Motorola One Hyper review

Software

• Android 10
• Stock look with gestures
• Moto Actions included

The Motorola One Hyper is off to a great start from a software point of view. For starters, it runs Android 10, the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system. Additionally, Motorola’s take on Android has always been relatively stock, and on the Hyper, it’s no exception.

Better yet, this is the first time we’ve seen Motorola introduce Android 10’s gestures to replace the navigation bar or slider from Android 9. This makes the UI look cleaner and takes full advantage of that all-screen display.

Moto Actions have also made a return. These gestures and input commands fire up features quickly and include Quick Capture to open up the camera with a wrist flick, Fast Torch to fire up the LED light around the back with a karate chop, and more.

There’s also a feature called Peek Display. Compensating for the fact that there isn’t an Always On Display on the One Hyper, Peek Display brings up essential phone information when it detects movement, and offers up shortcuts to get you into apps quickly.

With great app support and zippy performance throughout the UI, with the camera being the only area we saw any slowdown in our time with the One Hyper, its interface gets a resounding thumbs up from us - except when it comes to gaming.

Performance

• Mid-range Snapdragon 675 chipset
• 4GB of RAM
• 128GB of storage

Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 chipset and with lower mid-range benchmark scores, the Motorola One Hyper was never going to knock our socks off with its power, and that’s why things slow down a little when powering through 64MP photos like a picture-taking demon.

That said, the rest of the UI is nice and nippy, with everything from video playback to multi-tasking being lag-free.

Games aren’t always correctly optimized for the One Hyper’s screen, with most titles we played letterboxing games on the left, right and bottom side. This is clearly unintentional, given the fact Asphalt 9 - the one game that seems to be formatted for virtually every phone on the scene - looks gorgeously edge-to-edge and immersive.

Whether it’s down to Motorola or game developers to address this, we can’t say, but if you’re a gamer, it’s something you should be aware of. If you can deal with this, while there’s a fair bit of artifacting going on when displaying 3D games, they play back smoothly.

Also worth noting, the Motorola One Hyper features a mono speaker which is easy enough to cover up. 

On the plus side, there is a handy headphone jack here. Additionally, the phone packs NFC - a notable omission from other budget devices like the Honor 9X - so one-touch payments are a reality, and there’s also a decent amount of storage inside - 128GB.

Combine that with a microSD card, and when it comes to space for all your stuff, you’ll want for nothing.