[Poll results out] Opinion: Motorola's smartphone naming is all over the place, and it's confusing

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on August 15, 2022) follows:

I have been in the market for a new phone. Having used the iPhone for the past year or so, I felt ready to finally switch back to an Android phone. But this time try out something new.

Motorola quickly came to my mind. I have heard some good things in recent times about Motorola’s stripped-back software that promises reduced clutter and a smooth experience overall.

As someone whose smartphone usage has significantly nosedived in the recent past, probably as I age, my preference for a clutter-free software experience has skyrocketed.

And since the Google Pixel isn’t the easiest to come by these sides of the planet, Motorola quickly came up as the ideal alternative. And this is where things swiftly got confusing.

For years, Motorola had one of the most straightforward smartphone naming schemes in the Android community.

The Moto Z series was the high-end offering. The Moto G series took care of the midrange market, and the Moto E family served the entry-level market. Simple and precise, and it made making choices pretty straightforward.

However, things have changed over the past couple or so years. Gone is the Moto Z series and in came the Moto Edge family. The Moto One was introduced as part of Android One.

Easy-peasy, right? Well, nope! Things started getting confusing when some Moto One devices came without Android One software.

The Moto G family remained intact, religiously serving the middle class with some great hardware and clean software at various price points.

But then Moto went haywire with the Moto G series, throwing around all kinds of variants ranging from Moto G Power, Moto G Stylus, Moto G20, Moto G40 Fusion, Moto G50, Moto G80, Moto G100 all the way to Moto G200.

In 2021 and 2022 alone, GSM Arena has recorded over 50 Moto devices, but it’s hard to tell which device succeeds the other. Moto is simply pushing one device after the other into the market hoping to rack in more sales numbers.

The arguably poor choice of names for these phones isn’t helping the course. As a tech-savvy person, I struggled figuring out which phone is better than the other in terms of specs and features.

The naming scheme is even tougher and more confusing for the non-tech-savvy smartphone buyers looking into Motorola phones, as expressed by this Redditor a while back.

This isn’t a new practice by any means, though. Xiaomi is known for this, and so does the likes of Oppo and even Samsung, the leading smartphone vendor.

No doubt Samsung, Oppo and Xiaomi have achieved huge success using this strategy, and Motorola may have just realized this. But unfortunately, Motorola isn’t able to compete with these companies financially.

This then translates to poor or shorter aftermarket support for Motorola smartphones compared to Samsung, Oppo or even some Xiaomi devices.

Moto might be able to make some good money out of selling many phones in all categories. But sustaining this streak over a long period will be a huge task.

Regular software updates will be required for several years, something the company isn’t the best at if history is anything to go by.

And if devices are not getting longer software support, people start losing trust in the brand, which may eventually hurt the company’s margins.

If anything, this new strategy of pumping multiple phones into the market might work in the short term, but it could come to bite in future, unless Moto dedicates to providing longer software support to these devices.

Feel free to join the conversation via the comments section. The article will also be updated after a week with results from the Twitter poll below.

Update (August 22, 2022)

The poll results are out, and it appears everyone agrees that Motorola is losing it with its new naming scheme, if there’s even one in the first place.

Featured image: Motorola

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