Motorola Moto G82 review

Pure Android 12, the way Google intended

The Moto G82 runs on last year's Android 12 out of the box with minimal tweaks on Motorola's behalf. There are a couple of unique Moto features in there, but the software team didn't mess around with the pure Android experience at all. We would normally make a remark that the G82 runs on an older version of the OS but since the handset has been released in early 2022, we can't realistically expect Motorola to update its mid-ranger right away. With that being said, Motorola is indeed a bit behind schedule lately with its Android updates, which should used to be one of the key selling points for Motorola phones.

However, you still get the benefit of using a clean Android, and lots of people are after that. It's lightweight, it's familiar, and it's stripped of the heavy UI customizations. Still, Motorola includes a couple of unique features typically found in all smartphones from the company.

Even with the Snapdragon 695 on board, the device runs well with little to no hiccups and slowdown. In fact, we feel that the Moto G82 runs somewhat smoother than other Snapdragon 695-powered handsets with custom Android skins.

The UI and overall appearance are close to stock Android. That includes the new pill-shaped quick toggles in the notification shade. And once again, it does not include the toggle for automatic brightness, and you have to dig deep into the settings menu to enable or disable the feature.

Home screen, app drawer, notification shade, recent apps, settings menu

No change in the recent apps menu that displays apps in a carousel formation and no change in the app drawer as well. The iconography in the general Settings menu has been revamped, though, so it might take some time to get used to.

Moto features

As is usually the case, Motorola has added a handful of useful extras. They are all placed in a Moto settings app that lists them in categories. The first one is Personalization which allows you to tinker with fonts, app icons layout, accent colors, icon shape and themes.

Personalization

The more useful additions, however, involve gestures. The iconic ones - karate chop for turning on the flashlight or twisting your wrist to open up the camera app are here. There's also the Power touch (double tap on the power button) that brings out an additional app panel from the right edge of the display. It works exactly how the smart sidebar does in other Android skins.

Moto gestures, Power touch

The Attentive display keeps the screen on when the front camera detects a face looking at it so the display won't go dark when you are halfway through an article. Peek display lights up the lockscreen once the device senses you are close and you pick up the phone. It uses the proximity sensor and the accelerometer to detect motion. And in case there's a notification, you can just tap and hold on to the notification icon to see a quick preview of the text. The Peek display feature is almost as good as an Always-on functionality, but we would have preferred to have the ability to choose.

Attentive display and Peek display

Last but not least, the volume rocker keys can be used to change tracks by holding down the volume up or down key.

A relatively new feature is the Overcharge protection toggle in the Battery menu. It will cut off charging once it detects that the phone hasn't been unplugged for three days straight and keep the battery charged at a much healthier 80%.

Interestingly, there's no trace of the "Ready For" feature Motorola is offering on some of its Edge models. Even though the Moto G82 features the exact same hardware as the Motorola Edge 30 Neo, the Ready For screen casting functionality isn't available. Maybe it's part of Motorola's feature disparity scheme.

We only noticed a small slowdown outside of launching some heavier apps, which took a bit longer than usual. The UI doesn't feel heavy on the eye, nor does it take a toll on the hardware with excessive effects or animations.

Synthetic benchmark performance

The Snapdragon 695 powering the Moto G82 is a fairly popular chip. We have a good idea of the kind of performance we can expect from it. Generally speaking, it is an efficient and decent mid-range chip in terms of raw performance. Its noteworthy shortcoming is the limited DSP which caps camera video capture to 1080p.

Other than that, you get a decent octa-core CPU setup - 2x 2.20 GHz Kryo 660 Gold & 6x 1.70 GHz Kryo 660 Silver and a somewhat modest but still proper Adreno 619 GPU. Nothing chart-topping for sure, but good enough nonetheless.

The handset comes in two memory variants - 6GB/128GB and 8GB/128GB and seeing how little RAM affects user experience, we can't think of a reason to get the 8GB/128GB version. We received the 6GB flavor for this review.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  2063
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  2063
• Realme 9 Pro
  2020
• Snapdragon 695 average
  1979
• Motorola Moto G82
  1977
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  1964
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  1900
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  1891
• Motorola Moto G62
  1697

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  743
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  742
• Realme 9 Pro
  694
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  688
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  687
• Snapdragon 695 average
  680
• Motorola Moto G82
  671
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  670
• Motorola Moto G62
  543

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  416031
• Realme 9 Pro
  401894
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  394918
• Snapdragon 695 average
  389776
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  384646
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  382902
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  380818
• Motorola Moto G82
  380812
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  379313
• Motorola Moto G62
  303072

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  16
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  15
• Motorola Moto G82
  13
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  12
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  12
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  12
• Realme 9 Pro
  12
• Snapdragon 695 average (1080p)
  12
• Motorola Moto G62
  10

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  10
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  10
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  10
• Motorola Moto G82
  8.2
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  8.2
• Realme 9 Pro
  8.2
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  8.1
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  8
• Snapdragon 695 average
  8
• Motorola Moto G62
  6.7

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  23
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  20
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  19
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  17
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  17
• Snapdragon 695 average (1080p)
  17
• Motorola Moto G82
  16
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  16
• Realme 9 Pro
  16
• Motorola Moto G62
  14

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  27
• Samsung Galaxy A33 5G
  23
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  23
• Motorola Moto G82
  21
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  20
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  20
• Snapdragon 695 average
  20
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  19
• Realme 9 Pro
  19
• Motorola Moto G62
  16

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1.0 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  3570
• Realme 9 Pro
  2773
• Motorola Edge 30 Neo
  2747
• Motorola Moto G82
  2745
• Motorola Moto G62
  2287
• Snapdragon 695 average
  2062

The benchmarks show proper Snapdragon 695 implementation, and most of the rivals we picked for this comparison seem to be running either the same SoC or hardware with a similar level of performance. The Realme 9 Pro+ is the only one that stands out with Dimensity 920 that edges out the Snapdragon 695 in most tests.

Sustained performance

The Snapdragon 695 isn't all that demanding, so keeping it running at relatively high clock speeds shouldn't be an issue. The results from our sustained load confirm this, at least for the most part. At 100% CPU load, the device maintained rather stable and almost maximum clock speeds in the first 20 minutes before tapering off for the next 20 minutes.

CPU throttle test: 30 min • 60 min

Until the end of the hour-long test, the handset kept about 80% of the CPU's theoretical performance, which is a decent result.