Moto E5 Plus First Impressions: The Mojo Is Back With Moto

Moto e5 Plus

Motorola has been upping it’s game and decreasing the space between device releases in India this year. The Moto G6 was the last one and now we have the Moto e5 Plus launched today at an event in Delhi. The target here is the budget segment and the phone certainly has a lot of things going for it. Here are my first impressions of the phone

The Moto E5 Plus can easily be mistaken for a premium or a flagship smartphone, the company has ensured that the crafting and materials are good quality and look neat. The display takes up a substantial portion of the phone, with thin, but not very thin, bezels on the sides.

At 161.9 x 75.3 x 9.35mm, it’s large enough, but not too big. However, at 200g, it has considerable heft. That is expected given the 5000 mAH battery that it is packing. The battery is one of the biggest USPs of this phone.

Moto E5 Plus Front

The Moto E5 Plus has cleverly been given the look of a metal frame and glass back, but in reality, the company uses plastics and polymers that don’t feel quite as premium when you actually hold it though. On the brighter side, the plastic back panel is unlikely to shatter when compared to a real glass one.The company has given it a water-repellent coating for protection from splashes and light rain, and Gorilla Glass 3 is protecting the front of the phone against scratches and cracking.

The back side of the phone is one of the biggest smudge magnets I’ve ever come across, so the vanity value of the glossy premium feel goes away very fast.All the wiping on my shirt  lasted pretty much only for a second because the phone gets re-smudged in a matter of moments anyway. The rear also houses a fingerprint scanner which has a Moto logo on it and what at first looks like a dual-sensor camera, but in reality is awkwardly just one camera and a laser auto-focus sensor. This reminds us of the phones of a couple of years ago that actually showed this off big time.

E5 Plus

The bottom of the phone has only a micro-USB port and a microphone, while the top has a second microphone and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The main earpiece speaker also serves as the primary loudspeaker for watching or listening to media, and it does a good job putting out sound while also being hard to accidentally cover up with your palm while listening. The multimedia consumption angle seems to be a big driver for many things on the Moto E5 Plus.

You can enjoy a 6″ Max Vision display that you can use comfortably with just one hand. The 18:9 aspect ratio means that there is less scrolling on websites.You can also multitask effortlessly on a split screen – if you’re into that sort of thing. But note that this is not a flagship grade phone but a budget one, so set your expectations accordingly. That way, you will not be let down.

Moto E5 Plus Rear View

The display is the main USP for the Moto E5 Plus, because it comes with a pretty big one in for a low price. It is rocking a 6-inch IPS LCD display with an HD+ (720p) resolution. For a second,I almost thought that it had an AMOLED display, because at low brightness settings, it manages to stay fairly black when Motorola’s ambient display comes on. Then I realized that it is an LCD after I changed the brightness to some realistic settings. But not really complaining here. The screen is large and immersive and has been made with the consumption of media in mind. That works very well for this phone.

With a Snapdragon 435 octa-core chipset and 3GB of RAM running Android 8.0, the Moto E5 Plus is not in my league of any high-end phones or even mid-range phones. It is a budget phone and it is mighty good in that segment. I have seen a lot of budget phones and must say here that this combination of a big screen and a big battery is pretty good and thoughtful

One of the biggest factors that help the Moto E5 Plus run as smoothly as it does on its limited hardware is the particularly clean version of Android it’s running. There’s  close to zero bloatware and there aren’t any annoying UI changes.  Neat and light is the name of the game here.

The Moto E5 Plus has a 12MP rear camera with 1.25 micrometer pixels and an aperture of f/2.0, making it decent in dim scenery. The front camera has an 8MP sensor with 1.12 micrometer pixels and an aperture of f/2.2. I will put it to a full test in my review and let you know.

The battery is where the Moto E5 Plus is a big star. Itcomes a massive 5,000mAh battery, which is  the reason why the phone weighs 200 grams. I will put it through my battery grind and give you more info in the full review.

For now, it looks like the Moto has it’s Mojo back. More in the detailed review coming soon.

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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