The Motorola Moto G35 is a basic workhorse of a budget phone, suitable for those with only essential smartphone needs – and a desire to save money on handset prices.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Inexpensive | Frequent performance lag |
| NFC capable for contactless payments | Lower battery performance than older Motorola budget phones |
| Large 120Hz capable display | Camera is slow |
Score: 3.5/5
In this review
Motorola Moto G35 Specifications
Motorola Moto G35 Design
Motorola Moto G35 Camera
Motorola Moto G35 Performance
Motorola Moto G35 Battery
Motorola Moto G35 Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Motorola Moto G35 used for this review was loaned to me by Motorola Australia, and it will be returned to them. That gets it reviewed, nothing more. Motorola Australia does not and did not have any editorial input into this review, which is as it should be.
For more on ART’s Ethics policy, and why it matters for the quality of reviews, click here.
Design
The Motorola Moto G35 is yet another budget phone from Motorola. That very much goes with its positioning in Motorola’s Moto G range, but on first glance, I did wonder why Motorola figures it needs quite so many models in the budget space – if only because the differences can be slight and it does make it confusing for consumers to pick the “right” model for their needs.
The Motorola Moto G35 starts out with some standard Motorola inclusions that do present pretty decent value given its $199 AUD asking price. It starts with a 6.7 inch 2400×1080 pixel 120Hz capable LCD display. You’re not getting an OLED at this price, don’t be silly.
However what you do get – and what I appreciate here – is that Motorola gives you the ability to switch to a fixed 60Hz for better battery life, 120Hz for smoother visuals or a dynamic setting that lets the phone decide. Far too many phones only tend to offer fixed 60Hz and dynamic. More choice is better, and I wish more manufacturers followed Motorola’s lead here.
In Australia, the Motorola Moto G35 ships in just the single colour, Midnight Black. Black is essentially the default colour you expect for every mobile phone, though it’s not the only hue that Motorola makes this particular phone in.
In other markets it appears you can score the Moto G35 in two different shades of green and one of red, but not here down under. If you do want those phones, you could potentially import one, though you’d want to be careful about making sure that it was unlocked and compatible with Australian mobile networks before doing so.
The one blessing from my perspective is that Midnight Black is one of the colours that Motorola ships with the Moto G35 that has an acrylic back, as distinct from a (shudder) vegan leather one. I think my readers know I’m not a fan of vegan leather at all, but tastes can vary there, and I’m counting this in the minor win column for the Moto G35.
Cheaper phones are often ones with lesser water and dust resistance, and that’s absolutely the story for the Motorola Moto G35, which Motorola simply claims is “water repellent”.
While it’s not unreasonable at this price point, as I’ve pointed out before, “water repellent” covers most objects excluding kitchen sponges, so you’d want to be careful with the Motorola Moto G35 in damper or dustier conditions. You do at least get a simple clear case in the box with the Motorola Moto G35, so there’s some extra protection right there.
Explainer: How do mobile phone water resistance ratings work?
Camera
Budget phones used to have a terrible reputation for camera quality, because it was the easiest way for manufacturers to cut costs and build to a specific price point.
They’re no longer terrible in quite the same ways they used to be, but the limitations that you hit when you dip into the budget space quickly become apparent when you start using them, and the Motorola Moto G35 could practically be a poster child for what kinds of limitations you’ll see.
In camera hardware terms it’s equipped with a primary wide 50MP sensor, 8MP ultrawide and 16MP selfie camera, with the capacity for digital crop zooming at a maximum of 6x.
Not shockingly, 6x zoom isn’t particularly worth engaging with; to give this some perspective here’s a shot of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building shot with the ultra-wide lens:
A fair shot, though as you’ll see the wide lens delivers a more pleasing result.
Most budget phones can manage basic daylight shots well enough. The Moto G35 is no different, and its primary rear lens is easily its best.
6x zoom on Vicky herself (with a slight shift sideways) reveals a lot of noise and cropping problems.
The Motorola Moto G35’s selfie camera can’t do that much with my face (nobody can), but it has the classic “artificial” bokeh issue.
Predictably, low light shots get murky very fast.
Even moderately lit area shots don’t fare well, with a lot of lost detail.
All of this is rather par for the course, but what I can’t show you in still photos is quite how slow the Motorola Moto G35 is to take each photo and then process it before being ready to take the next. If you’re trying to capture any kind of fast action or react on the fly to a situation in front of you that you’d like to capture, you can basically forget it.
