seen on any LCD display.

The visuals showed a good amount of detailing and were crystal clear. The device has a 90Hz refresh rate which is decent for gaming as well as browsing the web and social media. 360Hz touch sampling rate made sure that the touch was ultra-responsive whereas the 500 nits peak brightness gave good visibility both indoors and outdoors.

The display also comes with a DCI-P3 color gamut and DC dimming for better display quality and longer battery life. SGS Blue Light certification and Motion Blur Reduction meant long working hours will strain and harm one’s eyes less. Watching content and playing games was much less stressful for the eyes due to these certifications.

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The display menu in settings has various smart options to choose the kind of display you would like. It includes a light/dark theme, font size, display size, screen timeout duration, adaptive brightness, refresh rate settings, and more.

Moto G52 Review: Battery

Moto G52 packs a 5000mAh battery which is powerful enough to last a day and a half with moderate usage. However, if you have heavy usage, then you will need to charge the battery once daily. My daily usage included watching videos, listening to music, browsing the web, attending calls, and surfing social media, and after all this too the battery lasted for about 28 hours.

The battery supports 33W Turbo fast charging which can charge the device from 0 to 50% in about 30 minutes and 100% in about 50 minutes. The charger comes inside the box so no hassles there. The battery page in the settings menu displays how much battery is left, if the device is charging or not, adaptive battery setting optimized charging, overcharge protection, and more.

The device heats up when charging which is a slight issue but otherwise the battery power and charging speed is decent.

Moto G52 Review: Camera

Moto G52 has a triple camera setup on the back. It includes a 50MP main sensor, an 8MP ultrawide sensor, and a 2MP macro shooter.

The Camera UI of the Motorola Moto G52 is very simple and user-friendly. There is a virtual shutter button to capture images but pictures can also be clicked using auto smile capture or tapping anywhere on the screen. The camera has various modes like Cinemagraph, Ultra-Res, Night Vision, Group Selfie, Panorama, Pro, Portrait, and more. HDR and flash can be enabled too.

The main 50MP camera gives good quality shots in natural daylight. The colors are true to life and cheerful with the exact amount of softness and coolness. The images of the setting sun captured the various hues well while the greens, browns, yellows, and whites were vibrant and detailed. The Night Images are slightly below average even when the Night mode is switched on.

Talking about the ultrawide camera, it covers a good FOV but the image quality is average as these images don’t have as much brightness and life as the ones with the main camera. Use this one only if you want to cover a large amount of area in a picture.

2MP macro sensor is strictly below average as the focus of this lens keeps fluctuating. It gives ok close-up shots but one would surely miss the lack of focus as it led to very less detailing being captured. In macro shots, all one wants is close-ups with details and since that is missing, using this lens can be avoided.

There is a 16MP selfie camera at the front which does its job well. It gave good quality video during conference calls and clicked precise images. The subject in the selfies is highlighted without blurring out his/her background. The background is as visible as the subject and neither of the two interrupts each other’s focus or quality.

Moto G52 Review: Performance

The Moto G52 draws power from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset and the variant we have features 6GB RAM and 128GB storage memory. The RAM and chipset together gave good functionality speed to the device. The apps were quick when opened or closed. The loading of programs was fast and multitasking was seamless. Switching between various apps did not let the smartphone crash or lag. With a good internet connection, heavy social media apps loaded swiftly and posed no problems. 128GB storage space is adequate for saving important videos, photos, apps, audio, documents, and more.

If we talk about gaming performance, then there were slight issues in this department. Switching between playing two games led the smartphone to lag and thus it was better if one game was running at a time. The games like Asphalt 9 and Free Fire ran smooth but in medium graphics and high frame rate combination. If both frame rate and graphics were boosted to high, the device slowed down a bit. The thermal performance of the device is good as the device never heated up while gaming or running benchmark tests. It just warmed up a little while charging, which is totally fine. Here are the results of some benchmark tests I ran on Moto G52-

Call Quality on the Moto G52 is good as there were no call drops or distorted voices even when I attended a call in double basement parking. The device has options of screen lock, fingerprint lock, face unlock, and more for privacy and security purposes.

Moto G52 has powerful multi-dimensional dual speakers at the top and bottom. The effect of this speaker setup can be felt when you listen to audio of HD videos, games, songs, and more. The sound quality is better than most sub-15K segment phones. The device allows air gestures to control the smartphone as well as features like 3-finger screenshots and swipe to split.

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Now, let’s talk about the software. Motorola Moto G52 runs Android 12 with its trademark skin on top. The UI does not have adware and bloatware too is very less compared to smartphones from other brands. The Moto G52 had a few third-party apps preinstalled like YouTube, YT Music, Sheets, and G-Pay. These apps could be uninstalled or kept as per one’s needs. There was no adware thus making the UI a clean experience.

The UI gives options for personalization. It includes layout, fonts, icon shape, system theme, and live wallpaper options. You can stylize your browsing experience the way you like. The UI has been guaranteed Android 13 updates and 3+ years of security updates. It comes with Moto Unique Gestures as well. These include 3-finger screenshots and twisting the wrist twice to open the camera from any screen.

Review verdict: Should you buy Moto G52?

Motorola Moto G52 is a budget smartphone in the under 18k price range. The smartphone has a good display, large battery, quick charging capability, and clean UI. It has a good main camera sensor, decent processor, and is IP52 rated as well. Although the device does not offer good gaming performance, is a smudge magnet, and has underperforming ultrawide and macro lenses, these small details can be overlooked if you are looking for a smartphone for under Rs. 15000 (as its low-end variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage costs Rs. 14,499)