Lenovo’s first batch of Motorola phones are causing quite a stir – the Moto Z Force gets top billing, followed by the Moto Z, and now they have released their more midrange device, the Moto Z Play. While the US has enjoyed the new Moto Zs for a while now, our Canadian brethren have been left hanging – just waiting to get their hands on the new Moto Z line-up.However, Lenovo plans to release the Moto Z and the newly announced – at IFA in Berlin – Moto Z Play at the same time in Canada, sometime this September for $650.
The Moto Z line caused quite a stir with its Moto Mods, which can be used on all three models, allowing the user to expand the phone’s features. Another highlight is that the Moto Z is currently the thinnest phone measuring a mere 5.2mm wide – so thin in fact that Lenovo removed the 3.5mm headphone jack and to use headphones, you must use a supplied adaptor that converts the Type-C USB port to a 3.5mm jack. While the Moto Z Force and Moto Z Play have a wider 7mm width, Lenovo still kept off the 3.5mm headphone jack on the Moto Z Force, but surprisingly included it in the Moto Z Play. Another nice feature of the Moto Z Play is the inclusion of an enormous 3510mAh battery – the largest of the three devices – that Lenovo claims will last about 45 hours on a single charge. Continuing with Moto Z Play features, if your battery gets low, they include the TurboPower charger that can give you up to 9 hours of battery life on a mere 15-minute charge. Those are some nice features for a midrange smartphone.
The Moto Z Play sports a 5.5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display with 403 pixels-per-inch (PPI.) It uses a Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz and an Adreno 506 GPU to handle the graphics. It packs 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that is expandable up to 256GB via a microSD card. It has a 16MP primary camera with Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) and laser focus, with a dual-toned LED flash, and an aperture of f/2.0. The front-facing camera (FFC) is a 5MP with f/2.2 aperture and a LED flash for selfies and video chatting. The Z Play sports a fingerprint sensor and NFC for mobile payments and is nano-coated for IP52 water resistance.