All of these the handsets go on sale in the UK on 1 March. The 6. It has a screen-to-body ratio of My Deep Indigo review sample looks nearly black at a glance, and there will also be a Viva Red deep crimson version. The back, in particular, has a very nice curve down into the long edges, which helps make the phone easier for small hands to grip. The back is glass, which makes it incredibly reflective and also very slippery. I had the usual problem with smooth, glass-backed handsets — a tendency to for them to slide off my chair when vibrating notifications were switched on.

Motorola provides a silicon bumper that not only lends a little protection, but also mitigates that slip-sliding characteristic.

The G7 Plus lacks a formal IP rating for dust and water resistance, but it does have a "water repellent design with P2i nano coating ". The circular housing for the camera lenses and flash protrudes significantly from the back of the phone — styling that, along with the curved back, is virtually unchanged from the Moto G6 Plus.

The G6 Plus also had a Motorola logo sitting beneath the camera lenses. That's here again, but this time it's not just a logo — it sits in the centre of the fingerprint sensor. There was a fingerprint sensor in the G6 Plus, in the awkward location beneath the screen. In the G7 Plus, more of the front of the phone is given over to the display, resulting in a screen-to-body ratio of Motorola provides a 3.

The volume rocker and power switch are in the usual location, on the right edge, while the SIM caddy is on the top. Even budget smartphones are now expected to have relatively large screens and, as with the rest of the G7 family except the Play model, Motorola uses a 6.

The Moto G6 Plus has a 5. The slight change in resolution and aspect ratio in the G7 Plus is due to the presence of a small 'tear-drop' notch around the front camera, maximising room for notification icons. I found the screen fine to use for email, web browsing and video viewing. Sound quality through the stereo speakers, which output through the top and bottom, is good enough for general listening, and does not distort at top volume. As far as dimensions and weight are concerned, the Moto G6 Plus measured Very similar, basically.

Motorola has at last brought optical image stabilisation to the Moto G range, and not before time. OIS makes a big difference with the point-and-shoot mode that many users adopt for smartphone photography. Motorola has also included some AI features. Auto Smile Capture apparently waits until everyone in a shot is smiling before taking a photo. I've not had the chance to test this with a group of people, so it will be interesting to hear what G7 Plus owners make of it.

Spot Colour takes out every colour but one, creating some fun and interesting shots. Something else that might prove fun is Cut Out: shoot a face or anything else in a designated area of the screen and it's saved as a cut-out, which you can then place on top of any other background. Google Lens is here too: shoot something and it will automatically capture text from a shot, identify plants, animals, tourist locations and so on, find places where you can buy an object and scan barcodes and QR codes.

A button on the camera screen makes this feature really easy to use.

Connectivity

The front camera has a built-in screen flash. When a photo is taken the whole screen does a white-out for a short period while a shot is given a brightness makeover. I've only had time for limited testing, but shots do turn out reasonably good using this method.

You need to get used to a disconcerting wait for the screen to come back into play, though, and the full screen white-out — which is very bright — won't be acceptable in some situations. The 3,mAh battery in the G7 Plus is good for all-day battery life, according to Motorola. The Geekbench battery benchmark ran the battery down in 6 hours 22 minutes with the screen constantly on, and gave the battery a score of I managed all-day use with my standard mainstream usage pattern. Motorola claims that a minute quick-charge with the provided power brick can deliver 12 hours of life. I'm not so sure about that, but short sessions of charging during a normal day did ensure the battery was always nicely topped up.

As you might expect in a budget handset, there's no support for wireless charging. It does a decent job repelling fingerprints, but if you're like me, you'll notice them anyway. On the front is another design trend. The 5. There are a few other perks, too.

It also packs in a 3. The G6 even has some protection against water, touting a "nano-coating" that's supposed to keep the phone dry.

It's not up to the IP67 standard of pricier devices, but it's better than nothing. Rounding out the internals are 3 GB of RAM and a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which delivers consistent enough performance for most apps, but isn't the best choice for intensive 3D gaming. It's a few years behind the performance of top-notch phones in our benchmark tests.

Not a tick tockjust a tick, and its consistency makes the difference. Like a lot of Android phones, none of these extra features work particularly well, but the main camera and 8-megapixel selfie cam do take decent photos in auto mode—just be sure to stand still and give the camera a little extra time. Nashville, I learned, is known as the "Athens of the South" and is so proud of that Greek connection that it has a complete replica of the Parthenon, which looks amazing on a sunny day.

Below are some shots I took around town. The camera app was a full second behind my shutter button presses, at times. The lag meant I missed shots of many crazy people doing weird things on the streets of Nashville seriously—this place is nuts!

It was particularly hard to nail a good, sharp shot in a moving car, and as the sun went down and the Honky Tonk bars lit up, I did wish I had a slightly better camera that could capture the lights or streets without blowing out one or the other. I did manage to take some beautiful outdoor photos during the day. My indoor shots were far more hit or miss, especially in more dimly lit bars and concert halls. Some not all fancier phones would have delivered crisper photos, faster and more reliably. But they wouldn't have been leagues better. At the end of the trip, I still have a camera roll full of fantastic memories.

Hopefully Motorola will keep up with updates as the year proceeds. It has a bunch of gestures and other small, harmless little add-ons that you can enable if you like. The one-handed, screenless Android navigation is fun, too.