Motorola launched its new smartphone Moto X Play in India at an event in Delhi. With aggressive pricing, Motorola wants to give tough competition to other rival phones available in similar price range. We were lucky to get the hands-on. Based on those 30 minutes, I am writing the first impression of Moto X Play.
Buy from FLipkart
Moto X Play 16 GB variant for Rs. 18499
Moto X Play 32 GB variant for Rs. 19999
Moto X Play First Impression
Build Quality and design
As always, build quality of this Motorola device is also solid. It has large body with dimensions 148.00 x 75.00 x 10.90mm. Weight of the device is 169 grams. Back side of the device has textured design which is smooth and made of plastic but offers feel of rubber. This makes it easy to hold in hand.
It also speakers at the front side very similar to what we saw in Moto G 3rd Generation. It also lacks LED notification light but comes with Moto display for notifications. It has power button and volume rocker keys at the right side. Power button also has textured which lets you easily identify the button in dark just with touch.
Read: Moto G 3rd Generation review
Back side of the device has the same Motorola branding over a dimple. It has 21 megapixel rear camera with dual tone dual LED flash at the back. At the top side, it has sim card slots which houses a try to hold 2 nano SIM cards and a microSD card. It also has 3.5 mm audio output jack at top.
At the bottom, it has a microUSB port to connect with charger and data transfer from computer. Back cover of the device is removable. It basically comes with black and white colors but back covers will also be available in various different colors.
Overall build is solid and good. It also has Water repellant nano-coating (IP52 certified). In this price range, now we have phones with metal frame and awesome design. Moto X Play is not that much of impressive in terms of design, but still it has its own kind of beauty.
Display
It has 5.5 inch of full HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Display of the phone is good. You will enjoy watching videos on this display. It also offers good touch response. Viewing angles are also good. In lowest brightness level, you will see display very dim but that may be because of saving the battery.
Hardware Performance (Chipset, RAM and Storage)
It comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC with an octa core processor in which one quad core cluster is clocked at 1.7GHz and the other quad core cluster is clocked at 1GHz. It also has Adreno 405 GPU and 2 GB of RAM. In initial impressions, performance seems to be smooth. This chipset is notorious for heating, but we do not have enough time to use the device to check if it heats up or not. There was no lag while switching between apps, or different screens.
It will be available in 16 GB and and 32 GB internal storage models with microSD card slot to expand storage up to 128 GB. In 32 GB variant, around 26 GB will be available to users. So, you have plenty of storage and option to expand storage a lot.
Software
It runs on stock Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. Few motorola specific features have been added but no customization on the skin. So, you will enjoy stock Android experience. Moto Assist feature lets you customize the functions of the device based on time and location. For example, you can automatically set to the device in silent mode with no interruption when you reach to a temple or office. It also has Moto Voice to interact with device without even touching.
Camera
Camera is the noticeable thing in the device. It has 21 megapixel rear camera with dual LED dual tone flash with performs very good. Yes, no 4K video recording but it can recording 1080p videos. Camera does impressive job. Photos have good colors and exposure which looks pretty natural. Even low light photos were also very good. It ha 5 megapixel front camera which also does decent job. Selfies were very good. I couldn’t transfer photos in my device so I am not able to attach photos and video samples.
The only thing which disappoints me is the camera app which still does not have much options to use. You have few options with no camera effects and control over photos or videos.
It also supports twist gesture to open camera app quickly.
Connectivity and battery
It comes with 4G connectivity and good thing is that both SIM slots support 4G connectivity. Other connectivity features are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB and GPS. It also supports USB OTG.
It is packed with 3630 mAh battery which claims to offers more than 30 hours of battery life after full charge. I cannot say if claims are right, but if we consider the performance of Moto G 3rd Generation, we can trust on these claims.
Motorola also claims that turbo Charging feature will charge phone to offer 8 hours worth of talk time with just 15 minutes of charging.
Conclusion
First impression of the device is pleasant. If you do not run behind specifications but want a good performing phone, this is for you. I will also publish the review of the device in coming weeks. If you just want to buy it now, you can buy it from Flipkart.
