Motorola Moto G6 (2018)

Great, except reception – Loved my Moto G4 so upgraded to G6 with plan to give hubby the G4. Look of the phone - terrific, smart silver. Note - it came with a transparent gel case which I have continued to use. I also added a tempered glass screen protector thankfully as I did drop it fairly soon and it cracked the edge of the screen protector, but not the phone. Screen… Read more

size, different to my Moto G4, which is wider though not quite as tall. This one is narrower and taller, but both are fine. USB C charger, good, better than the old micro on the G4. Charges fast - lots faster than the G4. Battery life excellent, much better than the G4 Camera great. Dual sim nice if you need it. Notifications - might be just me and the apps I have and their setttings but just can't seem to turn off all the notifications and frequent beeps that are not a problem on my G4. Reception - a problem if you live in poor reception area. I assume the antennae in this one not as good as the G4. I started using this on overseas trip, came home and couldn't get reception where I normally did with my G4. This is now the deal breaker for me, am going back to the G4 because I have borderline reception here and with it I have to drive somewhere to get reception, with the G4 I could walk out of the house about 10 m. If you live/work in places with good reception this is a great phone and I would highly recommend it. I don't recommend it if you live /work in borderline reception areas in the country. Sorry can't remember the cost and I bought it from some online place.

Let down by poor antenna and very slippery housing – Bought this phone from Aldi when it was reduced after a sale. I liked the size because I prefer phones that can be operated single handed. Also runs well on Android 9. Overall it is a pretty good phone, especially for the low price that I got it for. Comes with 4GB Ram, 32 GB storage, dual sim and separate SD card slot. The camera is good, the… Read more

screen is good and the battery life is good as it lasts about 1 day. But there are a few annoying things such as: The housing is extremely slippery. Without a protective cover you need suction cups on your fingers to not let it slip out of your hand. The antenna is poor which is very annoying in rural areas. I thought coverage has changed in my area but when I put the SIM back into an old phone I get immediately 1-2 bars more coverage. For me this means calls dropping out, only coming in as missed calls or people not understanding a word. The power button sometimes doesn't work and I have to press the home button repeatedly or close apps before it does turn the screen off.

Sadly I regret buying this phone because it affects my coverage compared to my old 2014 phone.

Good budget phone – I purchased this a few weeks ago at Aldi for $200. Full 1080p screen, 3GB Ram, NFC, Dual Sim, Proper magnetic compass, nearly stock Android. Bargain. I do however have 2 small issues. The headphone volume even on minimum is much louder than the 3 other Android devices I have. I need it low to listen to podcasts in bed and I can't get it low… Read more

enough. I have even tried using apps. There is also a faint hiss/crackle coming from the headphone jack. It is not really noticeable listening to music but podcasts where it's just speaking it is. I have just discovered that the static/hiss through the headphone jack is a known and common problem with both the G6 and G7 series of phones. Apparently Motorola have acknowledged the issues but are not doing anything to fix them. I have read that bluetooth headphones work without hissing but I don't have any to confirm this. If I had been aware I would not have purchased this phone. Without the headphone jack problems it would be a 4/5.

Not for the fainthearted – Not suitable for other than the young and tech savvy. Hardware seems robust enough but the Motorola tweeks let it down. Used to Samsung and Blackberry prior. With this unit, the alarm sound turns off occasionally and virtually impossible to switch back on, answer button dicky when in an app messages and email apps not user friendly by any means.… Read more

All in all, if you're an old fossil like me or a tech dummy, stay away from it. There are more user friendly phones out there.

Good value, decent performance, nice features – I bought the Moto G6 when it was on special at Aldi on 21st August 2019, for $279. Not the cheapest price around, but it made up for it by coming with $30 worth of Aldi Mobile data; plus, of course, the main draw-card of buying a phone (or any other weekly special item) from Aldi is that you can put it through its paces for 60 days, and if it… Read more

doesn't measure up, simply return it for a no-quibble full refund. You can't say no to that!

Hot Tip: if you're in the market for one of these at the time of writing the first update to this review, 21st Nov. 2019 - check a few Aldi stores, as some still have stock, and the price has dropped to just $149 - an unbeatable price for an unlocked phone of this quality! And you still get the $30 worth of Aldi Mobile data, too.

OK, so what is it about mobile phone designers these days that for some reason they feel inclined to encase phones in materials that have a friction coefficient of less than zero? In other words - this is one heck of a slippery phone! It seems ridiculous to me that for a device that's going to be going into and coming out of your pocket all day, and being handled over and over throughout the day, that they make it so slippery it's inevitable that it will be dropped, scratched and broken...

One solution is to ensure that you always have a healthy coating of honey or jam all over your hands and fingers all day - not too difficult for the kiddies! Another is to invest in a protective case, which I have done, and which cost me all of $5 on eBay.

Motorola's website says "moto g6 is completely wrapped in scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass with a 3D contoured back for a comfortable grip." I beg to disagree. Firstly, I don't believe it's "wrapped" in Gorilla Glass, because the back feels like cheap plastic. Secondly, as I mentioned above, the impracticality of the slippery back certainly does not make for a comfortable grip. But this advertising puffery is academic anyway, because once the phone is enclosed in a protective rubber case, it's perfectly comfortable to grip and hold.

