Motorola Moto G8 Power Lite Is Official With Great Cameras, Battery

Motorola has now officially launched its new Moto G8 Power Lite, aimed at improving camera and battery performance in the budget smartphone segment. Branded as a more wallet-friendly alternative to the Moto G8 Power, the new gadget comes in a water-repellent design. It also ships with Moto Experiences gesture- and motion-interactions intact.

That helps keep a consistent experience across the G8-series devices without quite as high of a price tag.

Motorola also includes a plethora of standard features here. Powered by a respectable MediaTek Helio P35  octa-core chipset, Android 9 Pie is included out of the box. Backing up that SoC, the company has included 4GB RAM and 64GB storage — expandable up to 256GB via Micro SD card.

While NFC is not included as part of this device’s make-up, a fingerprint reader and all other expected modern sensors are.

The requisite hardware is all packed under an HD+ 720×1600 display panel with a 20:9 display ratio. That’s not too spectacular but Motorola did make sure that the screen is large enough to accommodate a better-than-average experience. Motorola built its Moto G8 Power Lite around a 6.5-inch Max Vision display panel.

That’s not to say that everything in the new Moto G8 Power Lite is centered on the latest available technology. The company is including Android 9 Pie rather than the latest Android 10 firmware. And the charging port found at the bottom edge of the device — available in either Royal Blue or Arctic Blue — is MicroUSB 2.0 rather than USB-C. Bluetooth 4.2 provides close-range wireless connectivity. But the OEM has also opted to keep its 3.5mm audio jack in place there too.

Finally, Motorola says that its new budget handset does not feature a waterproof rating. So it isn’t necessarily going to survive submersion. But it will survive light rain, sweat, and splashes since it is designed to be water repellent.

Motorola’s G8 Power Lite lives up to its name and more

Moving past the mundane, Motorola did include two sets of features that should help its Moto G8 Power Lite stand apart from the competition — at least on paper. The first of those is found right in the handset’s branding. The Moto G8 Power Lite may be a budget-friendly, moderate-performance smartphone but it also ships with a massive 5,000mAh capacity battery.

The power supply here should charge up relatively quickly as well. Motorola coupled that with 10W fast charging tech.

The company claims that will allow users to stream music all day or to watch movies and episodes for up to 19-hours on one charge. Overall, Motorola says the Moto G8 Power Lite can last for up to three full days on a single charge. It’s not immediately clear whether that’s three days of screen-on use or if that expectation includes standby time.

Moto G8 Power Lite’s other defining characteristic is going to be its camera setup. Motorola is shipping its new gadget with a triple camera array at the back and a single selfie-snapper at the front.

The primary snapper features a 16-megapixel lens with phase-detect autofocus. That’s backed up by a 2-megapixel depth sensor and a similarly specced macro lens. The camera array is HDR compatible with dual-camera bokeh and plenty of other features. Although the 16-megapixel snapper should provide plenty of detail in just about any shot, the bigger feature here is the Macro Vision camera.

Motorola says its macro camera can get users 4-times closer to their subject than the normal lens. It also allows them to tweak the depth of field in portrait shots. That gives the Moto G8 Power Lite more versatility than might be found in other sub-$250 smartphones.

The front-facing 8-megapixel snapper, conversely, features a similarly-specced lense with a slightly larger pixel size. That should allow for better shots in lower light. Both front and rear cameras shoot video in FHD resolution at 30 frames per second.

Specs

Motorola also provided some in-depth specifications for its new Moto G8 Power Lite Android smartphone. You can find that here, as provided by Motorola.

Pricing and availability

Motorola indicates that its Moto G8 Power Lite will be sold at a recommended retail price of £149.99 — around $185.57. But that doesn’t mean that pricing will be universal, given differences in typical pricing across the expected sales regions. Motorola intends to sell the latest battery-focused budget device in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia over the “coming weeks” in select countries.

The price here applies specifically to sales starting on April 15. Motorola indicates its Moto G8 Power Lite will sell at O.2, Vodafone, CPW, Tesco, Amazon, Argos, and JLP starting from that date.