Motorola Moto X Play 16GB

Phablets have been growing prodigiously, and while Motorola managed to keep itself away from the mushrooming category with the previous two editions of the Moto X, it gave in to the trend this time. Both the versions of the latest Moto X, the Moto X Play and Moto X Style (first impressions) feature large screens.

Motorola has been upping the screen size with each model of the Moto X. While the first-gen offering was ideal for one-handed usage with a 4.7-inch display, its successor breached the phablet territory thanks to its 5.2-inch screen, and now, the new Moto X Play flaunts a large 5.5-inch display panel. The IPS screen offers brilliant colours and crisp visuals thanks to its resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It’s worth mentioning that previously, the brand used AMOLED panels for the Moto X series, which are punchier when it comes to the colour reproduction. Brightness levels are also adequate as we found no problems in reading the display outdoors.

One of the best features of Motorola devices is their software, and same delightful experience continues with the Moto X Play. The device offers a pure version of Android Lollipop 5.0, though there are some value-added features from the brand.

If there’s one complaint we had with most Motorola offerings till about last year, it was the sub-par camera experience delivered by them. While the smartphones sported decent specs, the image quality left a lot to be desired. However, the brand seems to be improving on this aspect, as the third-gen Moto G comes across as a sharp shooter, and we also found the Moto X Play to be impressive on most aspects. This is possible due to a powerful 21-megapixel snapper with an aperture of f/2.0 mounted on the back of the phablet, which is accompanied by a CCT (Colour Correlated Temperature) flash unit comprising of two LEDs. For selfies, the device features a 5MP front-facing camera.

Qualcomm hasn’t had a great run this year, with its flagship CPU, the Snapdragon 810 suffering from heating issues and its mid-range offering, the Snapdragon 615 also plagued with the same problem. Most devices powered by the Snapdragon 615 are notorious for heating up, but Motorola has implemented the SoC for the Moto X Play in such a way that it doesn’t show thermal inefficiency. With its four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 1.5GHz and the other four running at 1.0GHz, the processor is able to handle everything quite smoothly. Combined with the stock Android on the smartphone, the phone never showed any traces of lag while navigating between screens or switching between multiple apps, which was also helped by 2GB of RAM. As with previous devices in the Moto X range, the X Play features Motorola’s MCS chipset, which along with Snapdragon 615 CPU also offers a processor for natural language and contextual computing.

The X Play seems to be a spritual successor of Motorola’s Moto Maxx, which was launched as the Droid Turbo in India. The new Moto X sips juice from a generous 3,630mAh battery, which is considerable since most mobiles offer just a ~2,500mAh unit. Not just in terms of the capacity, the phone also astonishes us in terms of its runtime as well. With moderate usage, it can easily last a day and a half and even with heavy tasks such as GPS, Wi-Fi hotspot and gaming, it managed to go on for an entire day. There’s also a battery saver mode to extend the battery life slightly, which can kick in automatically when the juice drops below a certain threshold.