Motorola One Zoom review

Moto One, not Android One

• Runs Android 9
• Stock-like UI
• Moto Actions add functionality to the mix

The Motorola One Zoom doesn’t run Android One, the version of Android that guarantees software updates for two years and security updates for three years, as found on the Motorola One Action and Vision, but that shouldn’t put you off. Fire it up, swipe through its UI, and you’ll quickly realize it’s still very stock.

Home screen, Google screen, apps tray and notifications tray - it’s Android by the numbers and Lenovo nails it. The customizations Motorola applies are neatly clustered in the settings, in the form of Moto Actions and Moto Display.

Moto Actions are something we’ve grown to love, a series of gestures and inputs exclusive to Motorola phones that do handy things.

You can launch the camera with a wrist flick, or karate chop to fire up a torch, flip the phone over to activate do not disturb, or launch the one-handed mode with a diagonal swipe, and much more. Some of these are useful, some are a bit much, but they can all be toggled on or off, which is great.

As for Moto Display, this feature controls the phone’s always-on display, and interaction with the lock screen. Swipe straight from an app notification to fire said app up and unlock your phone simultaneously, or get a preview of a notification by tapping it.

The UI is smooth, seemed stable in our week with the phone, and we really have very little to complain about when it comes to swiping and tapping through its UI. The only waiting involved in our experience was within the camera UI, with the phone even handling 3D games better than expected.

Movies, music and gaming

• Great AMOLED display
• Ample 128GB of storage
• Good gaming experience

With its 19.5:9 aspect ratio screen, the Motorola One Zoom is significantly less awkward than devices like the One Vision and Sony Xperia 1 with their 21:9 displays when it comes to app and game support.

The One Zoom feels like a good middle-ground between ultra-wide and 16:9, with 21:9 content producing small borders up top and bottom, and 16:9 content still looking respectable.

This rings true for games, with titles like Injustice 2 loading up a sizeable black bar on the right side of phones like the Xperia 5, but the One Zoom handling them like a pro.

Interestingly, despite its middling power, Motorola’s new mid-ranger actually performed better than expected when it came to video game playback from a graphics point of view, even at high settings. 

The main issue with gaming was the positioning of the mono speaker - it’s easy to cover up. That said, flip the phone upside down or use headphones, and it fixes the issue; naturally, stereo speakers would have been preferable.

Additional points to note - the 3.5mm headphone jack is a welcome port for media, there’s microSD card support and 4K video plays back on the One Zoom very smoothly indeed.

Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 chipset
• 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage
• Mid-range benchmark scores

Because the Motorola One Zoom is equipped with a mid-range Snapdragon 675, this phone isn't going to be at the top of any performance lists.

However, unless, you fire up benchmarks, play emulators or plan on timing its boot-up process, you probably won’t be able to figure that out from a day of casual use with it.