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Moto Z Review – The Best Modular Smartphone

The Moto Z is an Android phone that actually is the first to pioneer modular connectivity in a robust way as compared to its competitors. At 5.19mm thickness, it is the world’s thinnest phone and it feels incredibly thin to hold. It comes with five practical modular accessories that satisfyingly and securely attach to back of the phone with magnets.

Moto Z’s concept “build out your smartphone” is fun and importantly its Mods are creative and well-designed. Moto Z comes with everything from a predictable battery back to a wilder pico projector.

It is an awesome novelty to shine your phone onto a wall and is completely swappable. You don’t have to turn the phone off. All accessories also work with shatterproof and thicker Moto Z Force and battery rich and cheaper Moto Z Play variants.

Design:

Moto Z features a flagship worthy stainless steel frame measuring 153.3×75.3×5.19mm. Weighing just 139g, it feels astonishingly wafer-thin in one hand. With such dimensions, the Moto Z is a smartphone taking thinness to a new level. The design of the Moto Z drops curved back and familiar Motorola dimple to get a flat and boxy shape that feels good to hold still.

This smartphone is so thin that it even doesn’t include a 3.5mm headphone jack. There is nothing on the bottom except a USB Type-C port. A 3.5mm jack to USB-C cable is included in the box to convert your existing headphones or you can opt for using Bluetooth.

A new revolutionary connection it includes is the Pogo-style pins on the back of Moto Z to enable modular accessories. The 16 gold-plated connectors supply data back and forth between phone and MotoMods. All of the mods and the entire back of the phone are magnetized so that the two parts snap into place and no amount of shaking knocks them loose.

The Moto Z doesn’t feature fingerprint on the back since that’s where MotoMods connect. But the tiny fingerprint sensor lies on the front of the phone at the bottom. At the same place resides the new “moto” lowercase logo.

The non-clickable fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. The home button is present above it on-screen. One standout feature of fingerprint sensor is that it not only wakes the phone with finger press but also puts device back to sleep. So you don’t have to reach to another tiny sleep/wake button on the side. The Moto Z has very small volume and power buttons on its ultra-thin steel frame.

Fingerprints are more of a problem everywhere on the Moto Z as this phone is a grease and fingerprint magnet. It is not very appealing or easy to clean it up.

Modules:

MotoMods are world thinnest, more creative and plentiful as compared to those shipped with other smartphones. The most unconventional accessory is the Moto Z Insta-Share projector which is a pico projector. Like its name, it works instantly the first time you try and you can watch whatever you want without having to lug around a heavy projector. The projector fits in a pocket and features an embedded kickstand for tilting and automatic keytone adjustment.

The Moto Z Hasselbald True Zoon mod shows that this phone is capable of capturing not just projecting. Motorola partnered with JBL to give a bump to volume with SoundBoost. It turns the back of phone into a thick and powerful speaker.

Display and Specs:

Moto Z is thin and focuses on modular capabilities. It features a Quad HD screen that is a very brilliant AMOLED with deep black and vibrant colors to match. The functionality is even better than the richness of the screen. Its Moto Active Display embeds two IR sensors and one transmitter in the face which pick up hand gestures and other passing movements lighting up a portion of display.

When these proximity sensors detect your presence, it intelligently turns on and shows discrete notification icons. You can tap on any of them to unveil more information. It is a handy way to deal with notifications.

The Moto Z is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, an Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB of RAM and connectivity options include NFC and USB Type-C port. This means that Android Pay is fully supported.

The phone starts at 32GB of internal storage but you can spring for 64GB configuration. There is a microSD slot for you to take the storage level up to 2TB theoretically.

Camera:

The Moto Z features 13MP main camera with larger sized 1.12um pixels and an f/1.8 aperture with laser autofocus and optical image stabilization. Its quality is a step up from Moto X series, certainly.

The phone has 5MP front facing camera with an f/2.2 aperture and 1.4um pixels for better low light and there is also a real LED flash on the front. It is a huge feature for selfie-craving phone users.

Zero shutter lag and OIS makes this a fine camera. The good thing is that Motorola has overhauled the camera software. New to app is white balance aperture, Professional mode for fine-tuning the ISO and other manual settings. The Pro-level tweaks work for cameras, front and back.

There are also other basic modes of Panorama, Slow Motion and Video. You can shoot video at 1080p at 60fps or 30fps and 4K UHD at 30fps. Slow motion on rear camera records at 120fps but it brings resolution down to 720p.

Battery:

The battery life is where it falls short and to blame is its slender size. The phone comes with a 2,600 mAh battery capacity which is not just enough for modern phones.

Pros:

·         Fingerprint sensor with a twist

·         Thinnest phone

·         Creative modular accessories

Cons:

·         No headphone jack

·         Big camera bump

Moto Z is neither the first nor the last modular phone but it comes with great features as well as impressive and creative Mods. Options like attachable boom box and pico projector are creative enough to inspire you a new way to use your phone.

It features a fast processor, a solid performing camera except in low-light and enough memory and internal storage. Its major hurdles are the battery life and audio delivered via USB-C. But overall, it is the most customizable and polished modular phone yet.  

