Most reviews are using the term "mid-range" rather than budget for this phone.

Have you seen how much an iPhone Pro Max or Galaxy Ultra costs?

Also factor in how many years of SW updates are you getting on those cheap Motorolas and also the quality of the software.

Hardware bang for the buck ain't everything. If the software is full of ads on those cheap phones or is buggy(like it was on my OnePlus), then your $250 phone ain't worth shit in terms of frustration it's gonna cause you long term.

The less software (beyond stock Android) that a phone has, the better off it is IMHO. My last Moto phone (a G4) was almost entirely stock and that made me more inclined to buy the new version. Unfortunately the new phone had a bunch of bloaty apps but I managed to remove or disable almost all of them. Many of them were from Google if that matters. There is an app called Universal Android Debloater (UAD) that does this automatically but I didn't find out about it til afterwards.

I'm not noticing any ads from the software on my phone. I am still working on replacing the Google stuff though, since it is presumably spying even if it isn't spewing ads.

On a recent iphone setup I didn't notice ads per se, but instead there were constant pitches to buy subscriptions to Apple services. I found that just as bad as ads.

The Moto G's currently come with 3 years of security updates and 1 Android major version update. That is probably good enough. More than 3 years out, the phone hardware probably can't keep up with the increased levels of software bloat. My old phone had 2GB of ram which was fine when I got it, but near crippled now.

Which bottom of a barrel did you have to scrape to get a phone with 2GB of RAM in recent history? My OnePlus 3 from 2016 had 6GB back then and my Samsung Note 2 before that had 2GB .. in 2012.

Moto G4 (XT1625) introduced in 2016. I think I got mine in 2017. It was $170 at the time iirc.

I don't even know how much ram my Maemo phones (N900 and later N9) had. They were dog slow though.

maemo wasn't as memory hungry as Android.

My recent purchase of Samsung S23 Ultra at almost £800 is full of Samsung crud and spying that I can't remove.

Cost is no guide on a crud-free experience.

Cost is no guide, but incentives are higher at the cheaper ranges.

Cute thinking Samsung's own apps are spyware crud. Is Apple's iCloud app also crud spyware?

If you wanna see spyware crud Try buying Chinese phones with Candy Crush and third party Chines apps and games you can't uninstall and show you ads in the menus.

I don’t think it’s a controversial opinion to state that yes, Apple software is higher quality and more privacy respecting than Samsungs.

Based on what impartial third party tests is this claim based?

$250 would have been a budget phone 5 years ago. If you're buying an unlocked phone from a brick and mortar store, $350-$500 is the minimum for a brand-name phone. If your are based in the US/EU, you may only have brand name phones available.

I thought Motorola and Samsung were both brand names here in the US. Here is Motorola's current budget line. All are below $300. Admittedly the best deals are the 2023 models but that is a regular thing with them. If I wanted a cheap phone today I'd probably get the 2023 G 5G at $149.

https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones-moto-g-family

You can get them brick and mortar at Best Buy at usually the same prices as on Motorola's site.

I miss my Moto One Action... The gesture programming was great. If I needed a flashlight I would just shake it twice on, twice back off. So handy.

I don't know about brick and mortar stores, but I've purchased a brand new moto e for <$150 within the last 5 years, and I'd call Motorola "brand name".

> 8GB ram is hardware limited

The line is (emphasis mine)

> Google is already calling devices with 8GB of RAM "hardware limited" when it comes to future AI features

which... yeah, I think that's true? You can run smaller LLMs in 8GB, for example, but it's a tight fit and you're going to be limited to really really small models.

Granted, I suspect this will result in the floor for "acceptable RAM" to go up considerably, which... we'll see if that's good or bad.

> $499 is a budget phone???

Yeah no that's nonsense. You can get a moto g for $99 (!) on sale at https://www.motorola.com/us/specials right now and that's... I mean, that's an old model, but it's perfectly serviceable yet.

500$/7y < 250$/2y

So yeah, seen on the expected life time, it's a budget phone.