One of the best handsets from last year was Motorolas modular Moto Z and Moto Z Play. The follow-ups are highly anticipated and today information about the Moto Z2 Play has come forth, with the handset apparently set to take a hit to its battery life.
The rumour, courtesy of leaker extraordinaire Evan Blass, says that the formerly larger handset which came with a larger battery life than the standard Moto Z, will be slimmed down to around 6mm thin with the battery being shaved down to a mere 3,000mAh – a drop of 510mAh.
The phone will get some spec bumps with a slightly better processor thanks to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 (the original had a SD625) which will be clocked at 2.2GHz. The Z2 Play will also get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, up from 3GB/32GB in the original. According to the leak, the phone will retain the 5.5″ FullHD display.
The rear camera will apparently be dropping from 16MP with f/2.0 aperture lens to a 12MP sensor, though this technically lower resolution sensor will be behind an f/1.7 aperture lens. Google has shown what can be done with a 12MP sensor on the Pixel, so this shouldn’t present a problem and the faster aperture should offer other benefits.
The Moto Z2 Play will launch alongside the Moto Z2 and Moto Z2 Force in Lunar Gray and Fine Gold, though dates for the launch haven’t been announced. The original Moto Z series was announced in June last year, so we could be seeing something sooner rather than later.
I was just looking at the specs for the G5 plus and apart from the size of the device and the processor bump the specs you list above are identical. Sure there should not be a huge gap between the upper budget and the lower mid/premium model but these sound too close. If they are true it makes me wonder what the point is of getting one of these if you can basically get the same phone in a G5 Plus for probably a few hundred dollars less.
TBH we don’t know what the battery performance would be on the 626 because frankly, if we’d been told a year before release that a phone would be coming with 1080p getting good frame rates and two day battery on that screen size we’d have been a bit skeptical right? The 625 was responsible and we need to see what the 626 can do with ~3000mah. I’d wager there are some people (I’m not one of them, battery life is my no 1 concern followed by camera) who bought the battery mod and like using that when they know they… Read more »
Firstly what happened to the comments from yesterday. I know you were using a different comment system but it is a shame to lose them. Do any of you guys know if these phones follow the camera standard now as allow manual control and shooting in raw DNG? I have a X Play which does not allow this which is frustrating. Going down to 12mp is not great for allowing cropping but should improve its low-light performance a heap. I do not know how expensive or how easy the mods are to get in Australia but depending on both the… Read more »
The comments aren’t lost, they’ll be reimported shortly; the reply to your comment was yes, we believe the Moto Z supported Raw but we don’t have the review device any longer to be sure. The mods are usually fairly well available, at least through Moto’s online store.
I have a X Play at the moment and hope to keep it going at least another 6 months but may after then be looking to upgrade. The specs listed above seem like a decent upgrade to what I have but would agree any reduction to battery life is not a great move as that would be 630mha than I have now (assuming my battery was new). I personally have not been following too closely these mods but if you can get an extra boost out of a mod and not increase the size too much I guess that would… Read more »
I don’t think we’ve still got the review unit of the Moto Z Play we had last year; we’d have to ask Moto about the shooting capabilities, but I’m fairly sure the Z Play could shoot raw/manual. It had a pretty capable camera.
I maintain that the Z Play has been far more successful (in Aust at least) than the Z. I think they’ll strive to maintain the same price points but improve sales of mods.
The occasional conspiracy theorist in me thinks the awesome battery life on the Z Play was probably cannibalizing sales of battery pack mods.
The battery packs are quite thick so this Z2 Play drop in both battery capacity and phone thickness might ‘encourage’ people to purchase the mods and artificially boost that ecosystem.
Pheonminally stupid decision! They best attribute of the Z Play and they reduce it to nothing more than a glorified G5!
That’s what I thought too. But unfortunately I think Adam J may have hit the nail on the head with his conspiracy theory.
That may be true but didn’t Incipo manufacturer the battery mod? Have they got that much leverage over Moto?
Apparently in February Motorola announced that they are releasing their own branded battery mod. See where I’m going here? ☺️