In case you haven’t noticed, Motorola is releasing phones at a torrid pace. In 2019 we have seen a refreshed G7 lineup, a new Moto Z phone, the Z4, a refresh the E series and most recently an onslaught of Moto “One” branded phones. The most notable of those for me, the Zoom and the Action.

Earlier in the year though, Motorola kicked off this phone release cycle with the Moto G7 Plus, G7, Power and Play. I have already put the G7 through its paces when I reviewed it in August. Since then I have been splitting my time with the Moto Z4 and the Moto G7 Power. I will be posting a review of the Z4 soon, but in the meantime, let’s check out the G7 Power.

What’s In The Box

I should mention that my device was an open box sent by Motorola’s PR team, so I didn’t get the full BNIB experience.

• Moto G7 Power – 32 GB – Marine Blue
• Motorola TurboPower™ 15 W Wall Charger
• USB-C to USB-A cable
• SIM Removal Tool (mine was actually missing, so I had to add one back into the picture)
• Manual and Legal Documents

Pretty straightforward. I was surprised Motorola didn’t include a clear TPU case for the G7 Power like they did with the Play last year. They may have with the Play this year, but I don’t have one of those versions to compare.

Motorola G7 Power Specifications

My unit came with the following specs;

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SDM632 Processor
• 32 GB Storage with microSD expansion up to 512 GB
• 3 GB RAM
• Android 9.0 Pie
• 12 MP Rear Camera, 8 MP Front Camera
• 6.2″ LCD Display with a 720 x 1570 resolution at 279 ppi (FYI, not that great…)
• Headphone Jack
• 5,000 mAh battery

There is another version of the G7 Power that ships with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. I have no idea why Motorola offsets the RAM based on the storage size, but that’s the budget market in a nutshell.

Normally I would do a “What I Liked” and ‘What I Didn’t Like” about the phone, but I am changing it up slightly here. Instead, I wanted to talk about a few of the highlights since the phone, for the most part, is very close in performance and day-to-day use as the Moto G7 Check out the G7 review right HERE.

The camera on the G7 Power held its own considering this a phone that sells for $249.99 CAD on Amazon in this configuration. Much like the G7, I reviewed before the Power, the camera app from Motorola offers a lot of functionality that I really like portrait, spot colour and Google’s AR Stickers, the performance of the software really holds the camera back. However, thanks to the booming community of devs that have ported the Google Camera app to almost every Android device on the market, I was able to up my photo game when using the G7 Power. Without this APK, I think I would have been incredibly disappointed with the G7 Power camera.

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If you have a Motorola G7 or G7 Power and want to try the Google Camera port, you can download that right here.

If the name Power wasn’t a good enough clue, the G7 Power hangs its hat on the size of the battery. Coming in at 5,000 mAh the G7 Power is an absolute monster. Getting through two days of use is a simple task for this phone. On average I was able to get through 3 full days before I dipped below the 15% battery mark. THREE DAYS! That’s insane considering most other phones I have been using, with my usage style, require a top-up on my way home from work mid-day.

One thing that was different about my usage of the G7 Power compared to most phones I use daily is the lack of Formula 1 Mobile gameplay. I’m a Formula 1 junky and the G7 power does not handle any sort of graphics-heavy game well. Basic games that require no heavy GPU/CPU load manage to work fine for the most part, but anything that is graphic intensive fails miserably.

One game that functions brilliantly on the G7 Power is Pokemon Go. I spent a day playing the Pokemon Go while mixing in the usual video, email, text and more. At day’s end, I still had just under 40% remaining on the battery. This phone is easily on the shortlist of devices that are best for playing Pokemon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite or Jurassic World Alive (does anyone play that game anymore…)

The overall performance of the phone was pretty good, within the expectations I set out with. However, despite the fact it is nearly identical to the Moto G7 specs, I found it suffered from more slowdowns and app crashes than the G7. It is likely attributed to RAM with only 3GB to the G7’s 4GB, but it was noticeable. I would like to see if the 64GB/4GB version suffered the same way, but that is neither here nor there.

Bottom line though, should you buy this phone? No, I don’t think the benefits of the massive battery outweigh the negatives I encountered. Now, the caveat with my decisions, as I mentioned, the higher spec’ed model may not suffer the same issues. For that price, you would be better with the standard G7 which has dual cameras and a more appealing design.