If we had asked you just a year ago what you considered to be an affordable 5G-enabled smartphone, your answer would have probably been a lot different than it is right now. T-Mobile, for one, unveiled what looked like an impossible to undercut device in the $400 REVVL 5G back in August 2020, and yet believe it or not, the “Un-carrier” is already selling a 5G handset at a lower price than both that and the $300 OnePlus Nord N10.
Meet the Motorola One 5G Ace, which has apparently become available directly through the nation’s leading “Un-carrier” with little to no fanfare late last week. Of course, this is not an entirely new phone, having seen daylight several months ago.
Prior to hitting Magenta’s postpaid sales channel, the 6.7-inch mid-ranger made its commercial debut at AT&T Prepaid and Metro by T-Mobile for reasonable list prices of $259.99 and $279.99 respectively. While T-Mo is rarely capable of beating the affordability of its prepaid daughter operator’s devices, this bad boy is the exception to the rule, fetching $264 at the time of this writing for postpaid customers of the second-largest wireless service provider stateside with no special discount involved as far as we can tell.
Naturally, you’re free to split that already crazy low price into 24 monthly installments of 11 bucks a pop if you so choose, and no, you don’t have to trade anything in, port in an existing number, or even open a new line of service if you don’t want to do that.
Compared to the slightly costlier OnePlus Nord N10 5G, the Motorola One 5G Ace is impressively larger, with a bigger 5,000mAh battery also on deck, not to mention a faster Snapdragon 750 processor. Obviously, this is not a perfect handset, not even by budget-friendly standards, lacking the N10’s 90Hz display refresh rate capabilities and suffering a little in the camera versatility department with a largely useless macro shooter joining a solid 48MP primary imaging sensor and 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens on the plastic back.
