Moto X Play review

[Guest]

Moto X Play review

Hello, I recently sold my Nexus 6 and bought a Moto X Play, this phone is available in 55 countries, but not the US. It’s available in Europe and India at least, and Brazil too, as far as I know.

It’s a midrange phone with a decent price for what you get.

Specifications can be found here: http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_x_play-7454.php

As you can see, it misses the gyroscope, but they had to cut costs somewhere (however, a gyroscope is mainly used for Google cardboard and I think Panorama photos, you also can’t turn your phone with Youtube 360 videos, you would have to use your fingers to turn in a video)

Furthermore it does support Turbocharging, but does not come with one, except in Canada, so you will have to buy that separately. Turbocharging basically charges the phone faster, the nearer to 0%/1% it is, when it is almost drained it will charge it really fast. It normally takes 2-3 hours to charge it with the normal charger, with the Turbocharger it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes or so.

The European one does NOT come with dual sim as far as I know, but people have managed to simply pry the plastic covering of the second simcard slot on the simcard tray, and then flashed specific firmware (look on XDA) to acquire the dual sim function. Yes, this has worked, consider it a nice bonus if you are willing to do this.

The Motorola X Play comes with a wall adapter and USB charging cable. In Canada it does however come with a Turbocharger I think, otherwise you have to purchase it later.

The X Play can be purchased from the Moto Maker website as well if available and customized, also various colors of backs (and flipcover backs) can be purchased.

Body

At 169 grams the Moto X Play is a relatively thick phone. It’s curved at the back and gets slimmer at the edges.

The back is a grippy texture and together with the curved back it makes for a really nice phone to hold, furthermore the back also doesn’t pick up fingerprints at all, something that was a problem with the back of the Nexus 6 for example.

There is a silver area on the back with the classic Motorola dimple and above that is the camera, which is neatly tucked into the back, 1 millimeter within, so you won’t have to worry about scratches to the lens so much. At the bottom of the back is a microphone hole.

There are 2 speaker cutouts on the front of the phone, above and below the screen, however ONLY the bottom one is used for media sound, the other speaker is for actual phoning and such. The front camera is to the right of the top speaker.

The left side is empty and on the right side you can find the power and volume buttons, they are a little loose but nicely textured, I do not mind the looseness myself, but you might, it’s not overly dramatic though, just jiggle and make a little sound if you shake the phone for example. They click well however.

The top of the phone contains the headphone jack and a Nanosim and MicroSD card slot. (they are on the same tray. With me the second simcard slot is simply sealed with a layer of plastic, but you can pry it loose. (and you would need to flash firmware on it anyway to get dual sim functionality, which I am not going to do)

The bottom contains a micro-USB 2.0 charging port.

Software

Currently, the Moto X Play runs on Android 5.1.1, it is expected to get an update to Marshmallow in this month (December) or in January.

The software is the Achilles heel of the phone since it came out, it had a lot of microstutters and back then I did use the phone for a day, it indeed was laggy. Note that these stutters were only for day to day tasks like opening the app tray and swiping down the notification bar.

While many people believed it to be a fault of the Snapdragon 615 (which yes, it partially is, it utilizes the lower powered or the ‘small ‘ cores for day to day tasks, disabling the small cores improved performance a lot according to many users on Reddit and XDA) Motorola also just had unoptimized software.

Nowadays it does ‘lag’ oh so slightly, but only sometimes, in day to day tasks and it is a lot better and even close to perfect. Soak testers of Marshmallow confirmed and showed in a video however, that Marshmallow will fix it entirely. A Cyanogenmod ROM already fixed the issue entirely.

Games run great and all apps I tried so far run fine. No FPS dips or anything and it handles emulators nicely too.

There are only a few Motorola apps like Migrate, the FM radio and one gesture, being the wrist shake to open the camera, otherwise it is basically stock Android.

Sound

The call quality is excellent, there is just nothing of note here to worry about, I can hear people on the other end of the line clear and they can hear me well too. I have noticed no faults in my unit and it seems to be just fine.

The media speaker on the bottom is LOUD and nice too, seriously, it’s loud…. That’s a good thing, however I do wish they made the top speaker function as a media speaker too, perhaps, someday…

The sound quality is mono, but it’s good, it only crackles a little bit at high volumes but that’s it, it honestly got louder than my Nexus 6, which does have dual speakers. And according to a test I found on the internet it is actually a little bit louder. The Nexus 6 was slightly clearer though. But only very slightly.

Screen

It’s a 5,5 inch 1080P TFT (Not IPS!) Screen.

I find the screen colors nice and the screen more than adequately sharp. It’s honestly better than the Nexus 6 at lower brightness, because the Nexus 6 had a problem with it appearing too yellow, however it did have an AMOLED screen too…

The brightness is very good I must admit, it’s very much great in sunlight. It could do with a slightly lower minimum brightness however.

