Motorola Moto G6 Play review
Build Quality
Phone Set Up
Features
Camera & Video
Battery Life
Big battery for maximum Play time
It doesn’t matter who you are, a big battery that will let you use your phone for extended periods of time, is always desirable. In our Motorola Moto G6 Play review, we find a Motorola phone that has such credentials and it is extremely affordable.
It is sometimes difficult to recommend phones at this pricing level, but at £169 (from £18pm on contract), the Moto G6 Play is one that we recommend because it stands out against others, in this crowded pricing range.
Build Quality
Max Vision
The Motorola Moto G6 Play has a screen with a nifty name. Whether it’s Max Vision, FullView or something else, this new breed of displays enjoy a 18:9 screen aspect ratio, which gives a wider viewing experience compared to traditionally sized displays (16:9).
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The Moto G6 Play gets a 5.7” HD+ Max Vision display and this gives 282 pixels per inch. The screen is bright and the colours are vibrant. With the large battery, you can actually afford to ramp up the screen brightness to full and not see your battery drained of power within a few minutes.
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Polymer glass design
The Moto G6 Play gets a high gloss polymer glass body and you have a choice of Silver or Deep Indigo. The back is nicely curved for the palm of your hand and at 9mm thick and at 175g, this phone is as thin and even lighter than some flagship smartphones.
Qualcomm performance
The Moto G6 Play has a quality Qualcomm Snapdragon 420 1.4GHz octa-core processor with 3GB RAM. This high amount of RAM converts into an excellent gaming experience and lag free operation when using Spotify or streaming YouTube content.
Phone Set Up
Rear mounted fingerprint sensor
Compared to the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus, the Moto G6 Play looks the sleekest of them all because the fingerprint sensor doesn’t sit underneath the display. Instead the fingerprint sensor is positioned on the rear. The overall look of the back has a clean look and this has been created by printing the Moto logo onto the fingerprint sensor itself.
If you have content from an old mobile phone to transfer over, then there is a healthy 32GB internal memory and an up to 128GB microSD memory card slot.
Features
Moto Actions
The Motorola Moto G6 Play goes beyond just a standard stock Android 8.0 Oreo operating system experience. Moto Actions are the most noticeable addition and there are several useful operations that these can perform:
- Turn the phone face down - Turn on do not disturb mode
- Make a double chop - Turn on the torch
- Swipe the screen - Shrink the screen for one handed use
- Pick up the phone - Silence the ringing of an incoming call
- Twist the phone - Quick capture what’s on the screen
In addition to these actions you can preview notifications without unlocking the phone. You can also enjoy music over the front ported loud speaker that has Dolby Audio and enjoy the Attentive Display feature that keeps the display on while you are looking at it.
Camera & Video
Fully featured camera
The 13MP camera comes with all of the features that you are likely to use. Rapid focus occurs with Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) technology and this Moto phone will automatically takes several shots and then suggests the best one for you to keep.
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Further camera features include low light mode, HDR, burst mode and panorama. When it comes to recording video, you can capture 1080p Full HD video or get cool results with slow motion video recording.
The 8MP portrait camera gets its own LED flash for illuminating the scene. Along with this there is a beautification mode that lets you say goodbye to wrinkles and skin blemishes.
You can save all your photos in the Google Photos app and there are some good advantages to this. The first is that object/image recognition makes your photos searchable and the second is that your photos are backed up in the ‘cloud’ and accessible from any of your other online devices.
Battery Life
32 hour battery life
The Moto G6 Play comes with a high capacity 4,000mAh battery. This is much larger than the batteries in its competitors and really will give you up to 32 hours of moderate use. When it does become time to charge the phone, the included TurboPower charger can be used to add hours of use in just minutes.
Next: HTC Desire 12 review
Written by: Michael Brown