If there’s one phone that made India go “Hello Moto”, it’s got to be Moto’s silent performer, the Moto G. For four generations, the mid-range darling of the Moto range did its job of pulling in the numbers while the pricier phones flaunted their modularity and unbreakable screens.
This year at MWC, the Lenovo-Moto combine unveiled the all-new all-metal Moto G5 Plus and followed it up barely two weeks later with the India launch.
Can the Moto G5 Plus take on competition from Xiaomi and Lenovo to be our sub-15,000 smartphone pick? Read on to find out.
Pros:
- Excellent build quality for its segment
- Near stock Android 7.0 with nifty Moto add-ons
- Fast charging support
- Dual-SIM plus microSD support
- Water repellant nano-coating
Cons:
- Poor screen visibility outdoors
- Lacking the stellar battery of its peers
- Low-light camera performance leaves a lot to be desired
What’s Good?
Moto Gs have never been renowned for their design, but this year, Moto’s turned a corner. Gone is the bland plastic of four generations past, and the G5 sports a premium metal design – chamfered edges, aluminium back and all.
The Moto G5 ships with the same core components as the Redmi Note 4 and the Lenovo P2 (and the pricier Z Play as well) – a 2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 processor with Adreno 506 GPU and 4GB of RAM – and the clean, unencumbered Android 7.0 Nougat build helps keep things running along snappily. There’s a sub-15K variant with 3GB of memory well.
There’s a bit of the Moto Z design language around the rear with the raised round camera module, and while it gives the G5 Plus a distinctive look, it also exposes the camera lens to the possibility of scratches. Suggesting a case defeats the purpose of this slick new design, but I wouldn't use the G5 Plus for an extended period without one.
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The big design wins are on two counts that are often ignored in this segment. One, the water-repellant nano-coating which was last seen in the Moto G3 is back, so you should be sorted if you’re out and the skies open up.
Second, and more interestingly, Moto’s bestowed the G5 Plus with proper dual SIM support along with a dedicated SD card slot – none of that hybrid SIM nonsense that we see in this segment. There’s no USB Type-C, and you have to make do with a microUSB 2.0 port, but at least there’s the included 15W TurboPower charger which gives you nearly 50 percent charge in about 20 minutes of charging.
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The G5 Plus isn’t bereft of any software customisations – the included Moto app lets you enable/disable gestures like the wrist twist to launch the camera, a double-karate-chop-like gesture to quickly turn on the flashlight and my favorite ‘One button nav’ feature which turns the fingerprint sensor into a swipe-friendly touchpad.
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