Motorola announced the new Moto G4 Plus, the successor to Moto G3. The new Moto G4 runs on upgraded Snapdragon 617 Octa-core chipset with either 2GB or 3GB of RAM. The internal storage depends on the RAM and there is 16GB storage on 2GB RAM and 32GB storage on 3GB RAM variant. There is also micro SD card expansion slot which supports up to 128GB.
We have been using the 3GB RAM and 32GB storage variant for quite some time now and here is how detailed review of the new Moto G4 Plus.
Related Reading: Moto G4 Plus Unboxing
Here is the video review.
Design and Build:
Design-wise, there are quite a few changes in the new Moto G4 Plus. Firstly the curved rear panel available in Moto G3 is now made flat in G4 Plus. While most of the devices in this category have moved to metallic construction, Motorola has retained the plastic finishing. The rear panel has a matte finish with a flat back. There is a chrome accent around the device. The camera unit is a black strip on the rear panel with 16MP camera, laser autofocus, and dual tone LED flash. There are some similarities in the design language with previous Moto G3, especially with the top panel. The top panel has 3.5mm audio jack while the micro USB is at the bottom.
The front panel has 5.5 inches Full HD display, front-facing camera and there is a fingerprint scanner located below the display. You might often confuse this for the home button. While the design has been changed and it brings some new changes, the Moto G4 Plus isn’t the best-looking phone out there, but build quality is still good.
Display:
The phone comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD (1080p) display and is protected by Gorilla Glass. There has been an upgrade to the display from the previous generation Moto G3 and it now looks good. The colors are vivid and the brightness levels are also very good. The viewing angles are also great and the touch response is also pretty smooth. Overall, the display quality is vastly improved on the Moto G4 Plus.
Software:
One of the best features of having a Motorola device has been the latest software and also future updates. Moto G4 Plus comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box with stock experience. The UI is exactly the stock Android with no major change. The notification center is also the same implementation.
With Marshmallow, there have been some changes in Android including the option to check memory usage over a period of time. There is also an option to set the display color from the settings. You can also enable the System UI tweaker by pressing and holding the gear icon in the notification panel. This provides an additional option to tweak the quick toggles.
There is also a Moto app which is probably the only app which comes outside of stock Android. The Moto app provides you with some gestures which include switching on flashlight and camera. There is also a display option where you can see the notification when the display is turned off. This feature was available on Moto G3 as well.
Overall, if you like the stock Android experience without any customizations, Moto G4 Plus will not disappoint you.
Performance:
Moto G4 Plus is powered by Snapdragon 617 Octa-Core chipset clocked 1.5Ghz coupled with Adreno 405 and 3GB of RAM. There is also a variant with 2GB RAM. The performance of the device with the Snapdragon 617 was quite good and with stock UI which is optimized the overall performance was good. We used the device as our daily driver and we never experienced any lags or issues.
But the major issue with the device is when you stress the phone with heaving gaming or camera usage. We tested the gaming performance of the device and it heated up to 50 degrees and this is quite high and not a desirable performance. The camera UI also struggles with lag when you use it for a longer time. So for casual usage, the phone performs pretty well, but we are quite disappointed with the heating issue on the Moto G4 Plus.
The speaker performance from the front facing speaker is good although it is not as good as the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note. The call quality of the phone is good and we never had issues with call drops. The phone comes with a fingerprint scanner below the display. While it is quite awkward for a fingerprint scanner to be on the front panel for a device with on-screen navigational buttons, it still works pretty well. The scanner is quick and also accurate.
There is 32GB onboard storage on the device with an option to expand it to 128GB via micro SD card. Ideally, the Moto G4 isn’t suited for people with heavy usage from their smartphones.
Camera:
Moto G4 Plus comes with a 16MP rear camera with f/2.0, laser autofocus assisted with PDAF and dual LED flash. The front facing shooter is a 5MP. The camera is one of the major changes in the device in both the performance and also the interface. The camera interface is revamped and now it comes with new features retaining the simplicity.
The interface now comes with a professional mode which allows you to change the focus, ISO, exposure, shutter speed, and ISO. There is also support for slow motion and panorama along with photos and video mode. There is also auto HDR feature from the previous version. You also get electronic image stabilization in the video which works quite well and we found it to be performing better than OIS is other smartphones.
The camera interface is quite quick to capture photos, but the problem we faced is because of the heating of the device. After 10-15 minutes of continuous usage, the heating was pretty high and the camera was not responsive. We had to cool the device before we used the camera.
Now talking about the quality of photos, Moto G4 Plus comes with one of the best cameras in the sub 15k price point with excellent quality photos. The colors look great and so is the exposure and white balance. While the sharpness was quite good, we felt it could have been a tad better. The low light images also had good quality and the noise levels were kept to a minimum. Overall, the clarity of photos taken using the device was very good.
The video recording also was good with great colors and excellent video stabilization. The front facing camera is also very good for selfies with great color quality and overall detailing. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
Moto G4 Plus comes with a 3000mAh battery with turbocharging. We tested the battery capacity using a 4G LTE SIM card with moderate usage including browsing, gaming, taking photos, calls and also social networking and we ended up with 5 hours and 10 minutes of screen on time.
With Android 6.0, the battery performance is quite good on the device and the turbocharging option makes it even better.
Verdict:
While the improvements to the new generation Moto G4 Plus are good, one area where the phone fails to impress is the performance even with the stock Android. The heating on the device is considerable and it is hard to recommend to anyone who wants to get the best out of their smartphones.
But at the same time if you are looking for a phone with casual usage without much of gaming or heavy multitasking, then with an excellent camera, battery life, and stock UI, the Moto G4 Plus is a decent buy. We would suggest you to check out Lenovo’s ZUK Z1 and Redmi Note 3 which are better in terms of performance when compared to Moto G4 Plus.
