Who else already has two phones for work and for play but still need another phone solely for GPS navigation? Well I do. I normally use my iPhone to listen to music while driving so that leaves my Samsung Note 20. I hate to put my Note 20 on the dashboard under the brutal Malaysia sun, so I bought another cheap Android phone just for the purpose. I was tempted to get one of those cheap second hand Sony Xperia 1 or Xperia 5 phones but they cost as much as a brand new entry level Android phones plus the fact that they could be faulty lead me to choose a brand new Motorola Moto e40 phone.
At first look, it has a decent and big 6.5” IPS LCD screen with advertised 90Hz refresh rate. In real life, the screen doesn’t feel too smooth when scrolling compared to other flagship Androids. Watching videos on YouTube or Netflix only gives you 1080p HD max. No 4K or better videos for you. Sound quality from the speaker is below par in my opinion. The chassis is unmistakably plastic with a wavy pattern at the back. The plastic back rules out wireless charging which I don’t expect anyway at the 500 ringgit price point.
The most jarring red flag for this phone is that the wi-fi radio only supports 2.4GHz band so if your router only broadcasts 5GHz wi-fi band (like my office did) you’re out of luck. 2.4GHz is still widely used everywhere right now so at least you don’t have to worry too much about that. Bear in mind though, 2.4GHz wi-fi is half as slow compared to the 5GHz one. There’s also no NFC and for security, there’s the standard fingerprint scanner mounted at the back. There’s a dedicated Google assistant above the volume rocker and power button which cannot be re-assigned. I lost count how many times I accidentally opened Google Assistant when I just wanted to turn the volume up.
Powering this Android is a Unisoc T700 coupled with a 64GB eMMC 5.1 internal memory so don’t expect any blazing fast performance from it. The triple camera setup with 48 Megapixel main camera and 2 Megapixel macro and depth camera produces mediocre photos and videos at best. With all those downsides, at least it comes with a USB-C port and a generous 5,00Mah battery. The battery can last between 13 and 24 hours on single charge. That said, you need to charge the phone for 2 and a half hours from 20% to fully charged.
What pulls me the most to pick Moto e40 from any other cheap Android phones is the near stock Android interface plus there’s minimum bloatware installed on the phone. The newer Sony phones also feature almost stock Android but they’re much more pricey than Motorola’s phone line. I’m not interested in those custom and usually laggy UI of Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo phones. Despite not having the best screen or fast processors, for my basic navigation, odd media and music consumption and occasional social media needs, it is more than adequate. Could I get a much cheaper phone? For sure but then I might not have stock Android, USB-C port, 5,000MaH battery and the big screen.
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