Focussed on offering best performance and experience, Lenovo-owned Motorola is not a part of specification race. The company does not launch new phones loaded with latest specifications every quarter or two. Instead, it has always focussed on offering a great experience with stock Android. The recently launched One Vision is a perfect example. But, does it have enough power and features to survive the cut-throat competition?
Design
Motorola One Vision is a good-looking and a tall smartphone. The all-screen display with punch hole on the left dominates the front and has noticeable bezels on all four sides around the screen.
Power and volume buttons are placed on the right edge but reaching the latter gets a little cumbersome during single hand operations. The hybrid dual-SIM tray sits on the right edge, Type-C charging port and speaker grill at the bottom and the headphone jack at the top. One Vision has a glass rear with rounded edges, which makes it comfortable to grip. The rear is dominated with a vertical dual-camera setup with flash on the top left and a fingerprint scanner with Motorola logo towards the top centre. Available in two colours - Bronze Gradient and Sapphire Gradient - my review unit in the latter (shades of blue) was an attention grabber.
Display
The 6.3-inch full HD+ display that dominates the front comes with a 21:9 CinemaVision aspect ratio. To have an understanding, most of movies are being shot in this aspect ratio. And the content shot on 21:9 ratio looked good on the display. I was also able to zoom in with a pinch on YouTube videos that occupied the full-screen and offered a stunning viewing experience. However, most of the content I streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix was not optimised for this 21:9 display. There were wide blank areas on all four sides (a bit too broad on the top), which was distracting and spoiled the experience. As not much content is available in the 21:9 ratio, this is more of a future-ready display.
Performance
I depend a lot on smartphones for my work, which includes constantly checking emails, documentation, browsing the web, streaming videos, clicking pictures and more. And I was quite comfortable using the One Vision. Switching from one of the flagship devices makes it feel a little slow. But, for the price it comes for, the performance was rather consistent. What works in its favour is the Android One platform, which isn't a power-hungry UI and does not even have unnecessary bloatware. With all apps placed neatly in the app tray, it will be simple for a new user to get accustomed to the UI. The 128 GB onboard storage is good enough to store files and should be able to suffice software updates too. Of the 128GB internal storage, close to 115GB is user-accessible. The Motorola One Vision is powered by Samsung Exynos 9609 processor paired with 4GB of RAM.
Camera
Motorola One Vision houses a dual-camera module at the rear - 48MP + 5MP. Even though the phone has a 48MP Samsung GM-1 sensor, the images are captured at 12MP resolution. Motorola uses quad-pixel technology that combines four pixels into one for delivering sharp images. Unlike Redmi phones, there is no option to capture image at 48MP resolution on this device. The results captured from the rear camera were sharp but wasn't perfect with colour reproduction. The biggest highlight is low-light imaging. Every time I capture an image in Night Vision mode, the AI onboard does an impressive job of reducing noise while balancing the image well. The results were astonishing, at par with the Night mode on some of the flagship devices. Some other interesting modes include 'cutout' and 'spot color'. The 'cutout' mode identified the subject and cropped the background. With 'spot color', I was able to pick and highlight colour in the frame and the rest of the image had a greyscale-like an effect. The camera UI is also pretty clean with four options at the bottom and rest accessible by a quick tap on the top left. The 25MP front camera is great for capturing selfies.
Battery
One Vision comes with a 3500mAh battery onboard and supports turbopower fast charging that was able to charge close to 30 per cent of the phone in just 15 minutes. However, the battery barely managed to last a day with heavy usage. I had to keep the brightness levels on auto mode.
Verdict
For Rs 19,999, the Motorola One Vision faces a tough competition with Xiaomi, Realme and many other brands. Consider this phone if you want good low-light photography, clean Android One UI and a future-ready display for streaming content. If you are looking for more power and good camera within Rs 20,000, Redmi Note 7 Pro is worth considering. If you can stretch your budget a little, the recently launched Redmi K20 is a great device with a better processor, camera and battery management but comes for Rs 21,999.
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