Shopping for a smartphone at the low end of the market used to entail taking a chance on whether or not your phone will work. Even the most basic devices can now do the essentials adequately, and there is a slew of ultra-affordable versions available from companies like Nokia, Xiaomi, Realme, OnePlus, and others.
When it comes to value for money, though, the Lenovo-owned Motorola brand currently stands out: Moto gadgets have been providing a lot of bang for a small price for years, and you can usually count on them to deliver something which least equals what you’d anticipate for the price.
That leads us to the Moto E7i Power, which costs just £79.99 inside the UK (about $110 or AU$150 in Australia) and is now the cheapest smartphone available. That’s the only true selling factor here, as you’d expect given the price: everything else is just a trade-off to get to that ridiculously low amount.
To go on sale for a given price, all smartphones make some tradeoffs, and how many sacrifices you’re prepared to make is a matter of personal taste (and personal resources).
So, it’s a slow phone with a mediocre camera, a large enough screen that could be better in just about every other area, and no nice extras like 5G or waterproofing. But for £79.99, is it worth it? It’s a pretty excellent deal. You can see where a smartphone might be rated as a two-star or five-star model based on your priorities as a buyer.
Aside from the price, the 5,000mAh battery life is the other noteworthy feature, as the Power moniker says. You’ll get lots of time between charges with this battery. Aside from that, it’s exactly what it appears to be: a very low-cost smartphone with all the limitations you’d expect.
You get a lot for your money, but there are lots of decent affordable phones on the market currently today, so consider if it would be worthy of your time to spend a little more before choosing one.
Yes, you read it correctly: the Moto E7i Power is currently available in the UK for just £79.99 (about $110 or AU$150) – we’re never aware of a new smartphone that is currently available for less. The phone is now unavailable in the United States and Australia, and there are no indications that it will be in the future.
The Moto E7i Power is available directly from Lenovo (which controls Motorola), and also from some third-party retailers including Tesco Mobile, Argos, Amazon, and Clove.
The Moto E7i Power doesn’t appear to be as cheap as it is, but to its credit: it isn’t the most fashionable, lightest, or smallest budget phone you’ll see this year, but it’s decent in terms of aesthetics and builds quality. Of course, there was a lot of plastic here, as you’d anticipate, but when you pick it up, it feels strong and well-made.
Everything is on the right side when you look at it in terms of buttons, with the volume and power buttons under a Google Assistant button. Although not many phones have a dedicated button for the Google Assistant, we appreciate it since it eliminates the need to wade through menus or shout “hello Google” at your phone.
On the Moto E7i Power, there are a few additional design decisions that we like. The fingerprint reader is on the back and under the screen (which can be difficult to use) or integrated into the power switch (which can be even more difficult), and the data connection is USB-C – let’s hope the era of micro USB is over. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, which is convenient.
The camera bump design is basic but effective, and while it causes the phone to wobble slightly when put face up on a solid floor, we can’t complain too much because most other phones have the same issue. There’s only one speaker, which is located on the back, and it produces decently clear music and other audio.
The Moto E7i Power, as you’d expect from a phone this cheap, doesn’t have full water or dust resistance, so you’ll have to be extra careful with that as well (or invest in a case) – Motorola claims it’s “water repellant,” which we guess implies it can only withstand a few drops of rain. If you’re buying at this price point, it’s one of the trade-offs you’ll have to make.
The smartphone comes in two colors: Tahiti Blue or Coral Red, making it stand out from the sea of grey and black handsets on the market. Overall, we think it’s a great design for such a price, and we have no complaints.
While the 6.5-inch screen is the focal point of the design, it’s also where cost-cutting begins.
To begin with, the display’s resolution is only 720p, and it does not support HDR. This means that, although movies and TV shows will play on the Moto e7i Power, it won’t be as sharp or color correct as they would be on a high-end – or even a mid-range – phone.
Even though more and more smartphones are switching to OLED, Motorola keeps prices low by using LCD technology. While this reduces the contrast between light and dark colors. It also allows the battery to last much longer during the day.
Look for such a phone with such a Full Hd display if you really can afford it.
| Dimensions | 165.1 x 75.9 x 9.2 mm (6.5 x 2.99 x 0.36 in) |
| Weight | 200 g (7.05 oz) |
| Build | Glass front, plastic back, plastic frame |
| SIM | Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| Type | IPS LCD, 380 nits (type) |
| Size | 6.51 inches, 102.3 cm2 (~81.7% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Resolution | 720 x 1600 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~270 PPI density) |
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Moto E7i Power’s camera isn’t excellent — it’s about as far from the greatest camera phone on the market as you can get.
A decent camera is one of the major things you spend more on in a phone (usually speaking), thus a super-cheap phone shouldn’t be expected to capture very nice pictures.
A 1/3.1′′ 13MP wide sensor with an f/2.0 lens and PDAF takes center stage. This is a little, simple sensor with no OIS or fancy features, and the most I can say about this is it performs admirably for the money.
