Motorola's affordable Moto G series of smartphones typically use mid-range processors, but that could change in 2021, as the company has confirmed it's set to use Snapdragon 800-series processors in some of its future Moto G handsets.
This comes as the Snapdragon 888 has been launched by Qualcomm, and that's a new top-end processor we'll see in many of the most powerful 2021 phones. At the launch event Sergio Buniac, Motorola President, announced that Moto G phones would soon get Snapdragon 800-series chipsets.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800-series chipsets have been used in top-end phones for years now - the Snapdragon 865 was used by many of 2020's fastest phones and the 855 in the top handsets of 2019, and so on.
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It's worth pointing out that Buniac didn't confirm that Moto G phones would get the new Snapdragon 888, and that seems pretty unlikely given Moto G phones tend to be affordable whereas top-tier chipsets cost quite a bit.
We could see them using older 800-series chipsets then, but that's no bad thing - those aging beasts still provide more processing power than some of the best mid-range chipsets.
Buniac also didn't confirm that all future Moto G phones will use these high-end chipsets - maybe a select few will, but others will probably stick to lesser processors, with the range running the gamut of processing power.
So if you're in the market for an affordable smartphone but don't mind waiting a while, it may be worth pausing on that purchase, because we could see some super-powerful Moto G smartphones coming soon.
News of the Motorola Edge 2?
Separately to that video, Motorola confirmed the top-tier Snapdragon 888 will be coming to some of its 2021 phones, and there's only one phone we'd really expect it in. Motorola only currently has one top-end line, the Motorola Edge series, and this Snapdragon 888 news could be our first hint that the Motorola Edge 2 is coming.
The Motorola Edge launched alongside the Edge Plus in mid-2020, and it was the first flagship handset the company had put out in several years. The Edge was a mid-range phone but the Edge Plus was more premium, and it used the Snapdragon 865 chipset.
Now the Snapdragon 888 is here to succeed the 865 for 2021 phones, it seems likely that a Motorola Edge Plus 2 (or Motorola Edge 2 Plus?) would use it. Saying that, the company hasn't officially commented on the existence of this flagship follow-up, so that's just speculation for now.
We'd like to see a Motorola Edge 2 series though, as the original was a pretty cool smartphone, so fingers crossed we get some official confirmation before too long.
