After a series of many leaks and revelations, the Lenovo-owned Motorola on Thursday officially launched its second generation of Moto Z Play, dubbed as “Moto Z2 Play” in the US smartphone market. Priced at $499 (approximately Rs. 32,100), the new Moto Z2 Play will be made available for purchase in the US in early July. As of now, the company has not revealed the pricing details and availability of the phone for other markets. The smartphone will be made available in Lunar Grey and Fine Gold colour variants.
In addition to the Moto Z2 Play, Motorola has also launched four new Moto Mods. These new varieties of Moto Mods include a new JBL SoundBoost 2, TurboPower Pack, Moto Shells with wireless charging and a new Moto GamePad. Like its predecessor, the Moto Z2 Play also supports Moto Mods accessories for powerful sound, extra battery backup, wireless charging, and full-on gameplay controls. As for pricing, the new JBL SoundBoost 2 and the TurboPower Pack comes at $79 (approximately Rs. 5,100). The new Moto Shells with wireless charging starts from $39 (approximately Rs. 2,500). Lastly, a new Moto GamePad is priced at $79 (approximately Rs. 5,100). All Moto Mods will be available in July in the US, except the Moto GamePad, which is expected to launch later this summer.
In terms of design, the Moto Z2 Play is very similar to the Moto Z Play with respect to design. The second generation Moto Z Play sports a metal unibody design with a metal frame all around giving it an overall premium look. The new Moto Z2 Play also features onscreen navigation buttons and a fingerprint scanner, that is housed underneath the Home Button of the device. The volume rockers as well as the power/lock buttons are placed on the right-hand edge of the smartphone and a 3.5mm audio socket is placed on the bottom edge of the device. The speaker grille is seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a USB Type-C port sitting in the middle. The rear panel houses a 12-megapixel camera and the connecting pins for the Moto Mods are also seen at the back side, while the top front panel features a selfie camera, dual-LED CCT (colour correlated temperature) flash, and an earpiece.
Moto Z2 Play specifications and features:
In terms of specifications, the Motorola Moto Z2 Play sports a 5.5-inch full-HD Super AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1080 × 1920 pixels and scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on top of the display. The device is powered by an octa core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 626 processor paired with Adreno 506 GPU to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the Moto Z2 Play comes in two models– a 3GB RAM with 32GB storage variant, and a 4GB RAM with 64GB storage variant. Both the native storages can be further expanded up to 2TB via a dedicated microSD card slot. Talking about its software front, the device runs on Google’s Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system out of the box.
In terms of photography, the Moto Z2 Play features a 12-megapixel primary rear camera with an f/1.7 aperture, phase detection and laser autofocus, dual-tone LED flash. Other features of the rear-camera include 1.4 µm pixel size sensor, touch focus, geo-tagging, panorama, face detection, and Auto-HDR. The rear camera is also capable recording 4K UHD videos at 30fps. On the front, there is a 5-megapixel front-facing shooter with an f/2.2 aperture, wide-angle lens, and a dual-LED CCT flash for capturing better selfies and making video calls.
In terms of connectivity, the Moto Z2 Play offers various connectivity options including 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz), NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/A-GPS, FM radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a USB 3.1 Type-C port for super-fast charging and other connectivity. The device is fuelled by a decent 3000 mAh non-removable battery that is rated to deliver up to 30 hours of talk time on 3G network. Sensors on board include Fingerprint (front-mounted), Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, Ambient Light Sensor, and Proximity sensor. The handset measures 156.2 x 76.2 x 5.99mm and weighs around 145 grams.