Mini Godzilla is unlikely to move, which makes him easier to photograph with the Moto G35
This, again, isn’t unusual for a phone at this kind of price point, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less annoying when you miss a shot or it ends up as a blurry mess because the Motorola Moto G35 can’t keep up.
Performance
The Motorola Moto G35 runs on a Unisoc T760 processor with 128GB of onboard storage and just 4GB of RAM. That’s at least the case for the model sold in Australia; it appears that there are variants internationally that bump up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but that’s not what we’re getting here.
At the $199 price point of the Motorola Moto G35 it’s not an unreasonable combination however; plenty of cheap phones have cheap chips and low RAM allotments in them. So how does the Motorola Moto G35 stack up against its competition? Here’s how that Unisoc CPU fared using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
And here’s how it compares against the same crop of phones using 3DMark’s more GPU-centric benchmarks:
Those are good results for the Motorola Moto G35, but it’s worthwhile keeping in mind that it’s still just the quickest by a margin amongst slow phones, and in real-world usage, there’s little doubt that the Moto G35 is a slow phone. That very much goes with the territory, and there’s little doubt that the inclusion of just 4GB of RAM on the Australian models also puts the brakes on performance in a major way if you’re doing much else aside from very basic usage.
One nice inclusion on the Motorola Moto G35 is NFC compatibility, so it’s capable of contactless payments via Google Pay if that’s of interest to you. It’s not all that common to see NFC in the sub-$200 space, and with contactless payments fast become the norm in Australia it’s great to see it here.
The Motorola Moto G35 ships with Android 14, slightly behind the times when it comes to Android versions.
Here again the budget balancing act is in full display, with Motorola only promising one Android OS update and three years of security updates for the Motorola Moto G35. I do wish that it could stretch that to at least one more OS and maybe another year of security updates, because buyers in this space often aren’t looking for fast updates to newer models; they’d rather buy phones that will last and stay secure for longer.
At $199, the Motorola Moto G35 is one of the cheapest phones you can buy that’s 5G compatible, although predictably that’s sub-6Ghz only for the Australian variant as tested.
I few issues with it in terms of data speeds or connectivity testing in Sydney and on the north coast of New South Wales, but then it’s been a long time since I hit a phone with particular performance issues in the areas I typically inhabit, and so much of the issues there are typically more network coverage ones than handset issues excluding quite remote areas of the country.
Battery
Motorola doesn’t buck the trend of Android phones right now, packing in a 5,000mAh sealed battery inside the Motorola Moto G35.
Every phone manufacturer will make bold claims about battery life, with Motorola choosing “non-stop power” to describe what it calls its “massive” battery. Memo to Motorola: When 5,000mAh is the dead set average for batteries in Android phones, you can’t really use “massive” as a prefix that way.
Slower budget processors often do have good battery life, however, because it’s not like they’re pushing data around all that fast, so I was curious to see how the Motorola Moto G35 would fare. I ran it through my standard YouTube Battery Test to give it some comparative weight. Here’s how it fared:
The 92% figure for the first hour isn’t bad to speak of; I typically find that phones that drop below 90% are the ones that struggle to last a full day.
Still, it’s not exactly good either, especially when you compare it to its predecessor and every single other phone in or around its price category. Usage will always determine overall battery endurance, and more anecdotally the Moto G35 can last out a day of light-to-medium usage, but only if you’re careful.
At this price point you can’t expect wireless charging, with the Motorola Moto G35 only supporting USB-C wired charging at up to 18W, which is on the slower side even for a budget phone these days. Motorola’s slowly been shifting towards not including chargers with its phones, and all you get with the Moto G35 is a simple USB-C to USB-A type cable.
Ultimately while there’s other aspects of the Motorola Moto G35 that stand out at its price point, its battery life isn’t one of them.
Motorola Moto G35: Alex’s Verdict
The key factor that should decide whether the Motorola Moto G35 is right for you is its asking price. $199 isn’t much for what’s on offer here, but this is yet another Motorola Moto G phone that plays a balancing act between its price and what you’re actually getting.
If your needs are on the basic side and you’re not that fussed about smartphone photography all that often, it would suit nicely while being nicely inexpensive. You will inevitably hit its slower side in day to day use, however, so some patience is advised.
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Motorola Moto G35: Pricing and availability
The Motorola Moto G35 is available in Australia through Optus and Vodafone as a prepaid phone for $199; Optus will range it from the 5th of May 2025.
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