Moto e22s Review: All about the display!

Motorola has tried to tick all the boxes with its Moto e22s smartphone. But does it beat the competition?

The Moto e22s has been launched in the budget segment with a price tag of Rs. 8,999. (Shaurya/HT Tech)

The Moto e22s has been launched in the budget segment with a price tag of Rs. 8,999. (Shaurya/HT Tech)

If you had a look at budget smartphones from 10 years ago, the main players in the market would’ve featured a 3.5-inch or 4-inch display, VGA camera and a processor that could’ve barely handled simple tasks. But that’s not the case anymore, especially with the new Moto e22s. Technology has grown leaps and bounds in the last decade, so much so that many of the features seen in flagship phones then, are now staple even in the budget segment smartphones. Keeping this in mind, Motorola has introduced the cheapest smartphone in its lineup, the Moto e22s. But with so many options in the budget smartphone segment, does the Moto e22s hold up against its competitors? I’ve been using the Moto e22s for a couple of weeks now, and here’s our detailed review.

Moto e22s: Display and Design

In terms of looks, the Moto e22s gets a similar design as other Moto smartphones such as the Moto G62; with a plastic body. The Moto e22s comes in two colours – Eco Black and Artic Blue, and both the variants get a visual pattern on the back. I received the Eco Black variant and although the back did not get scratches, it gets smudges easily; therefore using a case is recommended.

The highlight of the Moto e22s is its 90Hz display which is an extremely rare sighting in this price bracket. The display is a 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1600 x 720 pixels, which offers decent visuals and good viewing angles. Despite a relatively low peak brightness of 500 nits, it is the 90Hz refresh rate which takes it up a notch and makes swiping between apps a breeze. The Moto e22s also comes with WideVine L1 certification for you to stream OTT content in HD.

Moto e22s: Performance

The Moto e22s is powered by the MediaTek Helio G37 octa-core processor, paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It is a fairly capable processor and the Moto e22s juggles between apps quite well. You can switch over from your social media apps to web browsers without any noticeable lag. I tried a couple of games on the Moto e22s and despite not being a gaming smartphone, it handles games like Need for Speed Most Wanted without sweating.

In terms of audio, the Moto e22s gets a single speaker at the bottom and luckily you get a 3.5mm headphone jack which is, again a rare sighting these days. The smartphone supports dual-SIM and also gets a microSD slot which you can utilize to expand the storage to a hefty 1TB.

The phone runs on stock Android 12 with Motorola’s MyUX skin on top, which is one of the cleanest and most-refined interfaces I’ve seen. There’s minimal bloatware and the smooth interface coupled with the high refresh rate display is a pleasant combination for a smartphone in its price range.

Moto e22s: Camera

Despite having decent camera specs on paper, the Moto e22s is definitely not a camera-centric phone. It gets a dual camera setup at the back with a 16MP fast-focusing primary camera and a 2MP depth sensor. It also gets additional camera features such as Google Lens Integration, Dual capture photo, HDR and more. But that’s all on paper. It captures decent images in a well-lit environment but messes up the skin tones. However, low-light photography is disappointing as images captured in the dark are hazy and lack detail.

The 8MP selfie shooter is capable of capturing detailed images but again messes up the skin https://jiji.ng/ tones.

Moto e22s: Battery

The battery on the Moto e22s is one of its strongest points alongside its high-refresh rate and great UI. Motorola has provided a 5000mAh battery in this smartphone and it easily lasts a day and half with moderate usage, if not more. Do note that when 90Hz refresh rate is turned on, the smartphone depletes the battery faster. Despite having a good battery, the coupled 10W charging brick disappoints as it takes ages to charge the 5000mAh capacity to the max.

Moto e22s: Verdict

At its price point of Rs. 8999, the Moto e22s is a great option which has all the bells and whistles among the latest smartphone trends, such as dual cameras, high refresh rate display, great battery and more. Moto e22s’s great UI coupled with a fairly powerful processor, provides smooth user experience in its segment. Despite the poor low-light camera performance and not being 5G enabled, the Moto e22s is still one of the best options you can go for in the sub Rs. 10,000 segment.

iPhone 14 Plus Review: The clever choice

The iPhone 14 Plus offers a large display and the luxury of good battery life, and that does the trick for most. Read our review.

1/5 The iPhone 14 Plus starts at a price of Rs. 89,900 for the base 128GB variant. You get it is the same colour variants as the iPhone 14. And the display notch is still present. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

2/5 iPhone 14 Plus gets two 12MP cameras on its back (main and ultrawide). Sensor shift stabilisation and Photonic Engine promise better photography and videography on the iPhone. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

3/5 iPhone 14 Plus gets a big battery which Apple promises to deliver the best battery life on any iPhone. The 6.7-inch display also makes the phone almost as big as the iPhone 14 Pro Max. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

4/5 The iPhone 14 Plus relies on the A15 Bionic chip with the 5-core GPU and 6GB RAM. That makes it as powerful as last year’s iPhone 13 Pro Max. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

5/5 The main reason to get the iPhone 14 Plus is its 6.7-inch display. Apple is still using a 60Hz OLED panel with support for Dolby Vision support. Not the smoothest display yet and the display notch is still present here. That 2000 nits of peak brightness is also not present here. (Amritanshu / HT Tech)

Before you bombard us with hatred, there is a reason we consider the iPhone 14 Plus to be a clever choice. In fact, there are a multitude of reasons why the iPhone 14 Plus may be the best no-frills iPhone to buy until the iPhone 15 Plus drops. Surely, at a starting price of Rs, 89,900, it is quite an expensive phone and compared to its Android rivals, it just looks dull. The dated design also adds to the misery, pushing customers towards the iPhone 14 Pro. The iPhone 14 Plus is actually doing its job well – it’s not a flop show for Apple.

