There’s something about Motorola phones and their stock Android interface being so easy to use. With minimal topping, I’ve always found them great to customise and set up. Motorola brought this to the masses with the Moto G about three years ago and since then, the popular budget smartphone has seen various iterations, the latest being the Moto G5 and its larger sibling, the G5 Plus.

Golden looks The largely plastic body of the G series looked dated, with almost all phones, even those in the budget segment, flaunting metal and glass these days. Motorola has rectified that with the G5 and G5 Plus sporting a shiny new metal body that is a lot like the company’s high end Z series. Here is what the Moto G5 Plus is like to use.

The phone comes in two colours — Fine Gold and Lunar Grey. The review unit was the former, and it was quite the looker.

The G5 Plus is all shiny metal and glass, with ‘Moto’ embossed between the earpiece and the display on top, again being reminiscent of the Moto Z. An oval fingerprint sensor sits below the display on the bottom, with the volume and power buttons on the right side. The camera lens and flash unit protrudes from the shimmering back, above the etched Motorola batwings symbol. The charging and data port and the 3.5mm audio jack are both on the bottom of the phone.

Motorola has shaved off a bit of the display size on this one when compared to the G4 iteration, with the G5 Plus sporting a 5.2-inch, 1920 x 1080 full HD Display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It also gets an Adreno 506 GPU and this makes for a sharp overall display package. The screen is clearly visible even under direct sunlight and watching videos is a pleasant experience.

Top notch specs Hardware is good quality, with a lot of the specs on this one being akin to the ones usually seen on high end phones. It gets 4GB of RAM (there is a 3GB version available too) and 32 GB of expandable storage (there is also a 16GB variant). It is powered by a Snapdragon 625 octa core processor and all this means that multi-tasking is quite seamless. However, heavy duty functions like continuous navigation and video recording can tend to get the phone heated up. The phone also ships with Android Nougat out of the box, which gives you added advantages like the split screen functionality and bundled notifications.

The camera set consists of a 12MP rear shooter with f/1.7 aperture and with 8x digital zoom and a 5MP selfie shooter with f/2.2 and a wide angle lens. The images I clicked were lucid, with the colours standing out clearly. However, they tend to get a tad granulated under not-so-apt lighting conditions. However, shots at night weren’t too bad and although there was some noise, the overall effect was pleasant. What really impressed me about this phone was the quality of video recording on the rear camera. I took it to a concert and managed to record some really clear and nice looking videos even in the near darkness punctuated by the flashing lights. The front camera comes with a flash like the one seen on Snapchat and clicks decent selfies. The rear camera can also scan QR codes and barcodes and also has a professional shooting mode where you can tweak white balance, shutter speed, ISO, etc.

The phone packs a 3,000mAh battery, which I found did well with extensive use. I had the WiFi hotspot on almost the entire day and with other apps running, it gave me roughly a day’s use. Turbo charging makes sure it juices up quite quick and is handy when travelling. There are also gesture controls such as turning the flashlight on or off with a double chop of the wrist and starting the camera with a double wrist twist. There’s also water repellent nano coating, which is handy. The phone offers dual SIM support and is NFC and VoLTE enabled.

The G5 Plus’ 4GB RAM version is good value for money considering the specs and features. Honestly, Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 4 is the only tough competition that this one has to face.

Price: ₹16,999 (4GB RAM, 32GB ROM), ₹14,999 (3GB RAM, 16 GB ROM)

Pros: Looks, good battery life, seamless performance, Android Nougat, good video recording

Cons: Heats up, camera pictures can look granulated under low light

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