It’s been years since Motorola has been a top five smartphone maker, but it’s not for lack of trying.
The company’s Moto G smartphones have a reputation for offering decent features at a budget/mid-range price. The Moto Z line is unique for continuing to support modular “MotoMod” add-ons year after year. And lately the company has launched a line of Moto One devices with unusual features like a macro camera, an action cam, or big batteries.
The next big thing from Motorola is a modern take on the Razr flip phone with a flexible display. But it looks like the company also plans to launch its answer to the Samsung Galaxy Note series soon.
A series of leaks point to a new model called the Moto G Stylus that will likely be a mid-range device with a stylus.
Earlier this week @evleaks posted a picture of the upcoming phone. While the device hasn’t been officially confirmed by Motorola, Evan Blass has a pretty strong track record with this sort of leak, and fairly high standards (if he’s unsure that a product is real he either says so or doesn’t post it at all).
Yesterday he followed up with a name for the phone — the Moto G Stylus.
While Blass hasn’t said anything about the phone’s specs, the Moto G branding suggests that this will be a mid-range device that will likely sell for somewhere between $200 and $400. That could make it a much more affordable option than Samsung’s stylus-enabled Galaxy Note smartphones… albeit one that will likely have less impressive processor, memory, and storage options.
One thing we do know from the photo is that the Moto G Stylus will have a display that covers almost all of the front of the phone, with a small bezel on the bottom and a small hole-punch in the screen for a single front-facing camera.
Most recently, the folks at 91Mobiles posted what’s allegedly a real-world set of pictures of the Moto G Stylus, giving us a look at both the front and back of the phone. It look like we can expect four rear cameras, including a 48MP primary camera.
91Mobiles also says one of the other cameras is a 117-degree wide-angle action camera, and the site has sources that suggest the phone will have a 6.3 or 6.4 inch display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6xx series processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4,000 mAh battery. But I’d take those specs with a grain of salt for now.
We probably won’t have long to wait for more details — Motorola is expected to unveil several new phones at Mobile World Congress in late February.
I would totally buy something like this. I’m not willing to buy flagship phones any longer (I’m never going to spend $600+ on a phone again), but I do very much like the Stylus on the Note.
Hey Motorola, want to increase sales? Be known as a company who sends out regular updates and do it for more than the first 12 months. Better yet, start making all of your phones Android One phones.
OK, they make one Android One phone. How about all of them?
My moto g6 is still getting the occasional (every couple of months) update, about a year and a half in. Sure, it could be a lot better, but it could also be so much worse.
One important thing to note is that based on the picture we can assume the stylus is of the passive capacitive variety which would be a dramatically different experience from anything in Samsung’s note line since they use Wacom tech.
Or we can go with facts over assumption and infer that they’ll be using similar technology to that which is already baked into the Moto Z4 that supports MPP/Surface Pen varieties of active pen: https://liliputing.com/2019/06/moto-z4-supports-the-surface-pen-and-other-styluses.html.
Agree on the Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) 1.5 support. I have the Z4 and
it works just fine with an MPP compatible active stylus pen. Unfortunately,
the stylus I have is the full sized one, and the Lenovo flip cover case doesn’t
hold the stylus securely (the stylus can attach via the clip but it reels
really awkward). The Z4 also supports microSDXZC up to 1 TB, and
with OneNote, I feel like I have a Note for half the price.
“Hole punch screen” absolutely shameful
First world problem…
Yeah, I’d rather they just left the selfie camera out entirely.