This phone lasts forever, costs pennies, and is kind of awful

Battery life is still one of the most important aspects of any smartphone out there, regardless of its shape, form, or price tag. Chances are that no matter how many great features you have on board, if the battery life isn’t good, you’d be less likely to like and recommend the phone. That’s just the law, I’m not making things up.

While many flagships excel in battery life, it’s much more impressive when an affordable phone delivers great endurance, especially those that don’t seemingly pack a lot of oomph.

That’s precisely the case with the Motorola Moto G (2025), a phone which was released earlier this year to little fanfare, which is usually the case with super-affordable phones that lack any special features.

However, this Motorola phone has two great things going for it: its stupendous battery life and its extremely affordable price tag of just $200.

Battery life that puts flagships to shame… with a price tag to match

Okay, in all honesty, the Moto G (2025) is a fairly bad phone. You get lackluster performance, unimpressive camera and storage, a gaudy LCD screen, a run-of-the-mill design language, as well as Motorola’s terrible software update policy which entitles you to two major Android updates––if the planets align the correct way.

Yet, this otherwise unimpressive entry-level phone shines rather brightly when you take its battery life into consideration. Equipped with a 5,000mAh battery and the obviously efficient Dimensity 6300 chip, this one beats easily bests some current-gen flagship phones, like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which also packs a 5,000mAh battery.

See, we have these three battery benchmark tests that we run on every phone that enters the premises for a review. We do these tests with the displays manually set at 200 nits of brightness to ensure an even playing field for all phones. In all three of our tests, the unassuming Moto G (2025) posted some pretty impressive results.

Good battery life but not much else (Image by PhoneArena)

In the tasking browsing test, which emulates an automated browsing workflow, the Moto G (2025) achieves an absolutely impressive result of 22 hours and three minutes. This makes it third in our 2025 rankings, only trailing behind more expensive phones like the Motorola Razr Ultra foldable with 23 hours and 51 minutes (almost a full day!) and the Oppo Find X8 Ultra, which achieves 23 hours and a half here.

Then there’s our video playback test, in which other devices perform better, and the Moto G achieves a fairly good but not necessarily range-topping result of 10 hours and three minutes. However, in the $200 price bracket, you would hardly find a phone with better endurance.

Finally, in our custom 3D gaming battery test, the Motorola Moto G (2025) scores another win with a result of eleven hours and 42 minutes, which is another superb result only overshadowed by the more expensive CMF Phone 2 Pro and the Pixel 9a.

Bottom of the line, the Moto G (2025) achieves a total battery estimate of eight hours and fifteen minutes, beating most other flagship phones released in 2025 so far.

And the best thing about this is that the Moto G (2025) sells for just $199.

Are the trade-offs worth it?

Okay, so by now we’ve established that the Moto G (2025) has great battery life. That’s great. However, just about anything else about the phone is mediocre at best and disappointing at worst, which was given away by the low price tag.

To make up for the good battery life, the phone has had tons of corners cut. The screen isn’t great, the performance isn’t anything to write home about, and the camera isn’t something that will inspire you to take up street photography.

Those are the trade-offs that $200 get you.

But if you aren’t really concerned about performance, cool design, great camera and only want a phone that lasts and lasts, then this entry-level phone is the one you should short-list.