Technologies

Moto G 5G (2023) Hands-On: Are the Trade-Offs Worth the Lower $250 Price?

The Moto G gets reinvented with a cheaper price, and it shows.

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The $250 Moto G 5G marks a big reimagining of the phone since last year’s more-expensive $400 model. This year’s Moto G 5G scales back on storage and cameras to help hit its lower price but steps up the refresh rate on its 6.5-inch display to a smooth 120Hz. All that, while keeping the 5,000mAh battery and its roughly two-day battery life, should make the phone a decent value for its price.

The Moto G 5G has 4GB of memory, runs on a Snapdragon 480 Plus 5G chip and comes with 128GB of storage. This is a decent amount of storage space for this price and can be expanded up to 1TB with a microSD card. The phone’s stereo speakers and headphone jack are also quite nice for when I watch videos or listen to music. It ships with Android 13, and like other Moto G phones, will get only one major software update to Android 14 along with three years of security updates

I spent a few days with the Moto G 5G so far, and, while it looks and feels like it’s fallen down a few rungs of the price tier, the phone might meet enough essential needs to satisfy most people. However, by no means does it punch above its weight. The Moto G 5G has 4GB of memory, runs on a Snapdragon 480 Plus 5G chip and comes with 128GB of storage. This is a decent amount of storage space for the price and can be expanded up to 1TB with a microSD card. The phone’s stereo speakers and headphone jack are also quite nice for when I watch videos or listen to music. It ships with Android 13, and like other Moto G phones, will get only one major software update to Android 14 along with three years of security updates.

The back of the Moto G 5G. — The Moto G 5G has a main 48-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel macro camera.

Mike Sorrentino/CNET

However, when testing other features, I can’t help but compare this phone to the slightly more expensive $300 Moto G Power 5G — which includes quite a bit more for that extra $50. For instance, the Moto G 5G’s 6.5-inch display runs at a 720p resolution. Even though that screen animates smoothly with its 120Hz refresh rate, I find that the lower-resolution makes photos and videos look rather plain. The Power 5G runs at a 1,080p resolution at the same refresh rate, and in my review of that phone the display was a particular highlight.

Performance also seems to take a noticeable hit during my early tests, which could be attributable to the phone having 4GB of memory compared with the 6GB available on the Power 5G. Often when I test phones, during casual use I play games while taking calls or texting. I find that when a call comes through while I’m playing a game, in this instance Marvel Snap, that the game needs to reload itself after I answer the call. Lighter multitasking, however, has been fine, for instance reading news articles while I’m listening to music has not led to any noticeable issues.

The Moto G 5G also moves down from three cameras on last year’s model to two, with this year’s phone including a 48-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel macro camera. This is an area that cheaper phones often struggle, and my early photos taken by the Moto G 5G don’t change that opinion. Like other cheaper phones, photos taken in outdoor environments or indoor locations with good lighting come out OK, but without much detail.

The Public Theater taken on the Moto G 5G. — Outdoor photo taken on the Moto G 5G of the Public Theater.

Mike Sorrentino/CNET

Twister Air demo station — Indoor photo taken on the Moto G 5G at a Twister Air demo event.

Mike Sorrentino/CNET

The 8-megapixel front-facing camera is similarly serviceable, but photos look a little plain.

Photo of Mike Sorrentino taken on the Moto G 5G. — Front-facing camera photo taken on the Moto G 5G.

Mike Sorrentino/CNET

I’ll reserve judgment after I have taken the Moto G 5G through more photo scenes, but my early indoor photos are comparable to the Moto G Power 5G — which is to say that they are fairly blurry and lack detail. Photos are usable but more for quick group chats and social posts.

Cocktail photo in kitchen — A cocktail photo taken at a friend’s house on the Moto G 5G.

Mike Sorrentino/CNET

The Moto G 5G’s 5,000mAh battery, however, easily lasted two days during my early tests, matching the performance that I saw on the Moto G Power 5G and the $200 Moto G Stylus. As we continue to test phones in the $300 price range, it has been comforting to see the 5,000mAh battery become a standard feature in 2023. However, I hope Motorola finds a way to speed up charging, as the Moto G 5G’s 15-watt max speed takes about 90 minutes to charge from 4% to 88%. It’s not awful, but is slow when compared with the 33-watt charging included on comparable phones like the OnePlus N300 and OnePlus N20.

Motorola has been releasing several phones over the last few weeks, with the Moto G 5G arriving alongside the $800 Motorola Edge Plus. The Moto G 5G appears to be offering a middle ground between the 4G-only Moto G Stylus and the Moto G Power. The main question as I continue testing is whether this phone’s trade-offs are worth the lower price, or if someone searching for a deal should consider paying slightly less for the Stylus or more for the Power.

