Motorola One 5G is the newest Motorola mid-range smartphone to reach the US, and for a pricetag that’s expected to be below $500, it will be one of the most affordable 5G phones in the country.
The Motorola One 5G is actually a rebranding of the Motorola G 5G Plus phone that debuted in Europe and other countries earlier this year. There are a handful of differences, but the specs are virtually identical: 6.7-inch FHD display with a 90Hz refresh rate (and narrow 21:9 ratio), quad rear cameras, dual front-facing cameras, a Snapdragon 765 5G chipset, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery.
In other words, it’s got the best bits of the flagship Motorola Edge and Motorola Edge Plus phones at half the price. In fact, a rumor suggested it would be named the Motorola Edge Lite in the US, but according to Motorola, the company opted to rebrand it the Motorola One 5G to introduce the product line to Americans (it debuted last year with several phones, but none came to the US).
Aside from the name change, the biggest new feature is a ring light around the macro lens, which should help solve the ‘got close to the subject and the phone blocks the light’ problem seen with other macro cameras.
While price hasn’t been finalized, Motorola insists it will cost under $500 and will be coming soon to AT&T and its sub-6 5G network. A version that works with Verizon’s mmWave and sub-6 network will be available to buy in October – it’s unclear if this variant will cost more, which has been the case with phones that work on Verizon’s particular 5G setup.
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Motorola’s many phones
While Motorola always withholds some of its phones from the US market, its practice of rebranding some handsets to release in other markets under new names is confusing – so much that we wrote an entire guide to understanding the Moto G8 line, which has six phones, three of which were rebranded in different regions.
In that sense, renaming the Moto G 5G Plus (itself a mouthful of a moniker) to the Motorola One 5G is a bit of a kindness for US consumers. Given the Moto G line is priced at $300 and under, it makes sense to have the Motorola One 5G represent the below-$500 line, and then have the Motorola Edge and Edge Plus at $700 and $1000, respectively. Let’s just hope there’s no more confusing rebranding with the next Motorola phone.
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