Look cleverly and it is not a flop show for you either. It fills in the huge price gap between the iPhone 14’s Rs. 79,900 price and the iPhone 14 Pro’s Rs. 130,000 price. This is a crucial one and could make many consider this as a smarter option. You save enough money and you gain Apple’s largest iPhone display. What’s bad about that, right? To assure the notion, I spent two weeks with the iPhone 14 Plus to find out.

Design

Technically, the iPhone 14 Plus is a brand new phone in a long time – it has the Pro Max’s 6.7-inch size display. However, Apple did the bare minimum, or almost nothing, to the design of the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Plus is just a bigger version of the same. Hence, the excitement of the new phone is lacking; my office colleagues mistook it for the iPhone 13. The same diagonal camera lenses, the same flat sides, the same old notch – iPhone fans have seen this already.

On the “plus” side, this is still a handsome phone to look at, especially in the right colours. My Purple variant is pretty and I dig the Product Red variant. As long as the notch isn’t visible, this is a modern looking big smartphone that commands attention. Coming from the iPhone 14 Pro Max, I love the matte aluminium rails, the glossy back, and the lightweight build; it feels featherweight in comparison to the Pro Max. It is durable too – my car keys and my irresponsible colleagues weren’t able to scratch the phone, or chip the paint yet.

Display

This is one of the main reasons why you may consider the iPhone 14 Plus. At 6.7-inches, this is a “normally-sized” large display using a beautifully tuned OLED display of a very high resolution. Be it under the sun or inside your living room, the iPhone 14 Plus’ display is pleasant to look at. Colours look natural and the brightness is great; the typical iPhone tuning. If you love watching movies or scrolling through Instagram, you are going to love this display. Except…

The refresh rate! 60Hz of refresh rate is fine for daily use and you eventually get used to it. But for a phone that costs almost Rs. 1 lakh, this feels unjust. Even the cheapest Android phones have 120Hz OLED screens these days! And no, I don’t see any of the “Apple’s-60Hz-is-better-than-Android’s-120Hz” notion. It just looks jittery. The notch only adds to the unpleasantness.

Performance

We will charge Apple guilty of giving us an old chipset in its flagship-class phone – the height of cost cutting. But, once the irritation of missing out on the new stuff fades away, I don’t see any reason as to not choosing this iPhone for its performance. The A15 Bionic is still a fast chipset by all means – after all, those iPhone 13 Pro models are still running strong and doing everything nicely. With a 5-core GPU and 6GB RAM, the iPhone 14 Plus has the better A15 Bionic variant and it works as advertised.

Apple’s stronghold is its optimisation and iOS 16 on this iPhone runs smooth, except for some bugs. I have thrown everything in my might to have an “Ahaaaan!” moment with the A15 Bionic, trying to see if it struggles – I have only failed here. Be it the incredibly complex Apex Legends or editing a 4K footage on iMovie, this iPhone took it all like a Pro. It stays cool and keeps managing all kinds of loads with ease. Games like COD Mobile and Apex Legends just work in their best of ways.

As for iOS 16, the customisation options have made it an interesting OS to choose. That along with Apple’s tightly knit ecosystem guarantees a superb experience with AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Mac. You only miss out on the Always On Display and that isn’t a big deal in my opinion.

iPhone 14 Plus also left me impressed with its loudspeaker performance. The audio output is loud and there’s ample depth to enjoy the bass but it is all tuned for higher volume. Then there’s the network performance, which is good enough. On my Jio 4G LTE network, the iPhone 14 Plus kept hold of the network but dropped it in the basement (Google Pixel 7 Pro latched on to the network). There’s support for 5G too but Apple will release the update by December 2022 to enable 5G reception.

Cameras

Be it still photography or videography, the iPhone 14 Plus is simply brilliant if you want strong cameras. The 12MP main and 12MP ultrawide camera sensors are borrowed from the iPhone 13 Pro but tuned even better, thanks to the Photonic Engine.

Similar to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the main camera is tuned for keeping the colours closer to the natural tones, the brightness up, the shadows crushed, and extracting details. For social media and phone screens, these photos look great – everyone in my team loved the Diwali photos taken on the iPhone. However, pixel peepers were pointing out the oversharpened look, and how the Pixel 7 Pro creates contrast and keeps skin tones more natural.

Image Samples

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This also applies on selfies, where the photos appear oversharpened and the skin tones looking unnatural. In low light, it only gets worse. Night time photos are sharp enough and I love how the exposures are well maintained. Portrait mode also suffers from irregular subject cutouts but I love the foreground blur effect. Unlike the iPhone 14 Pro Max, there is no present 2X lossless digital zoom, and the lack of a telephoto camera restricts you to blurry zoomed in photos. For overall still photography, this is a great camera for both casual and professional shooters.

As for videography, there isn’t any competition – the iPhone 14 Plus dominates. Both 4K and 1080p videos have great clarity, wide dynamic range, good noise suppression, excellent stabilisation and smooth processing. The Cinematic mode is more useable in 4K while the Action mode is handy with its great stabilisation and a usable 2.5L resolution, although it uses the inferior ultra-wide camera to record it.