The $ 160 Moto G Pure aims to redefine the affordable phone

Motorola continues its steady stream of affordable phones with the launch of the Moto G Pure. In 2021, other than the Motorola Edge announced in August, all Motorola phones released in the United States were priced at $ 500 or less. The new Pure costs $ 160 and has the lowest price of any new Motorola device. And this is before any postponement.

Of course, you might be wondering what’s the catch? What does $ 160 earn you in terms of the phone? In the case of the Pure, not bad. You get a 6.5-inch display, a battery that Motorola says will last two days, a version close to Android 11, and an IP52 rating for water and dust resistance.

None of these features will give the Galaxy S21 or the upcoming Pixel 6 a run for their money. And the Pure isn’t supposed to do that. You can buy four and a half Moto G Pure phones for the price of a single iPhone 13.

But to get the Pure at such a low price, Motorola made a number of clever compromises and omissions. There is a dual rear camera which is actually a single 13 megapixel camera and a 2 megapixel depth camera for portrait mode photos. Instead of using a Snapdragon processor, the Pure has an octa-core MediaTek Helio G25 processor.

The Pure lacks 5G connectivity, NFC, wireless charging, and a high refresh rate display. I wouldn’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. It comes with 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot for expandable storage, 3GB of RAM, and a headphone jack.

You can order the unlocked Moto G Pure starting October 14 from Motorola and retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and B&H. A Verizon version will also be available to order on the same day. AT&T and T-Mobile will begin offering the Pure later this year.