Android 10 Review of Moto G8 Plus (India)
OS Update Review of Moto G8 Plus
Yes you read it right, it's good! That's the reality but the update itself has some flaws. I want to mention one thing before discussing about the software & that is - Android 10 was launched by Google an year ago and this smartphone received the same after Google launched it's Android 11 Update so this means that the update is already too late but I believe in - "Better late than never".
So in this article I'm going to tell you the Good & the Bad things about this new update that this smartphone have received.
The Good Things -
1) All Android Q Features - The latest software brings all the features offered by the Google. I will be discussing some of the important features of Android 10 here, but if you want to see whole changes provided by Android 10 You can see it here - "Android 10 Features"
Following are the new features offered by this new update -
a) New Gesture Navigation - The option of gesture navigation is now available in Settings App -> System -> Gestures -> System Navigation. In this new Gesture - there's a long bar present at the bottom of the screen & you can Swipe Up on it to get to Home & swipe up & hold to get to the multi-tasking page & also you can swipe left & right to switch between the apps and it's really good. To go back you need to swipe to right from left edge of the screen & swipe left from right edge of the screen. To launch the Google Assistant you have to swipe up from the bottom corner of both the sides of the screen. So overall it's good, but it will take a little time to get used to it if you were using old Navigation Buttons. And one fun fact - The Nav Bar & the indicators that pops up when you slide the edge from both sides of the screen (to go back), changes their colour (white on dark background & black on light background)
Oh & if you are worried about the "One Button Navigation" that Motorola Provides, it's still there in the new update as well, so if you prefer that one, it's still present in this update as well.
b) Dark Mode - The popular Dark Mode is present in the new update. Nowadays it's the feature that's high on demand, you can toggle it on from the Quick Toggles or you can dive into the Settings App & then you can find it under Display Section. You can also set it to automatically change to the dark mode while the Battery Saver is on.
c) New Notifications Controls - Now you can control which notifications should make sound when they arrive or which ones to be silent but still pop up. There are options available within 'notifications' under 'Apps & Notifications' section in the Settings menu and also from tapping & holding on the notification from the notifications panel itself & those are -
i) Alerting - If you select this option the notifications will let you know about it by making sound and vibration.
ii) Silent - This option will be used by you if you don't want the notifications from a specific app to make sound when it arrives. It will block the notification tones & also the vibration.
iii) Turn off notifications - If you don't want any notifications from any particular app you can completely block it by using this option. When you tap on it, it will open a small window at the bottom of the screen in which it will show you what notifications you don't want to see, you can toggle it off all at once or you have to toggle off the options you don't want to see in the notifications. There are some options available in this window and you can see other options as well if you tap on 'see more' on this window, this will open the other options that you can toggle off or on as per your preference.
c) Privacy Controls - New privacy controls are available in this new update.
d) Project Mainline - Now after updating this phone to this new version, this phone now supports Project Mainline.
e) Focus Mode - Focus mode is now available in this update under Digital Wellbeing. This feature will help you to pause the apps that you want so that you can focus on your work easily.
f) Smart Reply - With the help of machine learning it will suggest you some short messages based on the messages you get from various applications that you can easily tap to send directly from the notifications tab.
g) Location Controls - This lets you decide when you want to share your location with applications. Three options are available & those are -
i) Allow all the time
ii) Allow while the app in use
iii) Deny.
So these were the main Android 10 features.
2) Customization - This update brings the new customization options from where you can change shape & colour of Quick Toggles from variety of colours and shapes available & same goes with the shape of the app icons except you cannot change the colour of the app icons, also you change the system font as well. You can create your custom theme where you can set above mentioned things as per your liking. This option is called as 'Styles' which is available under Display Section in the Settings or you can tap and hold on the home screen to find this option.
3) Moto Display - One of the major features in this new OS update is this new Moto Display. It is now completely redesigned and it is now looking quite unique and fulfilling standards of today. It really looks good with the new animation that they've provided to the moto display and also the clock is changed which shows the temperature & indicates weather with the help of icons as well, and now the battery percentage is displayed in the top right corner in it. The new moto display aslo have a seperate page that gets displayed while media is being played, it displays the media player along with the album art in the background. I am really happy to see this new Moto Display and it is one of the best features in this new OS update. I am posting some photographs of the new Moto Display below so you can have a better look at them.
4) Moto Audio (tuned by Dolby) - Yes the Dolby Audio Equalizer is renamed to Moto Audio in this update but this is not the only change the equalizer have received. In this new update the option of custom settings has been enabled for the stereo loudspeakers (in the previous version this option was absent), now that you can customise the audio through this custom settings to make the sound of the speakers as you like. One more thing - the Intelligent Equalizer has been taken down, this option used to provide 3 sound profiles (to tune the audio) in the custom equalizer. I'm posting some screenshots of this app.