In practice, this implies that if you’re in near-perfect lighting, you’ll be able to get adequate photographs. With pretty genuine colors and even a rudimentary sense of contrast. They’ll be great to post on social media and WhatsApp.
But don’t look too carefully, or you’ll see the grit in that beautiful sky or the fact that information falls off a rock as soon as you get inside, or if the light changes. Auto HDR is also very restricted, failing to pick up darker parts in certain mainly bright images.
There’s a Night mode here, and it doesn’t appear to be the standard multi-shot thing. Rather, it appears to just brighten the image artificially, which is a fast and easy but unsatisfactory solution. The images are dark and blurry, and I wouldn’t call them useful in any situation.
The dual-camera setup on the Moto E7i is one of the simplest you’ll find. However, I believe it had gone much farther. This 2MP macro sensor that comes with this kit is completely unnecessary.
Although it’s understandable that Motorola’s impossible budget prevented the inclusion of an ultrawide or telephoto sensor, it severely limits your shooting possibilities. The video quality is equally limited, with just 1080p at 30 frames per second available.
The front of the phone has a 5MP selfie camera, which sounds good but is actually rather bad. Self-portraits are often flat, lack detail, and have blown-out highlights.
Finally, I feel a bit stupid commenting about the camera quality of the Moto E7i Power. Because it’s unlikely to be a determining factor for anyone considering a purchase. All they’ll need to know would be that the Moto E7i Power is indeed a dirt-cheap smartphone that also happens to capture photos.
We’d want to welcome everyone to the review if you’re hoping or expecting Moto E7i Power to outperform its peers in terms of performance. You should definitely read the preceding parts again, but don’t worry about it.
To summarise, it is an £80 phone, which implies there have been significant concessions made at every point. It includes the silicon that powers everything.
You may not be familiar with the Unisoc SC9863A chip. Don’t worry, it’s not a well-known brand. This is a modest 28nm octa-core CPU with 2GB of RAM to back it up.
That’s less than we’d like for an Android phone. Although Google’s lighter Android Go software assures it won’t be a full stutter. It’s a completely clean and clear take on Android, with no bloatware. It’s added on top of Android 10 instead of Android 11.
Everything runs on Google applications, which makes it more enjoyable to use than other flagship phones with their obnoxious bespoke user interfaces. That is, nearly.
This is backed up by 32GB of internal storage, which hasn’t been seen in years. Even phones under £200 now come with 128GB of storage. At the very least, there is indeed a MicroSD slot for expansion.
This all indicates that these days if you want the best smartphone bang for your buck. You should be looking around the £150 level and higher. Below that point, the returns start to dwindle rapidly.
Many individuals, of course, maybe unable or reluctant to spend over £80 for just a smartphone — possibly for a small kid or an old family. From that standpoint, the Moto E7i Power works admirably. Skipping between home screens is painless, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the experience. In comparison to many past super-cheap phones, this is a significant improvement.
The Moto E7i has great battery life. Especially if you don’t use it all that often (kind of obvious, but bear with us). The built-in battery has a bigger capacity of 5,000mAh, and it lasts for a long time owing to the low screen resolution and less-than-stellar internal components.
Motorola claims that you can go 40 hours between charges. That we believe – but you’ll have to minimize the screen and reduce your gaming to do that.
We’ve gotten roughly 10 hours of battery life when viewing videos with the display brightness turned all the way up; for more strenuous things like gaming, it’s a touch less.
When you’re not using the phone at all (for example, when it’s in a drawer, as it was throughout our testing period). The battery life reduces by roughly 10% every day, so it takes a long time to drain.
Your usage is probably somewhere in between nonstop video viewing and keeping the phone undisturbed, and with ordinary, daily use and not much GPS usage, we’d say that can usually get two days out of the battery. This is a big bonus for just a phone who does not have a lot of bells and whistles.
There’s no wireless charging or fast charging here, as is typical with ultra-low-cost phones: you’ll have to use a cable and will be restricted to 10W charging. If you’re charging overnight, that’s OK, and given how inexpensive the phone is, it’s a trade-off that most people won’t mind.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: it is a very low-cost phone. It’s the Moto E7i Power’s key selling feature, and the main reason you’d select it over everything else.
Because of the 5,000mAh battery, you can go a long time without charges, even if you only use it occasionally. Perhaps a great many people would find this to be a nice backup phone?
The Moto E7i Power has a 3.5mm headphone port, which is a plus if you want to utilize your existing wired headphones with your phone.
In bright sunshine, the Moto E7i Power’s rear camera is adequate, but otherwise, it is uneven. Don’t acquire this if you want to be sure of recording all those crucial moments precisely.
The Moto E7i Power struggles with the greatest games available on the Google Play Store, and you’ll notice some latency when using it — a lag that is likely to worsen over time.
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