Moto G96 Review: A Do-It-All Budget Beast

The budget smartphone segment is an interesting one, because there aren't just entry-level smartphone buyers fishing for something better with a slightly bigger budget. You also have first-time smartphone buyers looking to get better value for their money, aiming to get the best features possible on a tight budget. With that said, it is equally challenging for manufacturers to come up with something new, given these tight spending budgets. Year after year, they somehow manage to squeeze in a new feature by cutting a few corners.

However, this does not seem to be the case for Motorola's latest Moto G96, the successor to the Moto G85, which was launched last year. Motorola seems to have cut no corners while adding new features to the mix and retaining the good stuff that was introduced with the Moto G85. In this way, it ends up being the ideal budget smartphone for those who want a phone that does it all! Read on to find out why!

Moto G96 Design

Motorola goes with the “If it ain't broke, don't fix it” logic for the Moto G96's design. It's nearly identical to the Moto G85, but has just grown a wee bit thicker (from 7.6mm to 7.9mm to be precise) and heavier at 178 grams. The phone still feels as slim and light as its predecessor because of the curved-edge front and rear panels. The chassis and the mostly flat sides are made from polycarbonate.

The Moto 86's design appears slim but surprisingly accommodates a regular-sized 5,500mAh battery

The Greener Pastures colourway's vegan leather back also makes its taller form factor easier to grip. The faux leather (mostly silicon-based) back is soft to the touch but also feels tough enough to withstand the elements.

Given its familiar design, the Moto G96 has been given an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance by Motorola. This makes it one of the few phones available at this price point to get the same. However, we would not recommend testing your phone's durability rating because brands typically don't cover damage caused by water ingress.

The Moto G96's design is now IP68-rated for dust and water resistance

Also retained from last year's model is the 20:9 ratio, 6.67-inch curved-edge pOLED panel, which aggressively curves on the left and right sides. While it does make the display's borders appear thinner (giving it a more premium look), the curved-edge display is purely cosmetic and offers no additional functionality.

Moto G96 Performance

Motorola promises 1,600 nits of peak brightness, and the display does deliver when outdoors, even under direct sunlight. Colours are a bit saturated at the default, Vivid colour setting, so I had to tone them down to the Natural preset for more realistic reproduction.

The new Moto G96 switches gears to a more new-age 4nm processor. There's the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, that is also more efficient compared to the 6nm Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 used in the previous model. Motorola uses LPDDR4X RAM but sticks to the UFS 2.2 storage from the older model.

The 144Hz curved-edge pOLED panel operates in auto-refresh rate mode, actually refreshing at 120Hz. You can force the display to refresh at a maximum of 144Hz manually by going into settings and keeping the brightness above 35 percent.

We faced no noticeable lag while using Motorola's Hello UI, but it is a bit concerning that the company only offers 1 year of guaranteed software updates and 3 years of security patches in terms of support. Given that Hello UI is still based on Android 15, we believe it will only receive an upgrade to Android 16 and nothing more. If you are concerned about software support, you can look at Samsung's Galaxy M36, which promises 6 years of software and SMRs, making it a better choice for those who like to hold on to their handsets for many years.

Weirdly, there are two PDF reader apps, six pre-installed games, and 11 third-party apps in total. Thankfully, you can uninstall every single one of these and be left behind with a bunch of Moto-branded apps that are quite useful. Moto AI is not included in the software package, but you do get access to Google's Gemini. Perplexity AI also comes preinstalled; it isn't as deeply integrated as Gemini for basic everyday queries.

Motorola's software experience is typically Hello UI, but is loaded to the brim with third-party apps and games.

As for raw performance, I was impressed by the stability the Moto G96 offers in PCMark's Wild Life Stress and Wild Life Extreme Stress tests. While daily app multitasking was not a problem, gaming wasn't either. Given its budget price, don't expect it to run demanding games like Genshin Impact flawlessly, but you can play Call of Duty: Mobile at medium graphics settings without any hiccups. In short, its performance is suitable for mid-level gaming.

The Moto G85's 50-megapixel primary camera has been upgraded (to a Sony LYTIA 700C) on the Moto G96 to deliver better low-light imaging performance with bigger pixels. The 8-megapixel ultrawide remains the same as before, and the same can be said about the 32-megapixel selfie camera.

Photos captured using the primary camera show natural colour with good detail in daylight. Dynamic range is handled well, but Motorola seems to prefer a more contrasted look. In low light, image quality is decent but still usable, which is good for a smartphone at this price point. Noise is under control, but you will notice the lower-resolved detail in certain patches, which the phone struggles to process. (Tap images to expand)

Portrait photos captured using the primary camera come out well with good detail, but edge detection is pretty average, as you can tell from the above image. (Tap image to expand)

The ultrawide camera produces decent photos, which come out a bit soft in daylight. There's some purple fringing in the bright spots (accompanied by clipped highlights) and the colours are noticeably warmer compared to the primary camera. (Tap image to expand)

Selfies captured in daylight pack good detail. The dynamic range is under control, and therefore, the backgrounds are also properly exposed. However, edge detection, similar to the primary camera, is somewhat weak and struggles to produce accurate cutouts when used in conjunction with Portrait mode. In dimly lit settings, the selfie camera struggles to click a clear photo. These will come out quite blurry unless you have plenty of ambient light around you. (Tap image to expand)

While the primary camera manages better close-ups than the macro mode, it somehow struggled with focus when attempting to record subjects at around 20 centimetres away. 4K video captured at 30 fps offers the best overall quality with decent stabilisation, but appeared a bit contrasty. Details were also a bit soft. There's a noticeable focus hopping in daylight when shooting at 1080p at 60 fps, which worsens in low light. Overall, frame rates weren't steady, and noise is quite evident when recording low-light video.

Given that the Moto G96's battery capacity has been upped to 5,500mAh and we now have a more power-efficient 4nm processor, I expected better battery life compared to the Moto G85.

The PCMark Work Battery Life test, which runs everyday tasks in a loop, managed a decent 12 hours and 1 minute. But our video loop test also managed an equally impressive 24 hours and 31 minutes, which is better than the Moto G85's 21 hours and 14 minutes. Real-world testing saw the smartphone easily last a day and a bit more with an hour of gaming, several hours of video streaming and the usual social media scrolling (most of which was performed connected to 5G networks). Charging remains the same as before at 33W, and the phone can complete a full charge in 1 hour and 18 minutes, reaching 44 percent in the first 30 minutes.

Moto G96 Verdict

Minor niggles aside, the Moto G96 sure delivers when it comes to value, performance and style, which is a rarity at this price point. Its known compromises include its limited software support window and a barrage of third-party apps, all of which can be uninstalled. Since there's no expandable storage, spending a bit more and getting the 256GB storage variant is indeed a no-brainer.

At this price point, it is hard to find something new that is as capable as the Moto G96 that hasn't cut any corners. But if you can find one in stock, Realme's slightly older P3 Pro (now replaced by the P4 Pro) is a solid contender, which offers a capable camera, much better battery life, and a host of other attractive features at around Rs. 17,999, which is the same as the G96. It may not have made much sense when we reviewed it at launch, but it sure makes for a good alternative today, given its trimmed-down price tag.