Oh, and about that Corning Gorilla Glass - they claim that it's Gorilla Glass 3, but I'm doubtful, because after having the phone in my (clean!) pocket for just one day, I could already see micro scratches on the surface. So you will definitely need to apply a screen protector (tempered glass protectors are the best) and you can get these on eBay for around the $10 mark.

Anyway, after using the Moto G6 for several months now, I can say that so far (apart from these and a few other minor niggles you'll read about below) I'm actually very impressed by it. The sound through the front-facing speaker is good and loud, and the phone is fast and responsive. Bear in mind that this is a mid-market phone, so if you tend to push things, perhaps playing high-tech games, maybe you won't be as impressed as I am - but I'm not into all that, and frankly I can't see why this phone wouldn't suit most people.

The screen is a largish 5.7 inches, and in common with many phone designs today, is taller/narrower than screens used to be, with an 18:9 aspect ratio. I actually find it less comfortable to hold in my hand than the wider phone I'm used to (I'm coming from an LG Stylus 2) and as a result you get less overall screen real estate, too. But that's just my personal preference.

It has two SIM slots, NFC, a hefty 3000mAh battery, a decent 3GB RAM, a micro-SD card slot, FM radio, a good ol' 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C shaped charging port (though speed is only USB2.0) and the wifi works on both 2.4 and 5GHz up to 802.11n speed. But no 5G, this is a 4G/3G-only phone, not surprising at this price point, of course.

My main beef with the phone is the quality of the camera, which is solidly mid-market. For example, the auto-focus is dreadful for close-up work; and the manual focus is fiddly and less than responsive. There are some special effects which may impress some people (like portrait mode, cut-out, spot colour, face filters and more) but no Night Mode!

PROs:

1) Fast and responsive - no lag when switching apps.

2) Good sound quality for phone calls and WhatsApp calls.

3) Nice loud front-facing speaker. (And if you want to mute it briefly, such as when an annoying ad comes on YouTube, just stick your thumb over it!)

4) Easy to set up - these days, Google imports most (but not all) of your apps, settings and data from your old phone's account, so you're up and running in no time. Eg. for me, all my SoundHound songs were magically there, and my myNRMA app was signed-in. But for some other apps, whilst they automatically installed, I still needed to sign in again, eg. IMdB, Instagram, Shazam, Velocity, Facebook. Also your browser's tabs and speed-dials will not be restored.

5) Well thought-out, practical 'Moto' functions, eg. as you lift the phone when it rings, the ringing is silenced; and to set DND (do not disturb) mode, just flip the phone face-down - this is great at bed-time! You can quickly turn on the torch by shaking the phone twice, and you can quickly access the camera by twisting the phone twice. Most of the time, these functions work well, and they're great because you don't need to unlock the phone or even turn on the screen to use them.

6) Fingerprint unlocking, which generally works well.

7) Very fast charge with the supplied 3-amp charger - I observed the following charging times, starting from a dead flat battery: 15% in 10 minutes 32% in 20 minutes 48% in 30 minutes 88% in 60 minutes 99% in 90 minutes

CONs:

1) "OK Google" hotword detection sometimes disables itself, and sometimes it can be tricky to get it to work again (eg. several reboots). This is a bug with the newer Android 9 (Pie) version of the phone that it came with. There were also Android 8 (Oreo) versions being sold in Australia, so if this is likely to annoy you, do not upgrade to Android 9 until they sort this out. To be fair to Motorola though, this Android Pie bug affects other brands too, even including Google Pixel phones, so we can actually blame Google for this one, not Motorola! Edit: as of January 2020, this issue has still not been sorted.

2) Edit: this is a new issue that has started happening since I wrote the original review - the NFC intermittently stops working so that when you go to pay for something with Google Pay, or get on a bus, the phone is unresponsive. A workaround is to go into the phone's NFC setting, and toggle the NFC switch off and on again. This procedure takes about 15 seconds, so if you're getting onto a bus or running late for a train, you may wish to do this preemptively beforehand, to save time, and not hold up other passengers! I raised this as an issue with Motorola Australia, but despite other users reporting the same bug in forums online, they appeared to be unaware of it.

3) After the phone updated itself to the latest build a few days after I got it, I found that you can't get rid of the annoying and childish "Hello Moto!" sound effect each time the phone restarts, other than by muting the volume before you restart, or holding your thumb over the speaker. But I found a neat app on Google Play called 'Sound Profile' which fixes it :-) Edit: as of January 2020, this issue has still not been sorted.

4) There is no notification LED, so you cannot quickly see at a glance from across the room when you have notifications waiting. To be fair, this very useful feature is nowadays being left off even high-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S10. But then, those phones have the benefit of "always on" OLED screens that you can see your notifications on from a distance. The G6 does have a useful feature though, in that if you wave your hand in its general direction the screen will turn on, so you can see whether or not you have any notifications that way. Again, I found a great app on Google Play called 'Flash Notification' which utilises the front flash in place of the notification LED :-)

5) The screen is extremely prone to scratching, so you will definitely need to apply a screen protector.

6) Very slippery rear case material - you will definitely need a protective case to give it some grip.

7) The camera is rather ordinary.

8) The charging cable is quite short at 1 metre.