[Moto G6 Guides, News, & Discussion] GedBlake:
"...and the screen is not at all bad!"

Actually, I think the screen is gorgeous and looks amazing, bright and colorful without being oversaturated.

Hi, Markon101...

Wow, what a great post, and I agree with much of what you say, although I live in the UK and carrier networks are somewhat different here. Things aren't quite so locked down.

So, anyway, like yourself, I've also been away from XDA for quite a while, primarily because I'm not rich enough to afford the latest Premium Flagship devices. And over the past few years, I've been running fairly old devices, namely the (HTC built) Nexus 9 tablet and the HTC One M8 phone, both of which hail from 2014.

This hasn't been much of a problem in terms of regular day-to-day use, but to be a contributing member of XDA, it helps if you have more up to date hardware.

I remember buying my HTC One M8 phone way back in September 2014, which cost me over £500 - a fair chunk of cash for me even back then.

Today's Flagship phones are even more expensive (unless you go the contract route, but I prefer to actually own my phone outright), so when my HTC One M8's battery began to fail earlier this year (which is pretty respectable after three and a bit years of use!) ~ at the beginning of July, the phone would shut down when the battery dipped below 70% ~ well, I knew then that I needed a new phone, it couldn't be delayed any longer!

But you develop certain expectations, largely fed by what you read online and by the focus placed on them, that the only phones worth bothering with are Premium Flagship devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S9, Google's Pixel phones, the iPhone X, etc...

...and that any phone not costing an arm and a leg (ie., anything less than around £800) is basically not worth bothering with.

And it's so easy to fall into the trap of believing that. I certainly did, which is why I delayed replacing my M8 for as long as I did, not wanting (and not really able to afford it anyway) to spend upwards of £800 to £900 on a new phone. I guess I could have found the money, but the sacrifices elsewhere in my life, as a result, would have just have been unacceptable to me.

And then I read this article...

The Moto G6 exposes the identity crisis plaguing Android's top-end...

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/moto-g6-release-date-uk-price-specs

This article 'recalibrated' my expectations and changed my perspective about a phone costing only a quarter of the price of a Flagship device ~ just £220, network unlocked.

So, I bought one. Just over a week ago now.

I transferred the SIM card from my antiquated HTC One M8 and I haven't regretted my purchase for a single minute!

The Moto G6 is a singular delight to look at, to hold and most importantly of all... to use. Smooth and responsive, great screen, fast charging, looks good - what's not to like.

You could buy nearly five of 'em for the price of an iPhone X - all I can say is that the iPhone X must be an extraordinarily and an astonishingly amazing piece of technology, but is it worth £1000? A slightly rhetorical question I know, because value, when it comes to such things, is highly subjective.

Clearly, it's worth it to some people, otherwise Apple wouldn't have sold any of 'em ~ I just couldn't personally justify such an extravagant purchase, even if I did have a spare Grand lying around somewhere!

But going back to the Moto G6 ~ it's a great phone, at a great price, and I doubt I'll ever pay much more than a couple of a hundred pounds for a smartphone ever again, which also means I won't leave it so long until I upgrade again - I mean, £220 (or thereabouts) every couple of years is something I can easily scrape together. Thick end of a £1000... well, not really.

It seems to me that something has recently changed in the smartphone world, and that good quality phones no longer require remortgaging the house! The Moto G6 is evidence of that.

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As far as custom mods for the Moto G6 are concerned (ie., root via Magisk, TWRP, Custom Kernels, Custom ROMs, etc.) and all that kind of stuff... well, I guess it will all happen at some point. It's still early days yet, the Moto G6 has only been on the market for around three months, and the dev guys who understand the intricacies of Android required for building the tools needed for these things need time to work on them.

And in any case, I generally wouldn't even bother thinking about unlocking the bootloader until I've had a device for at least six months, primarily for warranty reasons. What's the rush?

And ideally of course, you'd need some means of restoring/re-flashing the Moto G6 back to its factory state before messing around with all of that - and which I don't think there is currently.

Root is certainly nice to have, for things like AdaWay, Greenify and Titanium, but it brings problems of its own, for example when an OTA is imminent ~ it won't install over anything other than unmodified stock. Maybe Magisk has changed that ~ I haven't used Magisk myself, and I'm only familiar with Chainfires SuperSU, which I do know had to 'patch' the boot image/partition for root to work. I had to use Chainfires FlashFire to run an OTA on my rooted Nexus 9, but with Chainfire retiring from the field, I suspect that FlashFire no longer works, and probably wouldn't be supported on the G6 anyway.

Anyhow, whatever the complexities, root doesn't seem to me to be that much of a deal breaker these days. Or maybe I'm just getting old, and I can no longer be bothered with the hassle of it all anymore. I remember (cue: pipe, slippers, cardigan, grumpy old man routine)... I remember back in ICS, Jellybean and KitKat days when root was just so easy to acquire, and you could even flash an official OTA via ClockWorkMod recovery...

...well, those days are long gone, probably for the better actually, because it means Android is now considerably more secure with things like Secure Boot, DM-Verity, Selinix Enforced/Permissive and a whole load of other things I don't really fully understand (but sort of pretend to).

Android is certainly much more slicker and polished these days (anybody here remember Éclair, Froyo and Gingerbread!), with Nougat and Oreo and whatever P will eventually be called, but it doesn't seem to be quite as much fun as it used be back circa 2011-2014 or thereabouts.

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Well, having ruminated on all manner of diverse topics here, I'll conclude this ever-so-slightly rambling post by reiterating my opinion on the Moto G6, and totally agreeing with Markon101 and his post above.

It is unquestionably a delightful phone, at an equally delightful price. I'm still amazed that it only cost me a little over £200. I doubt you could even buy a half-decent TV for that kind of money.

Hope everybody else here is equally happy with their Moto G6... I know I certainly am.

Cheers everybody.

Ged.