We spend some time with the latest addition to the Motorola family, the Moto X Play. Starting at Rs. 18,499 for the 16GB variant, the smartphone boats of some impressive specifications. Is it worth your hard earned cash?
The Moto X Play will be launching in India soon, after being announced globally. We got our hands on a device lately, and here's what it left us with.
Design & Form factor — The new Moto X Play isn't a tiny phone, as its screen measures 5.5-inch. But still, one-handed operation was largely possible, and we didn't face any real problems during the short time we spent with the device. The phone's back has a rubberized pattern that helps gripping it. The rubber finish feels nice on touch, too, and the curved back helps your grip while you're holding the new Moto X Play. If anything, its volume rocker and screen lock button along the right edge felt a bit too thin.
The black version of the Moto X Play (with a piano finish) is glossy along its minimal edges, top and bottom screen bezel, attracting fingerprint smudges easily. The phone comes with a water-repellent coating for added protection against liquid spills on the handset.
Screen – The Moto X Play sports a Full HD 1080p display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 coating and 403ppi pixel density. We played games on it, watched video clips and photos, and the screen looked quite bright, and managed to reproduce vibrant colours well.
Battery – One of the biggest highlights of the upcoming Moto X Play is its 3630mAh battery capacity, offering the promise of not just all-day use off a single charge but up to a whopping two-day of battery backup despite uninhibited usage – while you play games, stay connected to cellular 3G / 4G data, etc. Tall claim indeed, something we will be testing for sure when we get the Moto X Play for review next week.
We didn't get to experience this at IFA 2015, but the Moto X Play comes bundled with a tiny charger with Motorola's Turbo Charge technology, allowing the Moto X Play to last for up to 8 hours with merely 15 minutes of charging!
Camera – The camera on the Moto X Play seemed snappy enough, as we clicked some shots on the IFA 2015 show floor. The 21MP rear camera has f/2.0 aperture, accompanied by dual-LED flash. The Moto X Play's camera didn't feel slow. Burst mode photos seemed a bit out-of-focus, maybe because we tried shooting a crowded show floor that's constantly in flow. The rear cam can shoot jitter-free 1080p HD videos at 30 fps. The front 5MP camera is okay for selfies, at best.
Performance – With a phone titled Play, the upcoming Moto X variant didn't disappoint when we tried our hand at gaming on it. Packed with a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-core SoC, Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB of RAM, we tried a couple of racing games that were pre-installed on the handset and didn't observe any obvious glitches or slow execution. However, until we've tested the Moto X Play ourselves, we will withhold our opinion about its overall performance.
After walking away from the Moto X Play demo booth at IFA 2015, we certainly felt that it was a good overall addition to the Moto family of handsets.
Update: Motorola has announced the launch of the Moto X Play in India. The device is priced at Rs. 18,499 for the 16GB variant and Rs. 19,999 for the 32GB variant. If you ask us, we think that 32GB needs to be the new base line for all smartphones especially if you are paying about 20K for it. 16GB is full before you know it.
Even though the Moto X Play has launched late in India, the device is already listed on Flipkart and will be available from midnight tonight.
Looking at the India launch price, one thing is clear – Motorola finally has the ideal sub 20K smartphone. It has good specifications for the price and the camera and battery are two really attractive features. We will however reserve our judgement about the battery life and camera performance when we get our hands on the device. If you were in the market to pick up a sub 20K smartphone, we’d say hold your horses. Yes, you have the likes of the OnePlus One (we think 21K is an acceptable extension for a budget of 20K), Asus Zenfone 2, Xiaomi Mi 4 and more to consider but we think the Moto X Play just changed the sub 20K smartphone market. Stay tuned for our full review of the smartphone coming soon.
Buy Moto X Play on Flipkart at Rs. 18,499
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Jayesh Shinde
Executive Editor at Digit. Technology journalist since Jan 2008, with stints at Indiatimes.com and PCWorld.in. Enthusiastic dad, reluctant traveler, weekend gamer, LOTR nerd, pseudo bon vivant. View Full Profile
