Moto E5 Play Review | TechRadar

The Moto E5 Play is one of the best smartphone options at your fingertips if all you are interested in are the basics.

It has an HD screen, front and back cameras and a fingerprint scanner, which means that the Moto E5 Play checks most cases for what users are waiting for a modern phone.

It is powered by Android 8.0 Oreo, and has a quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, which gives it acceptable performance for everyday use. Plus, its battery is big enough to last all day. All that goes together to make a low-budget phone that leaves little room for disappointment, whether it's your first smartphone or your next cheap phone.

Compared to its predecessor, the Moto E4, little has changed. There have been some small style changes, with the fingerprint scanner moving backwards, and the screen extending to 0.2 inches. And, the operating system has been updated. Other than that, the two phones are pretty similar.

Motorola is often one of the best manufacturers offering clean Android experiences in quality budget phones. The Moto E5 Play continues successfully this tradition.

Release Date and Price

The Moto E5 Play is currently an American exclusive, with the UK and Australia getting only the Moto E5 or Moto E5 Plus. It is sold directly by mobile operators, along with Verizon, Cricket, Comcast Xfinity and Boost Mobile, for prices ranging from $ 69 to $ 119. Curiously, the Cricket model is renamed Moto E5 Cruise, and it is the only one available in a color other than black

It would be nice to see more availability for the Moto E5 Play because it reaches a balance of ability . and cost that make it a great choice for those who want a smartphone type without fanfare and fanfare.

(Note: we have introduced a T-Mobile SIM card in our evaluation unit, and it has successfully connected to the network.)

Design

The E5 Motorcycle Has No Exciting Play design. In many ways, it's not unlike the first-generation MotoG we had four years ago.

The front of the phone is all glass with a thin plastic protective lip around the perimeter. The 5.2-inch screen only covers two-thirds of the front, which means that there is a large bezel above and below. The front camera and the flash are on top of the screen, located on either side of the earpiece which also serves as the only speaker.

The back is covered with a single piece of textured plastic that opens to access the removable battery, the SIM slot and the microSD slot for expandable storage. There is a raised circle centered on the back of the phone that houses the rear camera and the flash, similar to the camera bumps found on the latest, but plastic, Moto phones in this case. Below, there is a dimple for the Motorola logo which also serves as a fingerprint reader.

The power button and volume rockers are located to the right of the phone, even though they are slightly high for a one-handed reach. There is a micro-USB port for loading and transferring data at the bottom, and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top

The Moto E5 game is protected from splashing and light rain by a water-repellent coating , like a lot of Motorola. other phones. But do not confuse with waterproof. This is not a very water resistant phone. The whole handset measures 151 x 74 x 8.85 mm and weighs 150 grams.

With all the plastic, and no screen on the front, there is not much to say about the design. The headphone jack can be the most exciting, and it really should not be. The textured back panel offers a good grip, and we had fun creating scratch sounds with the DJ. But, that's not much consolation for a bland design that feels a bit too brittle when you apply a slight bending pressure.

Display

The Moto E5 Play contains a 5.2 inch LCD screen, although you do not expect super fancy screen on a smartphone this cheap. Its resolution of 720p is considered HD, and it corresponds to the resolution of the 1st generation Moto G.

720p is pretty crisp on some smaller screens, but for a 5.2 inch screen, we could see some of sweetness. The contours of the application icon were not fully smoothed. Looking at a much more pointed display at this one, it may seem blurry.

This is also not the brightest screen, which is the biggest problem. With the direct sunlight reflected on the screen, it is difficult to read. But, tilting it at a different angle mostly solves that problem.

For typical use, the screen is pretty good. The lower resolution will not be too noticeable when watching shows or movies, and even though the viewing angles are not excellent and lose a bit of contrast, they are not the worst we've seen.

As long as you do not intend to read a lot of complete books on the Moto E5 Play, its screen is perfectly suited.

What it is that to use

As long as you are not an experienced user, the Moto E5 Play is ready to follow you. It runs Android 8.0 Oreo on a 425 or 427 quad-core Snapdragon chipset running at 1.4 GHz (none of the retailers we've seen offer the phone mention the Snapdragon variant 427). This paired with 2 GB of RAM is enough for web browsing, messaging and camera use. Even the fingerprint scanner is fast.

Google Maps has been sluggish, but it is still fluid enough to do the job. More demanding applications, such as photo and video editing applications, can be slow on this phone, but these uses are not really what someone should do with the Moto E5 Play.

Despite limited hardware performance, we have been successful at The Moto E5 Play game is fast enough even for PUBG Mobile. The graphics are not great, and we had trouble finding the enemies, but at the lowest settings, the gameplay was pretty smooth most of the time for an acceptable experience (ie, We won , in exchange). The Moto E5 Play has some Moto actions, but not all. There is no hash gesture to turn on the flashlight, and twisting the phone twice will not activate it. A three-finger tap can take a screenshot, and reversing the phone can silence the notifications. The features offered are practical, even revolutionary.

The Moto app that manages these features is actually the only complementary software that we have spotted on the phone. The Moto E5 Play is a great example of how Motorola keeps Android on its phones. Everything else pre-installed was the typical Google rate, like Chrome, Calculator, Maps and G Suite. (However, different options of mobile operators can be pre-loaded with different applications.)

This minimalism is extremely valuable on the Moto E5 Play because there is not much built-in storage. It comes with only 16 GB of space, and with only the stock applications and a small amount of files in our camera, there was only 7.7 GB of storage actually available. Fortunately, the phone supports up to 128GB of microSD storage, offering plenty of room for more apps, photos, videos, and music.