Review: Moto G4 Plus Packs in a Powerful Camera in Budget, But...
Is Lenovo’s Moto G4 Plus worth the hype? Should you upgrade from Moto G3?
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Motorola’s G series has become one of the most popular series of phones, especially in the budget segment. For this very reason, a new phone in the series is always eagerly anticipated. Motorola’s G4 had a lot of hype going for it too, but with great expectations, comes great responsibility. Does the phone manage to meet them, or does it fizzle out? Read on.
What’s Good?
Motorola has retained touches of the earlier MotoG series, such as the wide earpiece, metallic finish sides, a long strip for camera on the back, punctuated with an ‘M’ logo in a dimple just below. The similarity in design ends there, with the smartphone now both thinner and larger than its previous generations.
Moto G4 has a 5.5-inch 1920x1080 pixels Full-HD display. The back panel has a faux rubber feel to it, which adds a slight grip, but attracts a lot of finger stains.
Finger stains remind us of the fingerprint scanner on the phone, which is a new feature in the series, but more on that later.
Powered by an octa-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, Moto G4 offers Pure Android experience with a 3 GB RAM. In non-technical terms, it means the phone can handle a lot of work, while managing many tabs simultaneously. Our review unit was the 32 GB variant, which retails at Rs 14,999. The space is further expandable up to 128 GB via a microSD card.
Another great improvement seen with the Moto G4 Plus is the camera. The smartphone sports a 16-megapixel shooter at the back and a 5-megapixel camera in the front. Both the cameras capture a decent amount of details and colours, and could be ranked among the best cameras in this price bracket.
The rear camera performed really well even in low light, with it’s laser autofocus, and ‘best shot’ feature. It also allows shooting slow-motion videos and has a toggle for full manual controls for clicking photographs.
Moto G4 Plus is fueled by a 3,000mAh battery, which comes with the quick charge feature, just like Moto Turbo, and promises to give a 6-hour backup in 15 minutes of charge.
Another proprietary feature that impressed us was the Moto Display, which pushes notifications and alerts on the lock-screen, allowing a quick view of what’s inside.
What’s Bad?
The fingerprint sensor. Yes, the newest feature on the smartphone actually dumbs it down. Firstly, I couldn’t understand the aesthetic of a small square sensor placed below the screen. A sensor so small that I managed to put just about 25 percent of my thumb on it at a time. We had to strategically place the finger to get through the locked device.
Talking about the design, the smartphone looks like just another Android smartphone in the market. Metallic edges on the sides, Gorilla Glass 3 in the front and what looks like a physical button at the bottom under the display.
But here again, the device managed to confuse me. The fingerprint scanner under the display is just that. It does not serve as a physical button, it doesn’t act as a home button, and there’s no other function attached to it.
I may be nitpicking here, but the raised edges on the side of the display may accumulate a lot of dirt. And you cannot wash it this time, because the phone’s not waterproof anymore. Yes, unlike the Moto G3, you wouldn’t want to take the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus for a dip.
Why Buy It?
The smartphone offers a nice blend of features at an affordable price point, but it isn’t enough to rise above the intense competition in the mid-range segment. The likes of Xiaomi, LeEco and even Motorola’s parent brand ‘Lenovo’ have comparatively better-looking and better-featured devices starting as low as Rs 10,000. That too for metal build smartphones, compared to the plasticky Moto G4 Plus.
If you insist, this smartphone is worth buying for the stock Android experience and the decent camera it packages in a lightweight device.
So, will you say ‘Hello Moto’?
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)