There is really no more to be said about the screen, it’s decent, not quite on the level of the HTC One M8 or something along those lines, but I find it Equal to a OnePlusOne screen or perhaps even better.

Storage

The Moto X Play typically comes in a 16 GB version, but there is a 32 GB version , not here in the Netherlands however, the 32GB version also has dual sim.

Do not forget though, the X Play has a microSD card slot that supports up to 128 GB. So if you need space you can use an SD card, with Marshmallow coming you can even put apps on the SD card.

Camera

Actually I was surprised, the camera is not bad. I do not know much about camera’s at all, but it doesn’t do under for my Nexus 6. The quality is good but it records 1080p at 30 FPS I think. Photos I took with it look decent enough.

The only thing I had a hard time with sometimes was letting focus without it having re-focus constantly, it does lack OIS though.

I would say it’s a very good camera for a midrange Android phone, perhaps best in class.

I would advise scouring the internet if you want to get see some Moto X Play shots or videos.

Battery

The reason I bought this phone, the battery. It has a 3630 mAh battery and that is a breath of fresh air.

The battery is just great, absolutely terrific.

People report at least 7 hours screen on time, I can report that too, I have seen pictures of 11 hours of on screen time, though I am sure that was an anomaly, achieving 8 shouldn’t be hard. Do note however, SoT and standby go hand in hand, using one more drains the others stat and so on.

I myself get 7 hours steadily.

Today I barely used my phone, merely texting, some radio, browsing, got me an onscreen time of about 2 hours and 12 minutes, it was on standby for the rest of the day and by 8 in the evening I had 70% left. That’s very good battery. I could easily get a day and a half of use out of this.

With Doze coming with Marshmallow this should only improve it to a god-tier battery life.

Conclusion

Performance: 7,5/10 (Should be bumped up significantly come next update)

Camera: 8/10

Battery: 9,5/10

Storage: 9/10

Sound: 8/10

Screen: 8/10

Price to performance: 8,5/10

I honestly think this phone is a solid buy, price to performance is incredible. With that big battery it's very alluring and all other aspects are decent to good as well.

Notes:

- While the screen is 5,5 inches the on-screen navigation buttons do take a little space at the bottom.

-the screen to body ratio is well done too, the screen to edge finish feels very nice, the edges are silvery/metallic and are made from plastic but do not feel cheap.

- No overheating issues have been found by me.

- Lacks gyroscope as said earlier, also lacks AC wifi, but that's not a noticeable problem at all for most people.

- Is a bit heavier and thicker than most phones because of the battery.

[Reavantos]

good review!

[Guest]

good review!

Thank you sir!

[ultimaterandombanana]

Great review, I have had mine since october and I agree with all your comments. Although I got a sim tray removal tool with mine (and a nice one at that).

[Guest]

Great review, I have had mine since october and I agree with all your comments. Although I got a sim tray removal tool with mine (and a nice one at that).

Aww, I didn't

[Ridska]

I need to take some tips from you on how to write a review 8 Working on my own review of a mousepad.....dont ask plz )

BTW , great review.

[Guest]

I need to take some tips from you on how to write a review 8 Working on my own review of a mousepad.....dont ask plz )

BTW , great review.

Oh lol, thanks!

 

I wrote this while very tired before going to bed.  Good luck on your review.

[Guest]

Great review, I have had mine since october and I agree with all your comments. Although I got a sim tray removal tool with mine (and a nice one at that).

Derped here, I actually did get a sim tray removal tool, just didn't look well first time.

[beingGamer]

Nice review

I am planning to buy this phone sooner or later for my mom, she only uses apps like fb, whatsapp, youtube.

These apps wont require accelerometer i think.

Should work for basic use

[Guest]

Nice review

I am planning to buy this phone sooner or later for my mom, she only uses apps like fb, whatsapp, youtube.

These apps wont require accelerometer i think.

Should work for basic use

Definitely works for basic use, don't worry. And the battery life is nice too.

If you have low brightness in a completely dark room and are on wifi, browsing, well let's just say it can reach 10 hours Screen on Time with a full charge. (though I doubt anybody will browse for 10 hours straight)

Also FB app sucks battery

[beingGamer]

Definitely works for basic use, don't worry. And the battery life is nice too.

If you have low brightness in a completely dark room and are on wifi, browsing, well let's just say it can reach 10 hours Screen on Time with a full charge. (though I doubt anybody will browse for 10 hours straight)

Also FB app sucks battery

Well she currently has Zenfone 3 which is very small in battery size.

having 3630 mAh battery will be a huge difference