The phone's 6.4-inch AMOLED display looks bright and vibrant most of the time, even if it misses out on having a refresh rate any higher than 60Hz. The rest of the build is fairly standard, with volume, power, and a fingerprint reader all on the right edge of the phone. Although it comes with an optional transparent plastic case for added grip, it’s not really necessary, as Motorola has replaced the smooth plastic finish with one that’s finely textured, with curved thin lines cascading out from around the camera section. It’s not the kind of thing you notice unless you’re looking closely, but it’s a nice touch and extra grip is always welcome. The Moto G31 has a triple-camera module with the primary sensor being a 50MP snapper coupled with an 8MP ultra-wide-angle shooter which also works as a depth sensor and a 2MP sensor for macro photography. Though on paper you’d find that Moto has slightly downgraded the camera sensors when compared to the predecessor, however, we are still evaluating the camera performance and will be in a better position to tell you more in some time. If you're considering spending a little bit more money and exploring the mid-range smartphone market, the main improvements you'll see over the Moto G31 will be the increased snappiness of moving between multiple apps, and the better quality of the photos and videos that you take (especially in low light). A more expensive phone will have a more premium feel, and you'll also get access to extras that the Moto G31 doesn't offer, such as waterproofing, 5G and wireless charging. The Moto G31 managed nearly a full day of looped video in our standardised test, and while none of the handsets we’re comparing it to is exactly weak on the stamina front, it’s a clear win for the Moto if battery is most important for you. Motorola Moto G31 review: Camera

At first glance, the red bars may look like the Nokia G50 and Moto G50 outstrip the Moto G62, but their lower resolutions just require less power, allowing for a better frame rate in the on-screen compute tests. Look to the off-screen orange bars and you’ll see things even out – an unsurprising result, as all three use the Adreno 619 GPU. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 runs on the slightly inferior Adreno 610, which accounts somewhat for it trailing 86% behind the others.

The textured plastic body means no risk of fingerprints either, so it looks good no matter how long you've been using it for. A punch-hole at the top of the screen offers up the selfie camera lens, but it truly takes up the bare minimum of space - it's literally just the lens. In low light and at night, the Moto G31 tries its best, but it's here that the shortcomings of the rear camera really start to appear. It is possible to get okay-looking photos in dim light – actually quite an achievement at the budget end of the smartphone market – but they're blurred and fuzzy a lot of the time. As you can see from the Pixel 6 Pro comparison shot in the gallery above, if phone photography is important to you (especially in low light) then you might want to consider getting a more expensive handset. Our colorimeter confirms the huge improvement, measuring 92.6% of the sRGB gamut covered with a volume of 93.5% and an average Delta E (colour variance) score of 1.46. That means you’re getting a tonally accurate screen for the price, and as it’s OLED you’re also getting infinite contrast, which IPS can’t beat. It’s also over 100cd/m² brighter, at 440cd/m² – which isn’t always what you’d expect from a switch to OLED. However, it's fair to say that the significantly better color reproduction and the higher brightness speak for the Moto G31's display. Moreover, the phone is also a bit more compact and lighter than some of its rivals, which is convenient for users with smaller hands. The most demanding games is the only area where the handset starts to struggle, though we were able to run the fairly intense Asphalt 9 racing game without any real problems. Geekbench scores of 346 (single-core), 1283 (multi-core) and 1174 (OpenCL) confirm that the phone is down at the lower end of the performance spectrum, and you'll have to do without 5G as well – perhaps not a disaster, considering that 4G is still rather speedy.

You don't get the very latest Android 12 with this handset, but the one before it, Android 11 – and there's no indication from Motorola as to when an upgrade might appear. Thankfully there's very little in the way of bloatware and other pre-installed apps (Motorola is usually pretty good in this regard), so when you start up the phone for the first time you're not overwhelmed with a pile of apps you don't need. The Motorola Moto G31 is a good, budget-friendly, and lightweight mid-range phone with a great OLED display. Unfortunately, it's otherwise a bit inferior to the more affordable predecessor in terms of features. The panel isn't the whitest or very brightest ever - side-by-side with our Moto G200 it's clear the flagship wins in both regards, delivering a 'cleaner' image - but in isolation you'd never know and there's still ample brightness from the G31 to cut through varying lighting conditions too. In general usage, things were remarkably swift for the price. There’s the odd micro pause when opening more intensive apps but for the most part, scrolling through social media and switching between apps is suitably fluid.As you can see, graphical performance is a bit hit and miss, too. With a standardised 1080p resolution offscreen, the Moto G31 is marginally better than the Moto G30, but there’s again very little in it, and it’s still leagues behind the Nokia G50, Realme 7 and Poco X3 NFC. Like the Snapdragon 662 inside the Moto G30, this is another octa-core 2GHz chip, so performance should be mostly similar on paper.

The camera app though has a plethora of options available like dual capture, night vision, portrait, live filter, cinemagraph, cutout, pro, panorama, and spotlight. There is even slow-motion and time-lapse mode for videos. Early verdict The phone impresses in terms of battery life, meanwhile. We streamed a video for an hour, with the volume set low and the display at maximum brightness, and the battery level dropped from 100 percent to just 94 percent – that suggests you'll get 16-17 hours in total, which is way above average. In general use the handset held its charge well too, and we think the 5,000mAh battery will get you up to two days of use if you're careful with it. The (wired-only) charging is disappointingly slow though, at only 10W.

It doesn’t do too badly when digitally zoomed in, either. The macro camera is fine, if not great, and the zoom works well up to a point. You won’t get much quality if you go as high as 8x, but the 3x magnification and below retains enough detail in the stonework to be useful if you absolutely can’t get any closer.

In our Geekbench 5 tests, the Moto G31 achieved a single-core score of 345, which is pretty low but beats the likes of the ageing Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. The multi-core score was slightly better sounding at 1,311, but could still only beat the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7. The Moto G31 uses the MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, which is fine. Just plain old fine. It's supported by 4GB of RAM so it's far from a speedy phone, but it's also not the slowest either. It's possible to buy the Moto G31 in either 64GB or 128GB varieties, with the latter costing a modest amount more. Battery life

Case – Splash-proof and quite lightweight

Motorola has slightly trimmed down the camera system compared with the Moto G30: The main camera only has a resolution of 50 megapixels, so it takes 12-megapixel photos with pixel-binning for higher brightness by default. In addition, the depth-of-field auxiliary lens has been dropped, but this is probably a tolerable loss that will hardly be noticeable in terms of image quality. This isn't really a phone for multitasking, but it can do it in a bind. Similarly, heavy-duty gaming can take a while to get going, and the phone can get quite hot when doing so, but it works. The Moto G31 has a battery of 5,000mAh, which means it lasts a good couple of days without too much trouble, unless you're using it a lot. The upgrade proves effective here, delivering multi-core scores that pull 5.6% ahead of the Moto G50 and outstripping the Nokia G50 by more than 10%. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s Snapdragon 680 processor is the closest challenger, coming in just 1% slower than the Moto G62 5G. It’s not all bad, though. Battery life is truly astonishing, which makes us think that the MediaTek processor must be remarkably more energy-efficient.