Home » Motorola Moto Z2 Play hands-on, first impressions

Motorola Moto Z2 Play hands-on, first impressions

Motorola is set to launch and release the Moto Z2 Play in the Philippines by the end of July, a couple of weeks after today’s regional launch here in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Moto Z2 Play is a premium mid-range smartphone that follows the Moto Z Play from last year. Lenovo/Motorola is committed to making the Moto Z series an integral part of the Moto Mods ecosystem so the Moto Z2 Play will be backward and forward compatible with the existing Moto Mods accessories (watch the Moto Mods in action).

The Moto Z2 Play follows the same design signature as the original Moto Z (read our full review here). Compared to the Moto Z Play, the Moto Z2 Play is thinner by 1mm and lighter by 20grams.

It looks almost the same although there are some minor enhancements done on the exterior. The unibody design is made up of all glass and metallic materials with rounded corners and chamfered edges. It’s got the same smooth, matte finish and thin profile.

The Home button still doubles as a fingerprint sensor and is now more rounded than the squarish design before. The front-facing camera also comes with dual-tone, dual-LED flash along with the Moto logo just below the speakerphone.

The USB Type-C is placed at the bottom end along with the 3.5mm audio jack. Up top is the SIM card tray the supports dual-SIM slots with the second one that can double as a microSD card slot (up to 2TB capacity).

At the back is a flat surface with a polished metal finish, a pin connectors for the Moto Mods at the bottom end and the large camera lens that protrudes about 2 or 3mm. The 12MP rear camera comes with another set of dual-tone, dual-LED flash just below it.

The implementation of the antenna bands is unique with the lines circling all the way around the corners so at first glance you would not notice it.

Up at the front is a 5.5-inch full HD Super AMOLED display protected by Gorilla Glass 3. The screen is vibrant and crisp as expected of a Super AMOLED display.

Powering the Moto Z2 Play is a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 chipset (an upgrade to the SD625) which is composed of an ARM Cortex A53 octa-core processor with a maximum clock speed of 2.21GHz. The variant that will be released in the Philippines will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Our initial benchmark resulted to a high score of 68,691 points on Antutu.

Motorola Moto Z2 Play specs:
5.5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 2.2GHz octa-core CPU
Adreno 506 GPU
3GB / 4GB LPDDR3 RAM
32GB / 64GB storage
microSD card slot w/ UHS-I support (up to 2TB)
12MP 1.4um Dual Autofocus Pixel rear camera, f/1.7, Laser AF, PDAF, dual-LED flash
5MP 1.4um, f/2.2 front camera w/ dual-LED flash
Nano-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz
Bluetooth 4.2 LE+EDR
Fingerprint sensor
Gyroscope
NFC
GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
Front-ported loudspeaker
3 mics
Moto Mods connector
USB-C w/ USB 3.1 support
3.5mm headset port
Android 7.1.1 Nougat
3,000mAh battery w/ TurboPower charging
76.2 x 156.2 x 5.99mm (dimensions)
145 grams
Lunar Gray, Fine Gold

Lenovo also announced a new set of Moto Mods together with the Moto Z2 Play. This includes the Moto TurboPower pack and the JBL SoundBoost 2 that comes in red, black and blue. Stay tuned for our full review of the Moto Z2 Play in the coming weeks.

Lenovo is set to launch the Moto Z2 Play in the Philippines sometime in the 3rd week of July with the eventual released within the same week or just before end of the month.

Lenovo has not stated the exact suggested retail price but said they’re going to price it close to $525PHP 30,810INR 44,494EUR 500CNY 3,821 (about Php26,500USD 452INR 38,282EUR 430CNY 3,289 when converted).

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Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.