Although in defense of the company, this was done to make the phone compatible with previous Moto Mods. The rest of the dimensions remain the same as well due to the previously stated reason. This means you still get a 5.5inch FullHD (1920x1080) Super AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 3. Above the display is the speaker which is used as both an in call speaker and a loudspeaker. The display gets great viewing angles as expected and the brightness is also adequate for outdoor usage but the glass is a bit reflective. You also have your dual LED Flash, front facing camera and a couple of sensors here. Below the screen you will find a microphone and a physical key which acts as a fingerprint sensor. By default the phone displays on-screen buttons for Home, Back and Multitasking window but you can disable them and just use the physical button to do the same. The back has the camera setup, the 'M' logo and the contact point for Moto Mods. The right side gets all the buttons including the two volume keys and the power keys. Sadly all three keys are the same size so hitting the right button can be a bit confusing if you are not looking. The bottom edge holds the 3.5mm audio jack and the USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer.
The phone comes with nano coating to make it resistant towards splashes of water. Considering how we lug our smartphones everywhere, this is a neat and necessary feature. The build quality feels great thanks to the all aluminum body and the Gorilla Glass up-front. The bezel area, however, makes handling this huge phone a bit hard in crowded places.
Due to the thinning process the phone went through, it had to settle for a smaller 3,000mAh battery while the earlier model had a 3510mAh battery. But it is not as bad as it sounds. Sure the phone does not last as long as the Moto Z Play but it can still last you a day on heavy usage and about one and a half day easily if you do not continuously play games or watch movies for long stretches. Charging is not a problem either as it comes bundled with a Turbo Charger, that can give you roughly 10pc battery on every 10 minutes of charging adding to a total of close to 1 hour and 45 minutes to charge completely.
The SoC inside the mobile has been updated and now you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 octa-core CPU running at 2.2 GHz. While this is not the best around, it manages to provide a lag free experience at all times. The graphic duties have been taken up by the Adreno 506 GPU which does a fairly good job of playing all games at highest settings. Only when there are too many things on the screen does it exhibit a lower framerate. For example, in Real Racing 3, the game ran smoothly when there were only a couple of cars on the screen. Once the number of cars went beyond 10 there was some amount of stuttering but the game was still very much playable. What I would like to commend the phone for, would be the fact that in my usage of over a week, never did I find the phone to hot to handle, or even warm at all. Internationally you get the phone in two configurations. One has 3GB RAM with 32GB ROM and the other has 4GB RAM with 64GB ROM. In India however, we only get the 4GB version which proves to be plenty of memory for almost any task you can imagine. Motorola is also providing a dedicated microSD card slot, for adding a card of up to 256GB. It is always nice to see mobile that can hold two SIM cards and a microSD card simultaneously. The device runs on the latest version of Android, 7.1.1 Nougat and also comes with Google Assistant. You get a largely stock Android experience which is great as it does not bog down your hardware. There is also support for floating options for some apps; you can press and hold an icon for a short period of time to reveal some quick options.
The camera setup on the Moto Z2 Play consists of a 12MP rear facing camera with Laser and Phase Detection autofocus and dual LED flash. There are options for turning on HDR and manual mode which provides a great level of control. Videos can be recorded at 4K resolution at 30fps while you can also shoot 120fps slow motion videos by dropping down to 720p. We were able to get some great and natural looking photos from the device and the large f.1.7 aperture also allowed for a great depth of field. However the phone still did struggle with low light shots and unwanted noise was visible. Focusing can also be a slight issue when you are very close to the subject. The videos also do not get Optical Image Stabilization which we would have really appreciated. The front 5MP camera however performed great and we had no issues with it. Thanks to the dual LEDs provided for the front camera as well, you can take some great 'goodbye selfies' after that crazy evening party you just finished.
The Moto Z2 Play is a great phone, no doubt, but it is the price and what the competition is offering, that makes the shine of this smart looking mobile a bit dull. At Rs 27,999, you get a great battery life, a fast charger, likable camera performance, premium looks that make every onlooker ogle your device and the trust that comes with the brand's name. But the raw performance does fall short when compared to similarly priced devices such as OnePlus 3T, Honor 8, and even the iPhone 6.