The G series from Motorola has always been about the optimum performance, vanilla android experience and competitive prices. Since the original Moto G came out in 2013, it has been the phone to beat in this segment. With the latest edition of the G series, however, Motorola seems to have finally come to the tech spec wars. We have been using the latest entrant called the Moto G4 Plus for roughly about two weeks now and here is our review about the same.
The Moto G4 Plus features a removable plastic back, an all glass front and a silver finish around the sides. There are no sharp edges or corners, everything seems smooth and matte finish polycarbonate back makes the device easy to hold. Sadly the battery isn’t removable, unlike the Moto G3’s. On the front, the speaker is a part of the earpiece grill itself and below the screen is a fingerprint scanner, although the square bezel housing the sensor does not act as a home button. Motorola has opted for capacitive buttons for home, back and recent apps. The power and volume keys are a little too soft and mushy, and their positioning is a bit off, as the thumb naturally lands on the volume down key instead of the power key. The 3000 mAH battery is fitting with the whole package and the phone is compatible with Qualcomm Quick charge 2.0.
The Moto G4 Plus features a 5.5-inch full HD display and Motorola has never disappointed when it comes to visuals on the Moto G range. As expected the display is sharp and Motorola phones seem to get better displays with every new generation. Viewing angles are nice and wide and contrast is strong. While in the age of QHD displays, a 1080p resolution panel may sound disappointing, but in real life, it is rather impressive.
The Moto G4 Plus continues Motorola’s tradition of an almost 100% stock Android experience. Apart from a few Motorola applications and gestures, the phone runs on a stock build of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with just a handful of actually useful Motorola features on top. Motorola includes gestures like shake (double chop) to activate the torch and twist to launch the camera, which works flawlessly. Also when you lift the phone when the screen is turned off, it shows the Moto Display with the time and date and any important notifications. The gallery app has been replaced with Google’s Photos app, which is not the best to be honest but it does its job.
The inclusion of the Snapdragon 617 is a major improvement over the Snapdragon 400 series found in the previous three generations, helping the phone accomplish day-to-day tasks without any hassle. With Snapdragon 617 SoC and almost pure vanilla Android makes this device a snappy performer. We noticed no slow-downs or lags in animations and when switching between apps but the SoC does get warm quickly when gaming or even when using data or GPS, but it is nothing too alarming. Games like Subway Surfers, Clash of Clans and Leo’s Fortune run smoothly, without any lag or hiccups. However, graphic intensive games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Real racing 3 do suffer from frame rate drops. We tested the 3GB RAM variant and the smartphone did not suffer from memory management issues, and handled multi-tasking relatively well. Those concerned about the lack of stereo sound shouldn’t worry as the single speaker in the earpiece is loud enough for alerts and general media playback. Moto G4 Plus might not set the benchmarks on fire — in Antutu it appears down in the list and the GeekBench score is also not too high– but that doesn’t affect the overall daily performance.
The Moto G4 Plus’s fingerprint scanner is unique as it doesn’t operate like a home button. The scanner looks like an odd square button but it’s fast and accurate despite being relatively small. The odd choice of not integrating the home button into the fingerprint sensor does take some times getting used to.
Talking about the technical aspect, the rear camera is a 16-megapixel one with 4.7mm focal length; Dual LED flash, laser autofocus as well as phase-detection autofocus, and 1080p video recording. The front of the device has a 5-megapixel fixed focus camera. The primary weakness of the Moto G series has always been in the camera. The G4 Plus corrects this and we are highly impressed with the camera on this device as it takes crisp photos in good outdoor light and decent photos in low light conditions. In well-lit situations, the images captured are quite sharp, with good color saturation and acceptable detail. Although there are some underexposed and some overexposed shots as well unless you are too steady and quick to take the shot. We recommend keeping HDR set to Auto as it helps liven up scenes. On the video front the G4 shoots average quality footage at 1080p and 30fps but is cropped a lot so it can be hard to fit much in. There’s also a 120fps slow motion mode but this shoots at just 540p and we struggled to focus properly when using it. Moto is pitching the camera as the highlight. Moto G4 Plus gets a score of 84 on Dxro Mark a professional camera test, same as the 2014 iPhone 6 and that’s something the company has been quick to highlight.
The Moto camera app has also improved, with plenty of manual control using intuitive and attractive sliders should you need it, but lacks RAW support.
With the new battery saving features in Android M and battery optimizations done by Motorola, the 3000 mAh battery in Moto G4 Plus stays good for the day with general usage, and the screen-on time was well over four hours. The Moto G4 Plus is shipping with a Turbo charger and promising six hours of battery life with just 15 minutes of charge. When on standby, there is negligible battery drain with the Doze feature kicking in, but even if not, it is quite well-managed.
Although the new Moto G4 is more expensive than the third-generation, Motorola is offering a Full HD screen, better processor, more storage plus a microSD card slot and a dual SIM support in case you need it. The biggest problem, however, is that the new Moto G4 Plus is no longer quite as cheap as its predecessors. Also the Moto G4 Plus does run hotter compared to the G3 but it would not be something that will bother most of the consumers. The competition is tough, but in our opinion, the Moto G4 Plus has enough merit to stand on its own feet – the biggest one being timely Android updates. The G4 Plus would have been even better though if it retained the water and dust protection of its predecessor. The camera on this device is impressive and Moto has finally proved that the company has the capability to incorporate a quality camera module. The Moto G4 Plus is slightly expensive than its competition, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 or the LeEco Le 2. But if you are looking for a balance of build quality, camera and battery life rather than high-end performance, the Moto G4 Plus is the option to go for.
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