Gadgetory

the Moto G has always been Motorola's most popular line of smartphones and it's pretty obvious to see why the recent moto G 5 plus offered a really nice hardware experience in a very simplistic software experience at a pretty affordable price but Motorola definitely thought they could do better I'm David ml with Android authority and this is the review of the Moto G 5s plus if you compared the Moto G 5s plus to a lot of other options on the market right now and you probably wouldn't realize it was a budget phone its unibody aluminum shell and chamfered edges give it a really luxurious look and it is actually pretty reminiscent of the 1 plus 5 the distinguishing factor here is the camera bump and signature badge on the back reminding you that this is really a Motorola made product now Motorola never really said exactly what the S stands for but I like to think it stands for sports the g5 s plus feels a lot more refined than the previous iteration of the Moto G right down to the click enos of the buttons and the divot in that signature Motorola logo I like to think that this phone is a lot like a Kia Optima it's great to use and as fun as a daily driver but you're not gonna impress anyone with that branding this isn't a Porsche design after all well the body shape is actually really similar to the g5 plus Motorola's shifted the headphone jack to the top to make room for bottom firing speakers in the bottom of the device these speaker sounds okay they're really nothing special and they definitely lack bass but they get the job done and they do get pretty loud right next to the speakers on the bottom of the device you're gonna find a micro USB port well always advocate for USB type-c in 2017 motorola is including their fast charge technology in this phone which should get you about 6 hours and 15 minutes of charging speaking of power this phone is rocking at 3000 milliamp hour battery which is more than a lot of flagships can sport these days because motorola is using a 1080p display in this phone it lasts a really long time I took my phone off the charger Sunday morning and it only died on Monday night right when I got home from work that's two full days which equated to about 4 hours and 45 minutes of screen on time pretty impressive since I just mentioned the screen let's talk about it again it's a 5.5 inch 1080p LCD panel and it looks just fine 401 PPI was honestly just fine for everyday use and everything but the lowest brightening setting was clearly visible outside I think 5.5 inches is a great compromise between the usability and media experience so I'm really glad Motorola bumped it up from the 5.2 inch screen in the Moto G 5 plus there's a fingerprint reader sitting right below that screen and it is fast like really fast well I love the fact that I was able to wake my phone from sleep pretty much instantly it also means that it activated a lot sometimes I would just be sitting in my pocket and if I put my hands in there for any reason it would activate and think that I was trying to unlock it just got annoying pretty quickly and I'm really hoping that Motorola fixes this feature once they eventually update this phone to Android 8.0 Oreo like I mentioned earlier the Moto G 5s plus is sporting that classic Motorola camera bump well it's essentially the exact same size as the one in the g5 plus Motorola was actually able to stuff two camera sensors in there I'm really glad they were able to do this because I'm really not a fan of the whole dual camera aesthetic that's on most flagships today almost nice having two cameras in your phone the quality of said cameras is another story well a lot of these dual cameras give you the ability to do two X optical zoom and white angle shots motorola only really reserves this for a depth of field effect and well that's a cool effect to have it's pretty bad even in great lighting the depth of field effect looks pretty fake and it really doesn't even look as good as something shot out of the 1+5 the regular camera is also pretty so-so even at 13 megapixels it looks pretty washed out and even in decent lighting you're gonna get some muddy soft images it's pretty sad to see a phone so obviously focused on the dual cameras deliver such a subpar experience but that's one of the things you have to sacrifice when you make a budget smartphone oh right this is a budget smartphone you're getting a pretty nice body for just over $200 but what's packed inside the Moto G 5s plus is supporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor 3 to 4 gigabytes of RAM and 32 to 64 gigabytes of internal storage depending on the model you get yeah it's not Qualcomm's latest snapdragon 835 chip but it runs this version of Android really well and I hardly ever saw any skipping or stuttering oh yeah speaking of version of Android is actually one of the best in the business it's pretty near stock with just a few tweaks but these tweaks are actually really useful moto display and moto actions are the main changes that Motorola added to this phone and they allow you to do things like interactive notifications while the screen is off double chop to get the flashlight or twist to open the camera there are quite a few more actions baked into Motorola software but it would probably double the length of this video to talk about all of them so that's the Moto G 5s plus at 229 dollars you're gonna have a hard time finding anything quite this good and if you've been searching for the best experience on Android this is definitely a top contender if you like this review make sure you head over to our website where you can read the full in-depth article and if you want to see everything from Motorola and beyond make sure you stay tuned to Android authority because of course we are your source for all things Android