Motorola’s 2021 phone strategy does not make much sense, but it will still be the winner

Android enthusiasts have a long love affair with Motorola. In the beginning, Motorola released many understated phones with complicated changes to Android (remember MotoBLUR?) Which turned the company into a subsidiary of Verizon Wireless in the United States.

Then Google swept in and bought the key pieces that make up a Motorola phone, and we love the company. Phones like the Moto X looked good, had good hardware (for the time being) and were quick to get important and feature updates because Google was basically in control. This is the exact recipe for success if you want to watch the hardcore Android crowd, and it worked.

Google apparently did not like owning the Moto brand as much as we liked Google to have the Moto brand. Welcome to the Lenovo era, sometimes known as Motonovo or Lenoverola. Now we really do not know what to think, because Moto makes some of the best cheap phones, but it’s just as random with its US releases.

Take one of the new phones that Motorola announced yesterday: the Motorola One 5G Ace (not sorry, but I love the name) and its Snapdragon 750G, large battery and inevitably awful camera. It’s a 5G phone that does not have mmWave support (at least until Verizon releases its own version) and costs $ 400.

This is not bad. The 750G will perform for all purposes as well as the 765G, there is 6 GB of memory and 128 GB of storage, and unless you really need a decent camera, it’s a good phone compared to that of the Pixel 4a if you want something with a larger screen of 6.7 inches. Too bad it’s shipped with Android 10 and only gets one update, because Motorola doesn’t think you deserve two.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Moto G Play. The list price is $ 169 and you get exactly what you think a $ 169 phone would be: Snapdragon 460, 3 GB of memory and a low resolution (1600×720) 6.5-inch screen. But you also get a giant 5,000 mAh battery and a price of $ 169.

These two phones are apparently the best that Motorola can offer in 2021. Both are budget models, with the Ace the highest point of the budget and the G Play the lowest point, and Motorola can sell enough of one to splash around a bit, especially with any service provider support. If one of the promises of timely security solutions is accompanied and shipped with Android 11, I would probably feel good about recommending it.

But Motorola has also released two other phones that are just clones of 2020’s offerings, only worse. The Moto G Stylus and Moto G Power have nothing to let you know that you are using a model newer than the previous Moto G Stylus and Moto G Power, and it contains the software. Both are led with Android 10 and a promise of an update of Android 11 sometime in the future, just like the versions of the 2020s. Both look the same. They use different chips, but the performance compared to the 2020 models will be very much the same.

There was no need to do that, and Motorola could simply sell the 2020 models to the few people who want to buy one or two of the two phones. It is possible that Qualcomm is moving the needle and no longer building the “older” chipsets, but that is just a guess. My other guess – and the one I feel more confident about – is that Motorola did it just because it can and only Android enthusiasts will notice.

Motorola has become complacent in a category they own.

No matter what’s going on in Motorola’s offices – I like to imagine an extra large broom closet in a giant darkened 100-story Lenovo Megacorp Center – no one seems to care. What am I saying to someone needs to care.

Motorola has almost no competition in this space. Nokia and LG try to compete, but let’s be honest – no one buys these phones in a number worth counting. OnePlus is trying to break into the space, but it got off to a bad start by offering two models with confusing names and too little distinction for normal consumers. So this is now the home of Moto. They own it.

I think it made the company complacent. Whatever it releases does not matter, because the only real competition is between its own models. This is great for Motorola and Lenovo’s end, but it’s very difficult for consumers. Motorola needs to do something here because a cheap but better phone from Samsung or LG or even Google can quickly take up space.