The Moto Z2 Play is the successor of the Moto Z Play. It sheds the glass back panel for a full metal aluminum body and it’s 1mm thinner. The Snapdragon 626 replaces the 625 found in the predecessor together with 4GB of RAM. It is using the same 5.5” AMOLED which is about 401ppi.
The Moto Z2 Play curves have a really nice touch to it and it’s slim body makes it easy to handle. This reduces the battery to 3000mAh. It only weighs 145g with the dimension of 156.2 x 76.2 x 6 mm
The fingerprint sensor is on the front and it’s one of the quickest way to unlock the phone. It works blazingly fast.
Located at the top is the sim card tray which can hold 2 nano-sim cards and 1 microsd card. This is unlike other sim tray which uses of sim card slot to fit in the microsd card.
And on the bottom is the USB Type C which is reversible along with the much needed 3.5mm jack.
On the right side is the volume up/down button and the power button. Holding down on the down button and power button together will trigger a screenshot. There’s no button on the left side which is nice and smooth.
On the rear is the 12MP camera bump which is weird to lay down on the table and it is prone to scratches.
The screen is a Full HD 1080p on a 5.5 inch Super AMOLED display which has Gorilla Glass 3. It is not as bright as LCD in broad daylight.
The home launcher is pretty much like Google’s Pixel launcher and works the same. By sliding to the left you can get to the Google Feed page.
The Main shooter is a 12MP with the aperture of f/1.7 and Moto has added Dual Focus Pixels to compliment the laser-assisted phase-detection autofocus. This allows the image to be more accurate. It has dual-LED flash with dual tones which helps balance the colour.
The viewfinder of the camera app does appear sharp and I would think that the camera is not focusing well but once you have taken the photo and review the image it looks better. This is not really an issue but it irks me.
In normal daylight, the image is sharp and full of details. Even better the low light shots of this camera really impress me as some shots turn out really good despite the lack of light.
I feel that the autofocus is still lagging behind newer phones with better imaging processor.
Cloudy Day shot of the Lake
Sunset from my kitchen
Look at the sharpness of the image taken in bright daylight
Low light shot of stray cat
Image looks vibrant and detail outside of Mustafa
Clear sky in Orchard Road
Beautiful cloud formation in the sky
Close of shot of burning charcoal
This phone can take some good looking deserts
Kitty cat posing for a photo
Beautiful Bengal cat
Cloudy shot of Hotel
Indoor shot of brightly lit signage board
This shot was actually taken at night.
Phone calls made from this phone is quite standard and I did not have any dropped calls or bad distortion. The front facing speaker does a good job and it’s loud enough to be irritated when someone is calling me.
But a pity it’s not a stereo speakers which will improve the media playback capabilities of this phone. But this can be solved with Moto Mods like the JBL SoundBoost 2 which has 10 hours of play and is splashproof.
By adding the moto turbopower™ pack I have increased the battery life to more than 100%, 116% to be exact as it has a battery of 3490 mAh. It can also be charge up to 50% with 20 minutes. Which is faster than the phone of charging 30 minutes to get 50% of battery. It is also using USB type C.
