Motorola MotoSmart review

Do nice things ever come in very small and very cheap packages?

Hands on with the Motorola MotoSmart
Is it smart enough to thrive at a low, low price?

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

The Motorola MotoSmart comes with a 3 megapixel camera around the back, making it one of the lower-spec Android phone snappers out there today. And there's no flash or front-facing camera for video chats, either. It's not a great phone for those who are into photographing things.

Motorola MotoSmart review

The camera app has been tweaked a little by Motorola, although it's still very, very basic. You get a face detection option, white balance and EV sliders, with the choice of two scene modes - Night and Auto - and a toggle to switch geo-tagging on and off.

Motorola MotoSmart review

Other options are seriously light. There's a collection of your standard and rather pointless filter options, plus Super Fine, Fine and Normal photo quality options (not that the Motorola MotoSmart needs encouraging to make photos look any worse).

Motorola MotoSmart review

Click here to see the full resolution image

Images come off the camera at 2048 x 1536 resolution if you wisely choose to leave it at maximum resolution, although the images are quite poor. Organic parts of the shot are reduced to unidentifiable mush, with a serious lack of colour on show.

Motorola MotoSmart review

Click here to see the full resolution image

The Motorola MotoSmart's sensor is a fixed-focus thing, so there's no option to fiddle with the focus or wait for it to give you a clearer shot. You point, shoot, look at the end results and feel a bit sad.

Motorola MotoSmart review

Click here to see the full resolution image

Indoor shots are OK if the sun's out and your curtains are open...

Motorola MotoSmart review

Click here to see the full resolution image

...but when it's a little darker you'll notice a big increase in picture noise.

Motorola MotoSmart review

Click here to see the full resolution image

Close-up shots of plain things where nothing's moving produce the best results, so if you like photographing notice boards and posters, you're in luck.