The latest Moto G is proof that three bad cameras don’t equal one good one

They say that the best camera is the one you have with you. In fact, someone wrote a book about iPhone photography that says the same thing. Usually, I’d agree with them — it’s better to have a camera to capture memories than to have nothing at all. However, in my long history of reviewing smartphones, both cheap and expensive, I’ve found that not all cameras are created equal — not even close.

Granted, I don’t expect a $200 Android phone to go toe to toe with an $800 one; that’s just not how it works. That said, there’s a difference between giving a phone the cameras it needs and adding an extra sensor just to make the back of the phone look more impressive. Google and Apple are great examples of the former, especially with the likes of the dual-camera Pixel 8a or the new single-camera iPhone 16e, while Motorola still stubbornly tries to be the latter. Its latest Moto G (2025) falls into a classic cheap camera phone trap, and here’s how I’d love to see it climb out.

Before I start bashing Motorola for making the same budget camera missteps that it’s made repeatedly, I have to give it some credit. A few years ago, it switched from lowly 13MP primary cameras on some of its cheaper Moto G devices to 50MP primary sensors across the board, and to my eye, things got better. Sure, I had to trade a bit of low-light performance due to smaller individual pixels, but I was suddenly able to capture better details and punch in a little closer, thanks to sensor cropping.

The same thing holds true these days — Motorola’s main 50MP sensor still isn’t half bad. It’s not as physically large as the 64MP sensor on the back of the Pixel 8a, which packs 0.8µ pixels, or the 48MP sensor on the iPhone 16e with 0.7µ pixels, but it’s not that far behind with 0.61µ pixels of its own. If anything, it’s closest to the 50MP sensor on the back of Samsung’s budget-friendly Galaxy A16 5G, but I’d probably give Motorola the advantage over it for the Moto G’s more natural color profile. And no, I’m not suggesting that the Moto G’s camera is near the quality or the processing of the Pixel 8a or iPhone 16e, but from a hardware perspective, it’s not all that far behind.

In fact, if there’s anything I’d actually complain about regarding Motorola’s refreshed primary camera, it’s the fact that its default field of view is just a bit too wide for my liking. Of course, that’s not Motorola’s fault — almost every primary camera is set to somewhere between a 23mm and 26mm equivalent focal length. As such, I spent virtually my entire review period with the Moto G (2025) shooting at 2x zoom, mostly for tighter frames that look a bit closer to the 35mm equivalent that I’m comfortable with.

Try as I might, though, I never really came away from the Moto G (2025) primary camera truly disappointed — at least, not during the daytime or while hovering between 1x and 4x zoom. I realize that’s only a fraction of the time when you’d need a capable smartphone camera, but for me, it covered most of my usage. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to get much out of Motorola’s peripheral cameras for quite a few reasons.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about how I thought Motorola needed a soft reset. I suggested that it needed to ditch the ads from Hello UX (it kind of has), double down on its use of vegan leather (it definitely has), and rethink its budget cameras (it most certainly hasn’t). At the time, it felt like Motorola was grabbing whatever sensors it had lying around and slapping them onto the back of its most affordable phones, and that hasn’t changed.

For example, I complained that last year’s Moto G 5G — yes, 5G was still an official part of the name — only carried a 50MP primary camera with a dedicated 2MP macro as backup. I was okay with the primary sensor but regularly wondered when I’d use such a low-resolution peripheral sensor. Technically, I guess Motorola heard my complaints and added a 2MP depth sensor to the 2025 edition of its Moto G, but that’s not the lesson I wanted it to take away from my complaint.

If anything, deciding to add a depth sensor to its most affordable 5G-enabled device is an example of Motorola ignoring what I had to say. Sure, you could argue that Motorola had to do it to make its Moto G capable of applying portrait mode to objects and animals — something that the iPhone 16e can’t do — but I think that’s ignoring the problem, too. There’s a reason that almost nobody else uses dedicated depth sensors in 2025, and that’s because usually, you can just let another sensor pull double duty. Google’s Pixel 8a has two cameras, yet it has no trouble picking out non-human subjects for portrait mode, and the same goes for Motorola’s own Razr duo from 2024.

So, once again, I’ll beg Motorola — please, let things be two things. You’ve already given the Moto G Power (2025) an ultrawide camera with Macro Vision and autofocus, you could very easily do something similar for the next Moto G. I wouldn’t even mind a lowly 5MP sensor, so long as I can do a little bit more with it than a dedicated macro or depth camera. You don’t have to worry about the phones feeling too similar otherwise since the Moto G Power will always come with more RAM, faster charging, and a better IP rating — all of which I’m okay with. Those differences are more than enough to justify the price difference, so please, just give me a proper budget camera that goes above the bare minimum.

If you really want to see the state of Motorola’s budget cameras for yourself, you can pick up the Moto G (2025) at the widget below, but I recommend a longer look at the Moto G Power (2025) linked below it.