Mobile Phones & Networks!

I bought this phone, Motorola "Moto G50" as a retirement and birthday present to me.  I am not in the market for a £1000+ Apple or Samsung cell/mobile phone.  I haven't seen the need to "Keep up with the Jonesy's" for quite a few years.

What made the decision was that my Honor 9 Lite was beginning to get a little buggy and slowing down quite badly. Whether this was the last upgrade of Huawei's version of Android I have no idea.

Why the Moto G50?  I wanted a decent "budget" smartphone and after looking at a lot of reviews and then at the G50 in the Tesco Mobile shop I plumped for it.  

Of course, I was beaten to the punch by Claire. She has a very old but premium priced OnePlus 5T. It has plenty of RAM available and the onboard storage isn't too stressed unlike my 32gb Honor. But is has become buggy and prone to simply locking up. 

So after we sorted my 84yo Aunt Yvonne with her first ever smartphone on Saturday, Claire was on Google to look at replacements for the 5T. The Moto G50 came out best for performance and price.

Yvonne has been using an Alcatel phone for some years and only for calls and texts.  She is fed up with the keyboard when texting as the keys have multiple letters, ABC, DEF etc etc. She is also "pay as you go" (PAYG) and didn't want a contract. So we got her a Moto G7i at Tesco Mobile.  It is a budget phone and was on offer at £79.99 with a free PAYG SIM card with £10 credit when you use the voucher in the box.

I have been providing tech support all week since Saturday when we did that job!  Getting an elderly novice to use a modern smartphone isn't the five minute  "look here that's what you do" experience I had hoped. Part of the problem was changing her number over from the O2 network to the Tesco network.  When I went from 3UK to Tesco it took about three hours.  Four days was the estimate!

She had £17.50 PAYG to use up on the old phone SIM and so she did that on Sunday just gone.  It would have been lost.

I went up Sunday morning and we had a play and I setup the £10 free credit and the £20 bonus credit that looks to be a Christmas gimmick.  A few test SMS' and it knocked 10p a time off the £20. her £10 still intact.  We both suggested that she gets a Google account and then we can download and install apps on the phone. She is resistant to using Google and Amazon. Google would let us download WhatsApp and she would save the 10p she spends every time she sends an SMS. And the even larger MMS charge when she sends a photo.  It has been suggested by her friends that are slightly more advanced.  My brother Neill and I can set this up. She could also move her email across to Gmail and have it on her phone!  She currently uses Tiscali who were an ISP a while back and I  haven't seen hide nor hair of them for years!

Anyway back to the G50! Claire's arrived on Monday and I set it up. Google says to use "Moto Migrate" app on both phones to copy across data/contacts etc. It doesn't. The G50 uses Google backup/restore, Simply backup all your phone stuff to Google on the old phone, and then restore on the new phone. It's all done across the wifi. it's been really good. Hers is "Steel Grey".

It is a lot larger than the 5T and comes with dual SIM option and I have fitted a spare 64gb micro-SD in the other slot.  This will be good for music and photo storage as I can eject it and add stuff to it from the laptop.

So far so good.

So I ordered one from John Lewis as well.  Why John Lewis?  They offer a two-year no quibble warranty and their price is the same as Amazon and other resellers. Mine is "Aqua Green". Different so we can tell whose is whose.

https://www.motorola.com/we/smartphones-moto-g-50/p

Mine arrived yesterday and I set it up. It copied all my apps across in about an hour and then I had to go through and open each one and login. I was surprised that the transfer included username and passords to most of the apps making it much quicker than remembering them all.

It's early days. it is bigger than the Honor. It is heavier than the Honor.  The screen came in for some criticism in a few of the reviews but I can't see any problem. Had I migrated from £1000 plus phone I might have noticed!

Anyway that's all for now on this an no doubt "I'll be back" to the subject!

A couple of photos with watermark turned on.