Technologies

How Much Energy Do Your AI Prompts Consume? Google Just Shared Its Gemini Numbers

Current measurements of AI’s impact aren’t telling the full story. Google has offered a new method it hopes to standardize.

The explosion of AI tools worldwide is increasing exponentially, but the companies that make these tools often don’t express their environmental impact in detail.

Google has just released a technical paper detailing measurements for energy, emissions and water use of its Gemini AI prompts. The impact of a single prompt is, it says, minuscule. According to its methodology for measuring AI’s impact, a single prompt’s energy consumption is about the equivalent of watching TV for less than 9 seconds.

That’s quite in a single serving, except when you consider the variety of chatbots being used, with billions of prompts easily sent every day.

On the more positive side of progress, the technology behind these prompts has become more efficient. Over the past 12 months, the energy of a single Gemini text prompt has been reduced by 33x, and the total carbon footprint has been reduced by 44x, Google says. According to the tech giant, that’s not unsubstantial, and it’s a momentum that will need to be maintained going forward.

Google did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for further comment.

Google’s calculation method considers much more

The typical calculation for the energy cost of an AI prompt ends at the active machine it’s been run on, which shows a much smaller per-prompt footprint. But Google’s method for measuring the impact of a prompt purportedly spans a much wider range of factors that paint a clearer picture, including full-system dynamic power, idle machines, data center overhead, water consumption and more.

For comparison, it’s estimated that only using the active TPU and GPU consumption, a single Gemini prompt uses 0.10 watt-hours of energy, 0.12 milliliters of water and emits 0.02 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is a promising number, but Google’s wider methodology tells a different story. With more considerations in place, a Gemini text prompt uses 0.24Wh of energy, 0.26mL of water and emits 0.03 gCO2e — around double across the board.

Will new efficiencies keep up with AI use?

Through a multilayered series of efficiencies, Google is continually working on ways to make AI’s impact less burdensome, from more efficient model architectures and data centers to custom hardware.

With smarter models, use cases and tools emerging daily, those efficiencies will be critical as we immerse ourselves deeper in this AI reality.

For more, you should stop using ChatGPT for these things.

Technologies

Vivo Launches Mixed-Reality Headset, an Apple Vision Pro Competitor

Vivo Vision has many of the same design elements as Apple’s VR/AR, but is only available in China, for now.

Look-alikes of Apple products often pop up in China, and mixed-reality headsets have now joined the party. Chinese smartphone maker Vivo has introduced the Vivo Vision, a headset mixing both AR and VR, and it bears many similarities to the Apple Vision Pro.

The company announced the Vivo Vision Discovery Edition at its 30th anniversary celebration in Dongguan, China, saying it’s «the first MR product developed by a smartphone manufacturer in China, positioning Vivo as the first Chinese company to operate within both the smartphone and MR product sectors.»

The Vivo Vision, currently only an in-store experience in mainland China, has a curved glass visor, an aluminum external battery pack and downward-pointing cameras like the Vision Pro. But it also has some differences — an 180-degree panoramic field of view and a much lighter weight at 398 grams (versus the Vision Pro’s 650 grams).

CNET asked Vivo if it plans to sell the Vivo Vision to non-China markets, but the company did not immediately respond.

The Vivo Vision runs on OriginOS Vision, Vivo’s mixed-reality operating system. It supports 3D video recording, spatial photos and audio, and a 120-foot cinematic screen experience.

The starting cost in China will be $1,395 (converted to US dollars), compared to the Vision Pro at $3,500.

Even if the Vivo Vision came to the consumer market in the US, it might not matter much to Apple’s bottom line. The Vision Pro hasn’t been a big seller, likely because of the price tag. Still, the headset market is expected to grow quickly over the next several years, and Apple is already working on new versions of the Vision Pro, including one that’s more affordable than the original.

Jon Rettinger, a tech influencer with more than 1.65 million YouTube subscribers, says he’s not overly enthusiastic about VR/AR just yet. «It’s heavy, invasive and without a must-have use case,» Rettinger told CNET. «If the technology can go from goggles to glasses, I think we’ll see a significant rise. But if the current form factors stay, it will always be niche.

The YouTuber loves that the technology exists, but still doesn’t use it. «The honeymoon wore off. Aside from some gaming and content viewing, it’s still cumbersome, and I tend to go back to my laptop,» he said.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 22 #537

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Aug. 22, No. 537.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle has a fun theme, especially if you have ever read Agatha Christie books or played a few rounds of the board game Clue. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Whodunit?

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Solve the crime

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

REST, POEM, SOUR, SOURS, DIAL, HOLE, VOLE, ROLE, ROLES, VOLES, HOLES, DEEM, GAIT, SAME

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

HEIR, LOVER, RIVAL, SPOUSE, STRANGER, DETECTIVE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is ITSAMYSTERY, with all the answers being characters common to mystery novels. To find it, look for the I that’s the farthest left letter on the top row, and wind down.