Moto One Action: The Pros, Cons, And The X Factor

The Google-Motorola collaboration continues with the new Motorola One Action. The smartphone runs the stock Android Pie with no unwanted bloatware or crappy customized skins. It's plain vanilla Android user experience, which is widely preferred by smartphone enthusiasts worldwide.

Additionally, Motorola's thoughtful ‘Moto Actions' are also provided to further enhance the user experience. These include- One-button navigation, Quick capture, Fast flashlight and Three-finger screenshot. If you prefer stock Android UI over other ROMs, Motorola One Action is a great buy. Another handset that brings the stock Android user experience comes from the house of Xiaomi. Launched at a starting price of Rs. 12,999, the Mi A3 is also a promising budget smartphone. It offers long-lasting battery backup and 48MP camera paired with a wide-angle lens.

The 21:9 aspect ratio screen on the new Moto One Action is unique and brings an entirely new visual experience. It is the same crisp LCD panel that we have tested with the Moto One Vision smartphone. The screen offers an impressive contrast ratio and near-AMOLED level color reproduction. The pixel density on the 1080p x 2520p panel is 432ppi.

The 21:9 form-factor also improves the multitasking experience. As the display offers some extra vertical real-estate, you can comfortably place two apps in split-view for better multitasking experience. The video-playback experience is also quite immersive on the Motorola One Action; however, it is really difficult to find the suitable content for the unconventional 21:9 aspect ratio.

The single bottom-firing speaker on the Moto One Action produces loud and clear audio. It is the same speaker setup that was offered on the Moto One Vision and can easily fill up a small room. The sound produced by the Dolby tuned mono speaker unit on the One Action is much better than most of the rival devices in sub 20K price segment.

The Cons

Motorola One Action is backed by the same Exynos 9609 chipset that we have recently tested on the Moto One Vision. We ran some benchmarks to evaluate CPU performance. The Exynos 9609 chipset scored 6,793 in PC Mark Work 2.0 performance, 1,329 in 3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme- Open GL ES3.1 and scored 14,2,687 in Antutu.

The Samsung-made Exynos 9609 is no match for Snapdragon 712 which can be seen on Vivo Z1 Pro and the recently launched Realme 5 Pro. These two handsets offer better gaming and computing performance than the Moto One Action. But thanks to the stock Android UI and snappy 128GB UFS 2.1 Storage, I did not face any major performance issues on the Moto one Action.

The smartphone feels snappy and can easily handle multitasking and even some heavy applications without any major stutters. You also get the microSD card support to expand the internal storage to up to 256GB.

I was expecting Motorola to address the battery issues with the new Moto One Action but sadly it fails to bring battery upgrades. The smartphone is powered by the same 3,500 mAh battery unit that supplied power to the Motorola One Vision. The battery cell can last one day only if you use the handset moderately. Other smartphones in similar price-bracket offer bigger battery units with power ratings in the range of 4,000 mAh.

While other smartphone makers are fighting the spec-race, Motorola is not shying away from putting some thoughtful innovations. In addition to the new 21:9 aspect ratio display, the One Action also brings a new camera trick to please shutterbugs. There's an additional 16MP wide-angle lens that is essentially touted as the industry-first 117º ultra-wide action video camera.

This lens allows you to shoot landscape videos while holding the phone vertically. The ultra-wide video footage can be used later as standard landscape videos to fill up the entire screen of the handset. Motorola has achieved this by changing the lens orientation. We tested the new feature and it makes shooting landscape videos much more convenient than the usual camera setup.

Additionally, the videos you shoot from the ultra-wide angle are also stabilized for smooth video output. Content creators will find the new feature quite useful while shooting videos. There's one limitation though. The additional lens can only shoot videos and cannot capture wide-angle shots. It will be interesting to see if the company can address the issue with a future software update.

As far as other camera specs are concerned, the smartphone offers a 12MP primary camera that works on f/1.8 aperture paired with a 5MP depth sensor. It's a pretty standard camera setup that can capture decent shots in daylight. The camera can shoot 4K videos (21:9 aspect ratio and in standard format), slow-motion, time-lapse and brings some exciting modes and filters to step up your photography game. These include Spot color, Live filters, Cinemagraph, etc.

Motorola One Action might not come out as the most spec-heavy and powerful handset in the sub 15K price-segment, but it brings some exciting features. The newly added ultra-wide angle video lens is a thoughtful feature that makes it much more convenient to shoot wide-angle videos while holding the phone vertically.

The battery life and computing prowess on Motorola One Action are not best-in-class; however, the snappy UFS 2.1 storage and stock Android UI manages to compensate for the loss. Motorola has also addressed the pricing issue by launching the handset at Rs. 13,999 which can create some big issues for the recently launched Xiaomi Mi A3 and Realme 5 series handsets.

Overall, Motorola One Action is a well-rounded package for consumers who prefer a fluid Android user experience, good design and a crisp display. If you cannot compromise on battery life and processing power, Realme 5 Pro is a worth considering. The Realme handset also delivers slightly better camera performance than the Motorola One Action and the Xiaomi Mi A3.