We just spent time at the London arm of Motorola’s latest international product launch this afternoon to meet the three new smartphones including the new Moto X Play.
Motorola’s been passed around like a trading card amongst large tech companies like Google, but this was the first product launch since Chinese electronics giant Lenovo took to the helm and the biggest simultaneous product launch on the company’s history, with events taking place in São Paolo, Mexico City, London and NYC.
Whilst the Motorola team kicked announcements off with the new Motorola Moto X Style, the Moto X Play caught our eye as it aims to offer consumers flagship hardware at a significantly lower cost, around half the price of a conventional flagship in Motorola’s own words.
Naturally a few small tweaks have been made when compared against the full-fat Style variant, but the Moto X Play looks as though it has the power and the features where it counts.
The software is, in true Motorola fashion an almost stock take of Android 5.1.1, adorned with helpful extras like Moto Assist and inbuilt capabilities for muting the phone when it’s face down or when you’re sleeping. Hardware-wise the Play differs from the Style with a slightly lower resolution 5.5-inch Full HD screen (versus Quad HD), more reserved customisation options with Moto Maker and a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 615 octa-core chip withg 2GB of RAM but beyond that, you’re paying for a very similar experience overall.
Optics fall to a promising 21-megapixel rear-facing camera and a wide-angle front-facing 5-megapixel offering. There’s a 3630mAh cell which Motorola promises two days of usage on per charge and speaking of charge, thanks to its TurboPower 25 standard you can expect 8 hours of usage from 15 minutes with a wall plug.
Motorola promised that the Moto X Play should be touching down in 55 countries, including our fair shores in August for £299 unlocked through Moto Maker.
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