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This prompted Google itself to purchase Motorola Mobility in 2012, effectively making the American manufacturer into its in-house hardware team. Two years later, Google sold Motorola to Chinese giant Lenovo, which is its current owner.

While the Motorola brand has had its ups and downs over the years, it currently stands as the go to brand for affordable phones through the massively popular Moto G line. Its phones are always solidly built and dependably straight-forward, with a stripped-back take on Android that speaks to its time inside the Google machine.

As a brand that's most associated with affordable phones, you might not expect Motorola to have adopted 5G so strong. But of its 10 most recent phones, half can connect to the next-generation network.

Motorola might be renowned for its affordable phones, and there's certainly a larger range of budget handset options here than with virtually any other mainstream brand. But that's far from all Motorola has to offer.

While it no longer offers a top-end handset that mixes with the iPhones and Galaxy S phones of this world, it does offer the classy Edge series. Elsewhere, it's one of the few smartphone brands to offer a genuine rugged phone (the Motorola Defy) for those who work and play in extreme environments.

The best phone that Motorola has to offer right now is the Motorola Edge 20 Pro. Rather unsurprisingly, it's also the most expensive, though it still comes in hundreds of pounds cheaper than the biggest phones from Samsung and Apple.

The Edge 20 Pro gives you a sleek squared-off design, a 6.7-inch OLED display that runs at an unusually fluid 144Hz. It also boasts near-flagship performance thanks to a Snapdragon 870 CPU,  while a super-sharp 108MP main camera and an 8MP 5x zoom periscope lens complete the top-end vibe.

The cheapest Motorola phone on the market right now is the  Moto E7i. For just £80 SIM-free you're getting a solid smartphone with a large 6.51-inch HD+ display, a 13MP main camera, and a  huge 5000mAh battery.

As is the case with all Motorola phones, you also get an unusually crisp and clean take on Google's Android OS. It serves the purpose of making the E7i feel more expensive than it is.

The Moto G100 provides a fascinating value proposition. For around £400 SIM-free, you're getting a phone that's as fast as the range-topping Motorola Edge 20 Pro, together with a fluid 6.7-inch 90Hz display and a capable 64MP camera.

But you're also getting a unique dock station and accompanying software that lets you hook the G100 up to a TV or monitor, as well as a keyboard and mouse. Essentially, this turns the phone into a simple desktop computer for light productivity tasks.

Motorola releases a lot of phones in a year, and the most recent of those at the time of writing is the Moto G60s. As you might expect from Motorola, it's an excellent value proposition, offering a 120Hz display and a 64MP main camera for around £220 SIM-free.

Elsewhere, the Motorola Defy resurrects the classic Defy brand, with a military-spec design that can stand up to drops, spillages, and extremes of temperature pretty much unscathed.

Motorola does things a little differently to similarly established smartphone brands. It's not obsessed with the top end of the market at all, offering an array of affordable and mid-range smartphones that balance style and function brilliantly.

If you're in the market for a reliable phone that doesn't cost the Earth, we can't think of another brand that we can recommend without question. It's remarkably consistent.