Motorola Moto G85 review: Screen queen

Curved OLED screens like the one found on the Motorola G85 used to come at a premium. There was a time when budget phones didn't look like this and it wasn't that long ago.

These days, the tables have turned and flat-edge screens are now all the rage for premium devices like the iPhone 16 and Galaxy S24. While that shift isn't without its causes, it's proved to be an unexpected boon for those after something more affordable. A flatter screen like the one on the new Pixel 9 Pro XL may be more practical, but curved one can add a lot to the cheaper and more homogeneous end of the smartphone market.

The Motorola Moto G85 5G is far from the first fantastic budget phone that the brand have brought to the conversation, but it's a strong contender for the best looking one.

At a glance, the new Motorola G85 5G makes a strong argument for its as the brand's most premium budget smartphone to date. It's got a thrifty price-tag designed to catch your eye and a 6.67-inch OLED screen engineered to hold onto that attention. With 1600 nits of brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate and curved glass edges, there's a strong case to be made that this is the best display you can find for $399.

The aforementioned don't just make for a great complement to the thin 7.6mm form-factor on offer here. They make for one that feels like it's worth more than double the actual asking price. Other bells and whistles include Dolby Atmos speakers, an in-display fingerprint sensor, 30W fast-charging and 5G connectivity.

The biggest omissions are what you'd expect: wireless charging and any formal water or dust resistance ratings. FWIW Motorola does market the Moto G85 5G as having a 'water repellent design' though. That's not an IP rating but it isn't nothing either.

While the Moto G85 5G is available with a leather back, the unit I was sent to test featured a PMMA one instead. This didn't feel like that much of a downgrade. In practice, it proved to be a lot more fingerprint resistant than most other smartphones around this price-point tend to be.

The back of the Motorola Moto G85 5G is also where you'll find the camera bump. By the standards of the category, this bump is a relatively subtle one. The setup on the Moto G85 5G combines a 50MP wide-angle lens with an 8MP ultrawide one. There's also an 8MP selfie shooter on the front.

The glossy finish and golden rings encircling each component of the lens setup here do a lot to distract from the way in which they warp the otherwise regular form-factor found here. As for the results that hardware produces, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

During brightly-lit situations, the Moto G85 mostly met the moment. However, in more uneven lighting, it often struggled. Someones the white balance or exposure was slightly off. Other times, the subject being captured was completely out of focus.

My gut feeling here is that the setup here leaves the G85 set up to fall short as a photography device. The gulf between the quality of images produced by the two lenses here is very noticeable and while I often ended up defaulting to the 50MP lens, it wasn't suitable for every situation.

Even so, the Moto G85's slick looks are supported by some pretty solid specs. Under the hood, you've got a Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 processor, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a 5000mAh battery to work with.

On paper, those who pick up the Moto G85 5G can look forward to one major Android OS upgrade and 3 years of bi-monthly security updates. In practice, the hardware here proved uneven enough that I have a few caveats.

As a daily driver, the Moto G85 mostly met my needs. However, forced to rely on it during SXSW Sydney, I couldn't help but notice how often it left me hanging waiting for an app to load. The situations isn't a disaster. In a more ordinary week, that shortfall might be easier to live with. In the one I had, the distance between the thrifty processor inside this device and the pitch-perfect performance you can expect from something even $200 more expensive made for a pretty stark contrast.

On the other end of the equation, the Moto G85 5G also struggled as a gaming device. While titles like League of Legends: Wild Rift and Diablo Immortal looked great on the pOLED screen, they didn't run all that smoothly. Some of my other go-to mobile games, like Star Wars: Hunters, refused to run at all.

In terms of battery life, the 5000mAh cell inside the Moto G85 proved to be something of a silver lining to its sub-premium performance. I'd get through almost an entire day and still have around 65% battery remaining. Burned down from 100% to zero using video streamed over WiFi, the Motorola G85 5G lasted 23 hours and 19 minutes. That result puts it above the likes of the Google Pixel 8a but short of the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion.

The last detail worth touching on here is the fast-charging. The Moto G85 supports fast charging but only up to 30W. That's not as fast as you'll get from a laptop, but it's more than fast enough to make up for the lack of wireless charging.

Motorola's bread and butter has always been its budget-friendly smartphones and while the Moto G85 isn't without its compromises, it does a decent job of living up to and then adding to that legacy. It won't safe the appetites of those who want a better camera or something better suited to on-the-go gaming, but that's what the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is for.

If you're after a cheap phone that can keep up with your essentials and doesn't feel as thrifty as it is, the Moto G85 meets that brief and then some. Motorola's latest budget buy might not do it all but it definitely over-delivers on what you'd expect for $399.