A Budget Phone That Doesn’t Feel Budget—Say Hello to the Motorola Moto G96

Motorola has finally introduced the long-rumored Moto G96 smartphone. It has arrived as a mid-range smartphone packed with impressive features, including a curved display, a Sony LYTIA camera sensor, a water-resistant design, and a fast-charging battery, all offered at a pocket-friendly price tag of around $200. The device comes as a successor to last year’s Motorola Moto G85 smartphone.

The Moto G96 is a budget offering with an OLED screen and Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 SoC

The Moto G96 comes as one of the best feature-packed affordable smartphones from the company in the G series. It boasts a 6.67-inch FHD+ 10-bit OLED display that curves elegantly on both the left and right sides. The screen also offers HDR10+ support, a 144Hz refresh rate, a 300Hz touch-sampling rate, a peak brightness of 1,600 nits, and a layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5. It provides a dust and splash resistant (IP68 rating) design, and an in-display fingerprint scanner.

Powering the new G series smartphone is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 4nm processor. The company has paired the chip with 8GB of RAM and an Adreno 710 GPU. Consumers can configure the device either with 128GB or 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Software-wise, the phone boots Android 15 out of the box, and the company will provide three major Android updates and four years of monthly security updates for the handset.

A Sony LYT-700C camera and a beefy battery

Motorola has packed the Moto G96 with a 50MP primary rear camera featuring a Sony LYT-700C sensor with f/1.8 aperture and OIS. The main lens is accompanied by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter with an f/2.2 aperture and a macro option. For selfies, there’s a 32MP camera on the front with an aperture of f/2.45. Furthermore, the device gets Moto AI image functionalities like AI Photo Enhancement.

Moving to the other features, the 5G smartphone has dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support to deliver an immersive media experience. A beefy 5,500mAh battery powers the entire package, supporting 33W wired TurboPower fast charging technology.

Coming to the pricing, Motorola has priced the base 128GB storage variant of the Moto G96 at around $210. The model with a higher 256GB of native storage will set consumers back by approximately $230. Motorola is offering the new G series phone in four PANTONE colorways, including Greener Pastures, Cattleya Orchid, Ashleigh Blue, and Dresden Blue.

Motorola will start selling the Moto G96 in India across channels from July 16. As of now, the company hasn’t announced when it plans to launch the phone in markets like the US.