Motorola’s New Moto G and Moto G Play Pack a Key Gemini Feature at a Lower Price

Motorola’s new low-cost Android Phones will be among the cheapest to obtain Google’s Circle to Search. The new $200 Moto G and $170 Moto G Play for 2026, announced Tuesday, will come with Android 16 and gain access to Gemini-powered functionality as well as the Gemini Assistant.

The Google search circle is a particularly useful AI-based feature since its debut, which makes it particularly interesting that it will now be available on devices costing less than $200. The $170 Moto G Play will arrive first on November 13, followed by the $200 Moto G on December 11.

Both phones will feature a 6.7-inch display and 120Hz refresh rate, include 5G connectivity (which is a first for the Play series), and have a 5,200mAh battery.

The lower-cost Play phone will run on a Mediatek Dimensity 6300 processor and will include 4GB of memory which can be virtually expanded to 12GB with the RAM Boost feature. This advantage essentially borrows from the phone’s 64GB of onboard storage which can be expanded to 1TB with a microSD card slot, while its battery can be recharged at a speed of 18 watts. It will also have a 32-megapixel primary camera on the rear and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. It will be available in a color called Pantone Tapestry, which has a blue-green tint.

The slightly more expensive Moto G will also run on the same processor, but with 128GB of storage and a 30-watt wired charging speed. Its rear camera system features a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera paired with a 2-megapixel macro camera, while its selfie shooter is a 32-megapixel camera. It will be available in two colors, Pantone Cattleya Orchid (a magenta shade) and Pantone Slipstream (a gray shade).

While I’m happy to see cheaper phones getting Circle to Search, I’m somewhat concerned that many of the specs in the 2026 edition of the The Moto Gs are similar to the 2025 model – especially the inclusion of 4 GB of integrated RAM. I found the previous Moto G initially had stability issues, which were largely resolved by using the RAM Boost setting to allow the software to simulate additional memory for easier app loading and multitasking. We’ll have to test to see if the new 2026 Moto G phones will optimize better under Android 16, and hopefully the bigger batteries will also allow these less powerful phones even longer battery life between charges.