Recently Moto announced an upgraded variant of the popular G5 Plus (review), the Moto G5S Plus and it is also the first Moto smartphone with dual camera. Moto G5S Plus is also called a special edition and comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display and is powered by Snapdragon 625 Octa core processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage. It packs a dual 13MP sensor on the rear panel with dual LED flash. The front camera has also improved to 8MP with front flash. The device is priced Rs 15,999 and how does it stack up against the competition? Let’s find out in the detailed Moto G5S Plus review.
Design and Build:
While the Moto G5 Plus had quite a unique design with premium metal quality, Moto G5S Plus has improved it with a unibody design which looks quite similar to the previously released Moto M. Moto G5S Plus is made of a single block of metal and it looks really premium. The build quality is also very good with a matte finish rear panel. The circular camera unit has a slight projection and it houses the 13MP dual camera and dual LED flash. There is a chrome accent around the camera unit. The old Moto logo is also back on the rear panel. The two antenna lines are visible as it is made of single block of metal. The edges are curved and the rear panel has tapered edges. The front panel is mostly unchanged and you see the front 8MP camera and here you get a flash as well. The display size is 5.5 inch and below the display you get the fingerprint scanner.
The power and volume keys are on the right side, while the SIM tray is on the left side. The top houses the 3.5 mm audio jack while the bottom panel has micro USB charging slot and speaker unit. Even though Moto G5S Plus is an upgrade, Motorola has not considered including USB C type on this device. Overall, the design and build quality of the device is really good and feels premium.
Display:
With the G5S Plus, Moto has made the display once again to 5.5 inches from 5.2 which was available on Moto g5 Plus. It has a 5.5 inch Full HD IPS LCD panel with 1080p (full HD) resolution. The display quality is good and the viewing angles are also good. The colors and sharpness levels are again quite good, so is the touch response. There is also Corning Gorilla glass protection offered on the display. You can also set the display colors from the settings and choose between standard and vivid colors. Overall, the display feels quite good and it is definitely a vivid display.
Software:
One of the most important aspects of using a Moto device is the pure or stock Android experience. The Moto G5S Plus comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat with the stock UI. The phone comes with app drawer similar to the Pixel. The notification center and quick toggles are exactly the same as that you get on stock UI.
There is also an option to set the display color from the settings.
The only additional app on G5S Plus is the Moto app which provides actions and gestures. Moto app provides some useful features in Moto Actions and Moto display. You can also turn off on-screen navigational button and use the fingerprint scanner. 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.
The Moto actions include chop twice for flashlight, twist for capture, shrink screen and more. The Moto display has night display option along with Moto display which shows new notifications on the display even when screen is turned off.
Overall, if you are a person who loves pure Android experience, Moto G5S Plus won’t disappoint you and it is upgradable to next version of Android as well.
Performance:
The Moto G5S Plus is powered by the Snapdragon 625 Octa core processor clocked at 2.0Ghz and coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. While this is the same chipset that powered the Moto G5 Plus, here you get only one variant and it comes with 64GB storage. But unlike G5 Plus, the G5S plus does not feature dedicated SD card, instead it is hybrid SIM card.
The phone performs well in day to day usage and there was hardly any issues we faced during our testing. It responded well to all the tasks it was put to. The gaming performance of the device was also quite good and barring a few frame skips, it was quite good overall performance. Since the phone comes with stock Android experience, the performance was good. There was no heating issue on the phone.
Multitasking is also implemented in the stock Android manner and you also get split screen mode. The phone comes with dual SIM cards along with 4G LTE and VoLTE. The phone has front firing speakers and it works quite well. The call quality of the device is also very good.
The device has a front facing fingerprint scanner which is quick to unlock the device, you can also disable the on-screen navigational buttons and use the fingerprint scanner for navigation with gestures. There is hardly anything to complain about the performance.
Camera:
The Moto G5 Plus was one of the good camera smartphones and now Moto has added a dual camera set up on G5S Plus. The phone comes with a dual 13MP shooter with RGB and Monochrome sensor working in tandem. The camera has F/2.0 and PDAF along with dual tone dual LED flash. The front camera has also been improved to 8MP wide angle camera with a LED flash. The camera interface is mostly unchanged and packs the basic options like photo, panorama, video modes. One of the newer option is depth enabled mode.
Additionally, the G5 Plus comes with 4K video recording and Full HD video recording at 60FPS. Now coming to the camera samples taken with the device, the daylight shots came out well with good detailing and color quality. The sharpness levels are also quite decent, although not as good as Lenovo K8 Note. The focusing was not the fastest and the camera interface is painfully slow when taking depth mode and low light captures. We are expecting Moto to fix these issues with updates.
The low light performance of the camera was quite disappointing as you could see a lot of noise in the low light captures and were not the best in the segment. Even with adequate light, the low light performance was just average. There is 4k video recording along with 1080p and the quality was quite good for a phone in this segment. The camera also supports EIS. The depth enabled mode or the Boken mode is quite similar to Lenovo K8 Note and it is pretty inconsistent, but does a decent job with portrait photos. Here are some of the samples taken with the phone.
Battery Life:
The Moto G5S Plus comes with the 3000mAh battery, the same capacity as that of G5 Plus, but it has a bigger 5.5 inch display to power. We tested the battery life on the device and found it to last a day of usage and the screen on time could be around 4 to 4.5 hours based on the usage. The phone also comes with turbo charging out of the box which allows you to get 6 hours of battery life with 15 minutes of charging.
Verdict:
The Moto G5 Plus launched earlier was a good package which was priced slightly higher than the competition. Moto G5S Plus retails for Rs 15,999 and there is only one variant available. With Moto G5S Plus Moto has added bigger display and dual cameras. Moto G5S Plus needs an update to fix the camera issues, mainly the lag and also the depth mode.
Moto G5S Plus is a good offering for people who are looking for stock Android experience with Moto’s reliability. If you are already a Moto G5 Plus user, we do not think it is a great upgrade as the cameras are not better than G5 Plus. The device is available on Amazon for Rs 15,999.
