My Favorite Motorola Phone in 2023 Is on Sale for $400

If you need a telephone for lower than $500 that is not used or refurbished, there are two fundamental choices.The first is to contemplate a telephone that was made to be reasonably priced, of which there are a lot from the likes of Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus and Google. These telephones usually have quite a bit to supply for his or her value, reminiscent of nice battery life, 5G help and a processor that is not the quickest however remains to be highly effective sufficient for mundane each day duties (i.e. scrolling by way of social media, texting, video chats, and so forth.). But to maintain the value down, these cheaper telephones include compromises together with lower-resolution screens that are not very brilliant, cameras that take simply OK pictures and plastic designs.Read extra: Best Phones of 2024The different choice is to discover a dearer telephone that got here out final yr, and even two years in the past, for a reduction. The Lenovo AssumePhone by Motorola, at present priced at $400, is a good instance. I can nearly hear you asking: “Wait, Lenovo makes phones?” They did this yr, and it is one in every of my favourite telephones I examined in 2023.The AssumePhone was a superb deal at its authentic value of $700, however it’s positively value shopping for with a $300 low cost.As the title suggests, the AssumePhone is a collaboration between Motorola and its dad or mum firm, Lenovo. It has an identical design as Lenovo’s standard ThinkPad laptop computer lineup, proper all the way down to the signature crimson {hardware} button for triggering software program shortcuts. It has spectacular {hardware} for $400 that features 256GB of storage (most sub-$500 telephones solely have half that capability), a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus processor (two generations previous however nonetheless highly effective) and a beautiful 6.6-inch 144Hz show (the next refresh charge than most telephones). The Lenovo AssumePhone by Motorola is a first-generation product that made its debut in 2023. James Martin/CNETIt additionally helps 68-watt quick charging and ships with the required wall plug. That alone makes the AssumePhone stand out; telephones from Samsung and Apple take longer to cost and do not embrace the facility adapter within the field. In my exams, the AssumePhone went from an empty battery to 92% in 30 minutes, making it one of many fastest-charging telephones bought within the US. For perspective, the $799 iPhone 15 solely added 53% in the identical period of time.But it is the AssumePhone’s harmonious design that made it stand out in 2023. Smartphone {hardware}, particularly within the sub-$500 vary, has moved away from being an expression of fashion and design and has as a substitute turn into an aluminum or plastic housing for an oblong glass display. A telephone’s coloration and digital camera bump form are normally their most distinctive facets.The AssumePhone’s design is a little more bold. It’s refined and mature, replicating the ThinkPad’s buttoned-down company look. The diagonal aramid fiber weave inlay on the again offers it a complicated end and feels nice to the contact. The {hardware} and flippantly custom-made Android 13 software program really feel like a single cohesive design. It’s the form of factor a number of reviewers, together with myself, normally credit score Apple with. I ought to observe that Motorola and Lenovo commit to 3 years of main OS updates and 4 years of safety updates. The again of the telephone comes with the identical backside nook branding as a Lenovo ThinkPad. Patrick Holland/CNETI spoke with Sudhir Chadaga, world lead of Motorola for enterprise, concerning the AssumePhone this previous summer time. He stated the telephone’s design took time to seek out.”We wanted to make a statement that the ThinkPhone should be the best companion to your PC,” stated Chadaga on a video name. “It’s not just that they need to look like each other; they need to work well together.”Besides being a stable Android telephone, the AssumePhone has a variety of nifty shortcuts and cross-platform utilities with Windows. The cross performance is not restricted to Lenovo ThinkPads; the AssumePhone can work with most up-to-date Windows computer systems. AssumePhone by Motorola subsequent to a ThinkPad laptop computer MotorolaYou can join it to PCs, displays and TVs. For instance, I copied and pasted textual content and pictures from the telephone to a PC laptop computer and used the AssumePhone’s 50-megapixel fundamental rear digital camera for a video name I took on the ThinkPad. The video high quality seemed a lot clearer than the laptop computer’s built-in webcam.Those integrations between Android and Windows are the results of prospects, and even Lenovo employees, wanting a greater expertise between their laptops and telephones. Chadaga tells me a lot of his staff incessantly file bills on the highway, which generally is a clunky expertise that always entails emailed pictures of receipts. He questioned if there was a neater approach.”Android and Windows haven’t always played well together,” stated Jerry Paradise, vp of worldwide business portfolio and product administration at Lenovo. “Customers were always saying, ‘You guys really need to do a ThinkPhone.'” The AssumePhone will get three years of main Android OS updates. James Martin/CNETClearly, the AssumePhone made a superb impression on me. But I ought to point out among the drawbacks, and the primary are the cameras. For $700, these cameras take respectable pictures, however they wrestle in low mild. If you are shopping for this for $400, the AssumePhone’s cameras are good in contrast with most different low cost telephones.The interconnectivity between the telephone and PCs labored effectively more often than not, however there have been instances (reminiscent of after I had the AssumePhone’s display on a ThinkPad show) after I skilled an occasional lag.In phrases of software program help, Motorola and Lenovo nonetheless fall behind Samsung, which provides 4 years of main OS updates, and Google, which provides seven years for the brand new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.While Chadaga and Paradise praised the AssumePhone for business-minded customers, it is also a splendid Android telephone. You could not care about having a telephone that syncs to your PC or helps you to use Microsoft Teams on the press of a button. But the AssumePhone’s speedy charging, iconic design and in any other case high-quality {hardware} nonetheless makes it a worthwhile telephone.With its $300 low cost, the AssumePhone is the most effective $400 telephone you should purchase proper now. The query now: How lengthy will it stay at this value?