Read more: Quick Review Of Moto Z Specs

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Moto G5 Plus Features & Specifications

Just like fourth generation smartphones, there are two models with different sizes but identical specifications, in the latest Moto G series. The Moto G5 Plus is the first Moto G-series phone featuring a metal body and is also the first smarthphone to launch Android Nougat out of the box at this price range.

Motorola has surely managed to keep price competitive while offering features that easily compete with models that cost more.

Design:

The four generations of Moto G smartphones have evolved their design every year, also with the expected upgrades to specifications. The fifth generations’ Moto G has been given a metal body. The Moto G5 Plus now sport an aluminum finish.

The new Moto G5 Plus looks much like mid-range Moto Z Play having similar Moto branding between display and earpiece. One biggest thing that differentiates between the two is oval fingerprint sensor of G5 Plus that resides right below the screen as opposed to Moto Z’s square one. At the global launch event, the Motorola stated that new G5 range is inspired by premium Moto Z family.

The dual-LED flash and Moto G5 Plus camera’s circular housing on the rear is similar to that of Moto Z. right below the bump is the iconic Moto Logo etched. The Moto G5 Plus is not very slim being 7.7mm thick but that helps gripping the phone better. The round edges and corers of the phone also make it comfortable to hold and use.

On the right, the Moto G5 Plus has the power and volume buttons and are located comfortably for single-hand operation. There is a 3.5mm audio jack and Micro-USB port for data transfer and charging at the bottom. This smartphone is capable of accommodating a microSD card as well as two SIMs simultaneously.

The Moto G5 Plus weighing 155g feels the same as its predecessor. However, the Moto G5 Plus features a 5.2 inch display. The phone measures 150.2×74×7.7mm. It comes with a water-repellent nano-coating which is a feature that is also available on previous Moto G series phones. It gives the Moto G5 Plus an edge against its competitors of same price.

The Moto G5 Plus comes with a 5.2 inch IPS LCD display with full-HD resolution for an impressive 424ppi pixel density. It also uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. Its screen is good enough for games, movies and videos. Viewing angles and sunlight legibility are decent too. Its display settings feature a Color mod feature that allows users to select between vibrant and standard color reproduction.

Specifications and Software:

The Moto G5 Plus features a 2GHz octa-core Snapdragon 625 SoC along with Adreno 506 GPU. This is a popular SoC also found in other expensive phones as compared to Moto G5 Plus. At MWC 2017, three variants of G5 Plus were announced, with 32GB or 64GB inbuilt storage and 2GB, 3GB and 4GB of RAM.

The smartphone supports two Nano-SIMs and both can connect to 4G network, but one at a time. It also supports GLONASS, VoLTE and NFC. The phone features 3000mAh battery and supports TurboPower fast charging.

The Moto G5 Plus is the first smartphone to run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, in this price range. It also includes some neat software touches including Moto Display. Moto Display allows you to see notifications while phone is locked.

Google Assistant is one of the most important features of G5 Plus. You can activate it simply by long-pressing the home button. You can also chat with it to search anything or interact with it. It comes with a preloaded Moto app that allows you enable or disable various gesture shortcuts.

One of the reasons for buying the Moto G5 Plus would be the Android Nougat. Android Nougat provides several features including split-screen multitasking which makes you able to run two apps simultaneously. By just double tapping on the Recent button, you can multitask quicker and set a separate wallpaper for your lock screen. Android’s Daydream feature has now been named as Screen Saver, in order to avoid confusion with Google’s Daydream VR.

Camera:

The new Moto G5 Plus sports a 12 megapixel rear camera. The camera has a feature called Dual Autofocus Pixels which allows you lock focus in a blink. The camera has an f/1.7 aperture and dual LED flash. The smartphone also has a 5 megapixel front camera with an f/2.2 aperture along with display flash that could be useful in dim areas.

The camera app is easy to use and it launches without delay. It provides 8X digital zoom and also an active viewfinder which can recognize barcodes and QR codes. The camera features Mode selection controls on the right. You can capture panoramas and slow-motion video. It also has a professional mode. For the front camera, there is a beautification mode which can be toggled in settings.

Moto G5 Plus captures decent images in all sorts of situations. It lets you adjust settings like shutter speed, ISO, white balance, manual focus and exposure compensation. The front camera also provides great color accuracy with adequate light but works average in low-light situations. The camera is also capable of recording 4K videos at 30fps. This is a great advantage at this price point.

Battery:

Moto G5 Plus features a 3000mAh battery, which can deliver up to 24 hours of mixed usage, according to the company.

Pros:

·         Decent build quality

·         Quick fingerprint sensor

·         Near-stock Android Nougat experience

Cons:

·         Loudspeaker is not very good

·         Heating issues

·         Low-light camera performance could be better

When it comes to design, performance, battery and pricing, the Moto G5 Plus ticks all the right boxes. It features a stylish metal body and is the only smartphone offering pure Android Nougat at such a price. The camera is good for casual shots and the TurboPower charging is a great feature. It does have some issues such as heating problem when GPS is active for an extended amount of time.

The Moto G5 Plus deserves your attention if you are looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with all high-end features.

If you want to know about the price and more details, please read: Budget Smartphone with Extra Features-Moto G5 Plus