New Moto G73 owner. Spent quite a few hours setting it up last night and for the most part it was pretty much problem free except that whatsapp didnt want to transfer chats so i had to do it the old way with backing up the chats on the old handset then registering the number on the new device and doing a backup restoration.
Some issues:
1. Cant find option to enable VOLTE calling or Wi-Fi calling on despite guides on motorolas website giving instructions and pictures of where the options are - They arent there.
2. I dont have the option to turn on the netspeed thing that tells me how fast my internet is in the status bar while im using it - my past two or three devices had this!
3. I cant set a schedule for battery saver to turn on and off. My Note 9 Pro Max had this feature and I scheduled it to turn on between 1-8am every night to save on battery. All i get is the option to have it auto activate if the battery falls under a certain charge, say like 15 or 20%.
(*learned later on it was a non-stock android option)
4. I have to go into developer options to see how much ram im using or being used. Like fucking why?? why bury it in the developer options?
(IS THIS A STOCK ANDROID THING???) I cant wrap my brain around why they did this but I have 8GBs of ram to play with and I dont think I ever got close to maxing out the 6GB on my Note 9 Pro Max. Although Xiaomi's own background garbage did eat up a lot of it.
5. A bug relating to the refresh rate. I get three options Auto/Adaptive, 60hz or 120hz. If i set it to 60hz (because i dont game on it) to eek out the battery life between charges. Youtube videos start to stutter real bad and the videos im watching arent even 60fps. Went into the developer options and turned on 'show refreshrate' and even when videos are 30 or 60fps the phone stutters and occasionally tries to hit 90fps/hz
Its quite a well documented bug sort of relating to this thread here - But as you can see motorola/Lenovo reps are basically just bots and i dont expect any fixes.
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These things asside, its pretty much an all out upgrade if you ignore that the screen is still IPS. Ive basically made it a clone of my old phone as far as theme and wallpaper goes. I rarely change that stuff so once its set, I dont touch it. I also didnt bother using Motorola's own themes as I already have a premium version of Novalauncher because I hated MiUi. Im getting a lot more options under the hood to mess with and since its close to being stock android it hasnt been messed with the same way as MiUi where Xiaomi translates it from English to Chinese then to Engrish and it becomes your typical cheap chicom stuff you can see on amazon where they market the hell out of it with a tonne of buzz words but in reality its nowhere near as good as they hyped it up to be.
I can also have my own ringtones and notification tones again. Xiaomi made it almost impossible to do it with the last MiUi update for my handset. Before, all you had to do was put all your tones in a specific folder. The latest MiUi update now ignores that folder and buries it somewhere deep in the system folder where you need root access to get to it so i had to do things the long way round and load the ringtone up in a music player to play a song then 'set as ringtone' and I could only do that for ringtones but not notification tones - Have no problem with this on stock android.
Overall. Its lighter and slightly smaller so it sits in my hand more comfortably. Using it is a much less convoluted experience although a I see a lot of people loving MiUi in youtube comments on Xiaomi reviews.
(Bonus)
Camera is probably garbage but since im coming from a budget device anyway, Im not expecting to be completely blown away by the picture quality anyway but from a lot of reviews they said it could/should have come with a better camera for the RRP -- But i didnt buy it at its RRP. I bought it at 26% off.
(Final verdict)
Im not totally wowed (although im not the sort of person to be wowed by mobile phones. I never have been.) by the device so far but it ticks 99% of boxes for my needs and requirements.... Stereo Speakers, More built in storage, MicroSD slot, decent amount of RAM -- Every other feature was pretty much secondary or a bonus feature so im not really taking that shit for granted either.
::EDIT::
- Finally found the Wi-Fi Calling toggle. I dont know if I needed an update to unlock that feature but the handset went through a few more android updates (and also October security patch
) then It appeared ripe for the toggling. I assume its a region locked feature that can be unlocked with a software update the same way as NFC to some regions.
- Seeing the VoLTE icon/symbol in random places so I also assume that VoLTE is on by default without me having to turn it on and no way to toggle it on and off.
- Bug for the refreshrate still exists. But Ive played with it enough to know that everything else apart from youtube works perfect fine if manually set to 60Hz. It only gets stuttery if I have it manually set to 60hz and I watch a 30fps video on youtube. There seems to be some sort of conflict in the code where Moto says
"NEIN!! YOU VILL RUN AT SIXTY HERTZ JAAA??" and youtube app starts to panic and trigger some sort of epic fight over fps.
However, Videos that were recorded in 60fps on YT work perfectly fine and if I connect up to my NAS and watch a video rip that was recorded in 30fps in MXPlayer. I still have no problems at all. So im not quite sure whats going on there and battery life is good so far so i've left the refreshrate set to Auto/Adaptive. (maybe there is another option or setting i need to tweak somewhere)
Still loving how light it is compared to my previous handset. Like honest to God if I jumped in a lake with the old one. It would probably drown me. Definitely noticing the lack of weight hanging off my waist or trousers/shorts when out walking with it.
