Motorola Moto G5S Plus Smartphone Combines Power and Affordability

As Samsung prepares to release its Galaxy Note 8 and Apple readies its iPhone 8, smaller handset makers are delivering midrange devices that might appeal to those who don’t want all the bells and whistles. Motorola is the latest to deliver such a device, with the Moto G5S Plus. The smartphone, which costs just $230 to start, has midrange processing power. But what it lacks in computing resources, it makes up for in attractive looks and surprising extras that might make it an appealing option for customers who don’t have the budget for a higher-end phone. Best of all, the smartphone is available unlocked so it can be used on any service providers network. This slideshow will examine why the Moto G5 Plus might deliver a solid value for the price.

The Moto G5S Plus doesn’t take many design cues from high-end smartphones like the Galaxy S8 or the Essential Phone. Instead, it sticks to a traditional smartphone design with thick bezels all around the display and a physical home button to control software. There’s also an unsightly camera bump on the back that makes the otherwise sleek smartphone thicker.

The Moto G5 Plus ships with a 5.2-inch display. The screen has a full-HD resolution of 1,920 by 1,080, and sports 424 pixels per inch. It’s protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3, which is nice, but not nearly as protective as Gorilla Glass 4 or 5.

Qualcomm is powering the chip inside the Moto G5 Plus. The chip, a midrange Snapdragon 625, has a 2GHz clock-speed across its eight cores. The Moto G5 Plus also comes with a 650MHz Adreno 506 GPU and is configurable with up to 4GB of onboard RAM.

The G5S Plus runs Android Nougat, which is a good thing for those who want to have recent software. However, it’s running Android Nougat 7.0, an older version of the software that doesn’t come with some of the security fixes users would find in 7.1. That might be a problem for some security-conscious shoppers.

On the camera front, the Moto G5 Plus comes with a single lens. That shooter delivers 12-megapixel images with dual auto-focus pixels. It can also record video in 4K Ultra HD. On the front, users will find a standard 5-megapixel wide-angle lens.

The Moto G5 has a sizable 3,000 mAh battery. According to Motorola, the battery should deliver “all-day battery life,” which usually means it’ll hold its charge for at least eight hours. It also comes with a TurboPower charging feature that will boost the battery’s juice by six hours after just 15 minutes of charging.

The smartphone comes with a shortcut feature called Moto Experiences that users might find appealing. The feature will allow users to quickly access the camera, email, and other apps by moving the smartphone in a certain way, twisting it, or performing other actions. In one example, Motorola said the feature could allow users to twist their wrists while holding the smartphone and activate the camera.

Although this is a midrange smartphone, Motorola is offering a surprisingly strong amount of storage in the device. The handset comes with the customer’s option of 32GB or 64GB of onboard storage, as well as up to 128GB of storage on a microSD card. That should be enough for most users.

The Moto G5 Plus is an unlocked smartphone that can work on both CDMA and GSM networks. That means American customers will be able to put the device on the network of their choosing in the U.S. and make calls. That kind of flexibility is attractive to some customers.

What might ultimately get some customers to choose the Moto G5 Plus, however, is its price. The device starts at just $230, making it one of the more affordable handsets on the market. Those who want 64GB of storage will need to shell out $300 for the smartphone — still a deal compared to competing devices. Motorola says the G5S Plus will go on sale this fall in the U.S. It will be available on other internationals markets in August.