Moto G5

The Moto G5 is bringing Android Nougat and Google Assistant to an affordable metal phone without too much compromise.

Motorola is finally designing its top budget ranked phone series without an all-plastic or rubberized look and feel.

Its hardware is designed to make you forget about the fact that this is a budget phone. The software, meanwhile, pulls from more expensive flagships.

Moto G5 runs Android Nougat and Google Assistant, both of which premiered on the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL.

If you're looking for an Android smartphone and don't want the Moto Z for its higher specs and MotoMods, this one has potential.

Release date and price

The Moto G5 is being touted as a "premium for all" smartphone, but it won't be launching in the US, unlike the slightly bigger Moto G5 Plus.

Instead, the smaller Moto G5 is making its way to Europe, Africa, two countries in South America, the Middle East and America's neighbors to the north and south, Canada and Mexico.

Specifically for Europe, the Moto G5 is launching in the UK, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Germany, Benelux, South East Europe,  Nordic Region and Benelux.

In South America, it'll come to Columbia and Brazil, where the Moto G series has become extremely popular over the years.

The Moto G5 price is €199, which is about £170 for the UK and, if it were coming to the US and Australia, that would translate to about AU$270 and $210.

Design and display

The Moto G5 is ditching most of the plastic and rubberized back covers for what the Motorola team calls a "premium" design.

That rather generic term means we're finally getting a metal Moto G5, though a large chunk plastic does remain around top and bottom for antennas. A unibody phone this is not.

It still feels like a Motorola phone with a riveted power button on the side and a smooth volume rocker. 

The Moto G5 has a 5-inch display with a Full HD resolution. The screen looks bright enough here at MWC 2017 even if it'll never be capable of VR.

While we appreciated the metal back, we did find the demo units to be scratched up, especially on the back Moto logo. Luckily, the diamond-cut camera lens glass remained unharmed.

Moto G5 specs

The Moto G5 is using a more budget-friendly Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset instead of sticking with the mid-range 600 series.

The 1.4Ghz octa-core processor should be fast enough for most tasks, as we experienced 3D gaming on the phone during our brief testing, but it's not as powerful as the Moto G5 Plus.

It has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage on the inside with a microSD card slot. Other areas of the world may get 3GB of RAM. It's going to be country dependent.

These Moto G5 specs are just enough for emerging markets. But they're going to be enough for more demanding phone users, which is why the Moto G isn't coming to the US.

On the backside the Moto G5 rear camera gives you 13MP photos with a f/2.0 aperture and phase detection autofocus, while the rear camera sticks with a 5MP wide-angle lens and a f/2.2 aperture. 

Inside, we're getting a 2,800mAh capacity battery. It's supposed to provide all-day battery life and 10W rapid charging. 

You are going to have to deal with micro USB when the rest of the world is moving toward reversible USB-C at the moment.

MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week to bring you the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2017 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar's world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone.