Motorola announced a new mid-range phone yesterday, the 2026 Moto G Stylus. It’s not exactly a game changer unless you demand a stylus with your smartphone. Despite little in the way of upgrades, the new G Stylus will debut at $500, which is $100 more than last year’s version. It’s now clear that higher pricing will be a trend in Moto’s lineup. Without so much as a peep, Motorola has enacted price increases of up to 50 percent on the rest of its 2026 Moto G lineup.
Prior to the G Stylus announcement, Moto had three 2026 G-series phones—the Moto G Play, Moto G, and Moto G Power. They used to sell for $180, $200, and $300, respectively. In the past day, the Moto G Play rose to $250, which is a 38 percent increase. The 2026 Moto G went to $300—a whopping 50 percent price bump. Finally, the top model in Moto’s budget lineup, the Moto G Power, is now $400. That’s a 33 percent jump, putting it close to Samsung’s latest mid-range phones and $100 shy of the new Moto G Stylus.
Seeing a higher price tag on the new Moto G Stylus wasn’t a surprise given current hardware conditions, and the phone does have a few small upgrades. The battery capacity is slightly larger, and the stylus has basic pressure sensitivity support now. However, that hardly justifies a $100 increase over last year’s model, which had the same display and memory. It makes more sense in the context of an across-the-board price increase for Moto’s budget lineup.
We’ve reached out to Motorola to inquire about why these phones have seen such substantial price increases, as well as whether its other phones will be getting more expensive. The reason seems clear, though. AI projects around the world are hoovering up every available memory chip, making all sorts of consumer electronics more expensive. If it has memory or storage inside, it’s probably more expensive today than it was a year ago, and heaven help you if you need to buy tens of gigabytes of RAM for a PC build
With memory prices through the roof, this trend is probably going to continue in 2026, and it’ll hit smartphones particularly hard. As people upgrade less often and demand more from their mobile devices, it has become harder for manufacturers to turn a profit. Those slim profits are now turning into losses. We’ve already seen Google release the Pixel 10a with almost no upgrades over last year’s model, but at least the price remained the same. Asus also decided to just stop making phones in this environment, and there are credible rumors that OnePlus will leave many markets, including the US.
The Moto G series occupies an important place in the smartphone ecosystem. Before the first-gen Moto G launched in 2013, phones that cost $200 were universally terrible. Motorola showed us that didn’t need to be the case. Relatively cheap hardware has kept the dream of a capable low-cost phone alive ever since, but you may have to make tough choices going forward.
