After the Moto G4 and the Moto G4 plus, it is now the turn of the review of the Moto G4 play, the little brother of the range who recovers a 5-inch screen, and recovers the essence of the economical terminal that caracaterized the Moto G. Here we will analyze everything it has to offer.
Back to its origins
When they introduced the latest fourth generation Motorola Moto G, we were able to appreciate a significant qualitative leap, offering a larger terminal, with a 5.5″ screen with higher resolution, along with hardware that took a step forward.
This step has also been a jump in the price of the Moto G, which leaves the middle-range mobile range around 150 euros to be above 200 euros, competing with other types of higher performance terminals.
With this change of positioning, Motorola has not wanted to lose everything that had won with previous generations of this model, and so in the analysis of the Moto G4 Play we find a terminal that is all that many of us thought would be the current Moto G, that is, an update of the previous model with enough improvements to keep it updated in front of the competition.
However, we will see that the differences between the 3rd generation Moto G and the Moto G4 Play go further in some respects. We’ll see what motorola’s new terminal can offer us.
Design
As could not be otherwise, the general lines of the Moto G4 Play follow the tonic of its older brothers, and we have an attractive design, with rounded shapes that favor the ergonomics of the terminal,
The metal edge that surrounds the entire phone escapes from the diamond edges that the iPhone 4 once brought in fashion, and that we can find in many competing models. This metallic finish extends to the back, where we find a trim surrounding the phone’s main camera, and also on the top of the front with the main speaker.
The removable back cover is made of a plastic that offers a soft touch, but offers enough adhesion so that the Moto G4 Play does not slip out of our hand. In general the result obtained is good in general terms, being one of the phone quite nice, although it sins to be continuous compared to previous generations.
But also of the largest. Its dimensions reach 144.4 mm in height, 72 mm in width and a thickness ranging from 8.95 mm at the edge to 9.9 mm in the central part where the chamber is located. These generous dimensions, especially in width, do not imply having a heavy terminal, and with 137 grams it is placed in the average of the category.
As for available connections, we have the headphone connection located at the top, while at the bottom we have the micro USB connection.
If we remove the back cover we will have access to the removable battery, the two micro SIM cards that the terminal supports, as well as the micro SD slot for cards with a maximum capacity of 128 GB, which complement the 16 GB of internal memory of this Moto G4 Play.
As its brothers have shown us, this phone does not have a 2.5D glass that seems to be fashionable given the number of terminals that are using it, and it is true that the image it offers is very attractive, although there are also terminals that are able to offer an attractive aesthetic as we see in this review of the Moto G4 Play.
What we did miss is the IPX7 protection against water and dust that the third generation had and that we already saw how it was stopped using on the Moto G, so that this Moto G4 Play was not going to be an exception. If instead they claim to have a splash-resistant layer of water-repellent protection, something that the vast majority of terminals support without the need for any flaunting.
Screen
Since the fourth generation Moto G has adapted to a 5.5″ screen, we will not use this reference in our analysis of the Moto G4 Play, but we will have to look and memory back to bring us the memory of the third generation Moto G screen.
The 5-inch screen comes to us with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels, with a density of 294 pixels per inch, just like in the Moto G3. And like this we find a screen that meets, but is not at an outstanding level.
It has an IPS panel to ensure optimal viewing angles from either side, although we have seen how the contrast is kept at some distance from the best screens in terms of depth of colors.
The color richness is adequate, although at some points it can give the impression that the color is somewhat flat, even with the intense mode within the two settings that allows us to configure the screen. The brightness is in the middle of the category. We can find slightly brighter screens, but under no circumstances is the difference remarkable.
Performance
What else can we say that the Snapdragon 410 processor has not already been said? The truth is that when we talk about obsolescence in technology, we tend to think that the lifespan of a processor is 2 years at most.
And this was the case at the beginning of the appearance of the first smartphones, where the technological difference between one model or another was quite large. And while the performance jumps are still large, the minimum achieved by mid-range processors is well-performing with the average user’s pretensions.
What’s the consequence? That as we see in this review of the Motorola Moto G4 play, the Snapdragon 410 processor continues to act, in this case accompanied by 2 GB of RAM.
How to improve the performance and fluidity of your Android
There is no doubt that the war to offer the highest possible resolution has benefited these mid-range, which, conforming to an HD resolution, manage to have enough capacity to solvenally move the operating system.
The same thing happens when we’re playing, where the performance of this 4-core processor and a maximum frequency of 1.2 GHz gives us a gaming experience that has surprised us by how fluid it is. Here it is also worth highlighting the low heating of the terminal during long gaming sessions, which certainly helps as this guarantees the absence of throttling on the processor, and the occasional performance drops.
Software
Motorola has always stood out since the first generation of the Moto G offering a very simple and completely updated system. So much so, that predictably the Moto G range will be one of the first to receive the update to android N.
But until then what we have is Marshmallow in its version 6.0.1. As is characteristic in the terminals of the brand, this version is completely stock, or what is the same, a pure Android like the one that we can find on the latest generation Nexus phones such as the Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.
Thanks to this, the operating system we have is very clean, with very few pre-installed applications. So few that there really is nothing left of what is included. And this allows us to have a good starting point in terms of performance, as we will see later.
The only proprietary app that Motorola is allowed to include is Moto, an assistant that allows you to manage the notification system so that you can have them with your phone screen turned off, decide which apps can display those notifications, and the amount of information that is displayed. We can also activate a gesture to reduce the screen to get to the top more easily, although this is not especially useful on a 5″ screen.
Camera
One of the aspects for which the Moto G range always stood out is because of the quality of the camera, always taking into account the sector to which it pointed. And this is still fulfilled by this fourth generation of the Moto G.
But looking for a greater differentiation with its range siblings, the camera of the Moto G4 Play reduces its pretensions so that the range is perfectly staggered in terms of technical characteristics of it.