Motorola have begun refreshing their popular moto g series early this year, with the moto g05 and moto g15 announced last month. We’ve grabbed a hold of the bargain priced moto g15, which is on-sale in Australia now for $229 and given it a whirl for a week.
Motorola have announced the new moto g15 in three colours – Gravity Grey, Sunrise Orange and Iguana Green – with a vegan leather rear, sending over their brilliantly coloured Sunrise Orange for me to check out.
The spec list belies the $229 price-point, including a 6.7″ FHD resolution LCD display, and powered by a MediaTek Helio G81 Extreme processor with 4GB RAM and 128GB of on-board storage, with options for RAM boost and SD card slot to expand memory.
There’s a dual camera array on the rear, headlined by a 50MP main sensor and an 8MP selfie camera on the front.
I got to use the moto g85 for a couple of weeks and here’s how it went.
The moto g15 has a lightweight design while still offering an IP52 Water-repellent design, It weighs in at 190grams, and at just 8.17mm thin it feels comfortable in the hand.
The rear has a camera island in the top right, which gently rises from the rear with a nice slope, and there’s the ever-present motorola batwing logo in the centre, embedded in the vegan leather finish. The vegan leather is soft touch which feels quite nice to me and has a nice contrast to the metallic coloured rails on the side.
You won’t be able to feel the vegan leather finish if you use the included clear TPU case, but it fits the phone nicely and will protect it from everyday bumps. The clear TPU allows you to see the colour on the rear though and there’s some nice colour options to choose from.
I’m quite a fan of their Sunrise Orange, though the Iguana Green has a certain attraction – but if you like something a little more unobtrusive, the Gravity Grey is a solid choice.
The volume rocker and fingerprint sensor enabled power button are on the right hand side, with the SIM tray, which supports dual Nano SIMs and a microSD card on the left.
On the bottom of the phone you get the downward firing speaker which pairs with the earpiece for stereo sound, as well as a USB-C port for charging and data transfer, though it only supports USB 2.0 speeds.
Surprisingly you get a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the moto g15 – right next to the Dolby Atmos branding – though there’s no earbuds included in the box.
The 6.7” LCD display on the front comes in a taller 20:9 aspect ratio with fairly minimal bezel around the outside. There’s Corning Gorilla Glass 3 covering the LCD for additional protection.
The LCD display has a fairly low 60Hz refresh rate, however the FullHD+ (2400×1080) resolution is crisp and makes text fairly easy to read. It’s an easy display to read even in bright sunlight, making it a treat for a budget device.
The colour accuracy is fairly good for an LCD, and you can tune your experience in the settings between Natural or Saturated colours, or manually select your colour temperature.
There’s a MediaTek Helio G81 Extreme octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz with 4GB DDR4 RAM with 128GB built-in storage you can expand with microSD cards up to 1TB.
The overall package is ok for just one app, but add in any apps running in the background or switch between apps and the phone does start to lag. The performance tends to suffer due to the processor choice, though the minimal 4GB RAM doesn’t help.
You can boost the performance using Motorola’s RAM Boost, which allows you to use some of the built-in storage as swap memory to boost the RAM. You can assign a set amount yourself, or use the on-board AI to scale it for you as required which seemed to work best.
I ran the moto g15 through GeekBench and 3DMark to see how it holds up
The moto g15 rocks a dual camera array on the rear with a 50MP main sensor with Quad-Pixel technology paired with a 5MP ultra-wide sensor which motorola says ‘fits four times more into the frame’. There’s also an 8MP selfie camera in a punch hole notch on the front.
The main sensor offers good shots in most lighting conditions, with the quad-pixel technology binning the images from 50MP down to around 12MP, stacking the images for a crisper and more detailed image.
The colours are bright, and there’s a decent amount of detail in good light, while the ultra-wide sensor lets you capture more details for say group shots, but you lose a little on the details in the final images. You can use the digital zoom – which just crops in the image – at up to 6x digital which isn’t the greatest, however the 2x gives you a little without losing a lot.
There’s a 5200mAh battery in the moto g15 which Motorola says will last up to 40 hours of use in a single charge.
There’s FastCharge support through the Motorola 18 W TurboPower charger – though this is not included in the box. If you read the Motorola website you can apparently buy the charger separately, however my Googlefu failed me in actually locating it, even on the Lenovo website they sell devices directly through.
That said, if you have an 18W or faster charger, the phone will charge at 18W speeds. I have a Motorola 68W Turbo Charger and using that you can go from dead flat to 50% charge in 45 minutes, while a full charge will take you a full two hours. The faster charger doesn’t imbue an ability for the phone to charge faster, it simply charges at 18W.
Launching with Android 15, the moto g15 will NOT see any OS updates. The phone will receive 2 years of System Maintenance Releases (SMR) – security updates.
Out of the box, the phone is running the Dec 1st 2024 update, and as of March 14th 2025 a system check reads as ‘Everything looks good!’. Motorola has generally held to a quarterly release schedule for their security updates, so it’s likely that one will be offered soon.
The moto g15 comes with the usual Google apps pre-installed alongside apps from motorola.
Strangely Motorola have NOT included their Moto app which is a disappointment. The Moto app is a great start for any new phone owner to customise their experience with a very well laid out app ready to guide you.
There are still a few useful utilities from Motorola included like their sound recorder, FM Radio app, Game Mode as well as the Moto Secure app for managing the security of your device.
There’s also a smattering of ‘partner apps’ that come pre-installed including Booking.com, Linkedin and TikTok. I also managed to get some of their ‘App recommendations’ installed, so had Candy Crush, Thief Puzzle and Color Water Sort installed as a bonus.
Thankfully you can uninstall all pre-installed apps – so, a few minutes of time and you’re back to a pretty stock experience.
At $229, the moto g15 is a decent phone with a large, pleasingly bright display, reliable camera and excellent battery life.
The performance leaves a little to be desired for anyone wanting to push the limits of a budget device, though for calls, text and photos with some app use on the side it works.
The camera offers a lot more than the price tag would suggest with some great shots in low-light, as well as in more well lit times of the day. The camera, like the phone performance is a little slow – but once you frame your shot it looks great.
The only other thoughts are on the softwre side, and while the Motorola software experience is good, there won’t be any OS updates which is disappointing, though you will get the two years of security updates.
Overall, the moto g15 is a decent phone that will satisfy most entry level smartphone users with great display, battery life and a solid camera.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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