I also want to mention one thing & that is - you know that the stereo loudspeakers are really good on this phone but after this update, you can now tune the sound signature in Moto Audio app so because of it the speakers sounds just incredible & I cannot even express in words about the sound that I am getting out of the loudspeakers. Just unbelievable and amazing!
5) Adaptive Performance - This feature is now available in this new build of android. What it does is it helps to improve RAM efficiency with the help of AI that reads the usage patterns and then optimises the RAM accordingly.
6) Call Indication Sound - A beep sound can be heard whenever you cut the call or whenever the call gets disconnected. This is a small addition but it is good and helpful.
7) Screenshot Toolkit - After taking a screenshot a little window pops in the bottom left corner of the screen which shows the captured screenshot along with 5 options -
i) Edit screenshot - when you click on it, full screen window will open where you can write on the screen with the writing tool, crop it, scan it on google lens and share it.
ii) Share - When you click this option it's going to pop up all of the options available and you can make selection (whichever option is needed) from those options.
iii) Scan with Google Lens - When you tap on it, Google lens gets activated and will scan the screenshot and provide all of the options that Google Lens offers.
iv) Delete - It will help to discard the screenshot.
v) Expand - This option comes handy if you want to capture longer length screenshot. When you tap on it, it scrolls and captures the screen until you hit the stop button on that micro screen.
8) New Volume Controls - Now if you want to adjust the volume of calls, media, ring & alarm sounds then you don't have to go all the way inside the settings, you just have to tap the button below the volume slider then it will pop up a window showing volume sliders of the above mentioned options. This feature comes pretty handy.
Now that I've mentioned the good and new things that are provided in this new update, so let's talk about the bugs that I've noticed in this new update -
The Bugs -
1) Haptic feedback issue in One Button Navigation - Sometimes the haptic feedback is missing when switching between the applications using One Button Navigation.
2) Not so smooth One Handed Mode - On Android 9 pie the One Handed Mode was smooth - its animation when activating it (transition effects) were smooth but after this update the animations are not that good and it feels laggy. Also when activating the one handed mode sometimes the application in foreground just got refreshed when switching to the one handed mode and vice versa. So because of this, it feels really annoying. These things shows that the optimization is not good of this One Handed Mode feature.
3) Occasional stutters within the User Interface - Stutters within the UI are sometimes visible during the usage of the phone - in day to day tasks and regular usage. Sometimes animations are not smooth. But overall fluidity is good.
4) Orientation issue while capturing photographs - Sometimes the orientation of the image that is captured from the camera app is wrong. It is the bug I've noticed in this new update.
5) Focus hunting in Video Mode while using Primary Lens - Continuous focus hunting while recording videos is happening when using the Primary Camera Lens. There is no such issue on Action Camera Lens (Wide Angle Lens). This problem is only with the Primary Lens and only in video recording.
6) Low level of Deep Bass in audio through Headphone Jack - The level of deep bass in the audio is kind of low when listening to media via headphones, the bass is clearly audible but the intensity felt a little low to me. Let's see if they can increase the level of bass in the next software update.
7) Bug in Volume Controls - When you tap and hold the either the volume up or down button the volume does not get changed and I don't know why it is happening but I've noticed the occurance of this issue after some time after plugging the headphones to the smartphone. The volume goes up or down only after you tap again and again on the volume up or down buttons. So this Issue I've noticed in this version.
Note:- I have not performed factory reset after upgrading to the latest software version.
Final Verdict -
In my daily use of this smartphone with this new update I haven't faced any major issues though there are some bugs I've mentioned above but overall the update is good. The RAM management is good, the multitasking is good, the gaming performance is same as before, the animations are smooth, the camera performance is good as well.
What I liked the most is they introduced many features that they've started to provide in their newly launched smartphones like the new moto peek display, redesigned moto app, adaptive performance, gestures, customizations etc.,& many more new features. And also there are improved and new animations you can see here & there. And yes I won't be telling you about other animations, I leave the rest of these animations to find it for yourself, so find them & then enjoy.
So, overall it was a great experience of using this new OS Update because it was fluid and as you know because Motorola provide close to stock Android experience without bloatware.
So this was my full review of the new OS Update of Moto G8 Plus. What are your thoughts about this, you can let me know in the comments section.
Have a great day & thanks for reading this article!
Regards!
Written by - Amay Bakshi.
Twitter - @amay_bakshi
Good one Amay
ReplyDeleteThanks!!
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