Motorola’s Moto Z was an impressive phone that added some much-needed innovation to an increasingly stagnating smartphone market, with a series of mods that added funky features like a portable projector or a 10x optical zoom camera. Now there’s a new Moto Z2, that’s thinner and lighter and faster. Here’s what it is, how much it costs and when you can get one.
Built around a 5.5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, the Z2 Play is just 5.99mm thick and weighs just 145g, significantly lighter than other similar-screened phones like the 195g Sony Xperia XZ Premium. That 5.99mm figure excludes the Z2’s significant camera bump, but the bump exists purely because the phone’s designed to be thin enough to accommodate mods on it every day. There’s a battery boosting TurboPower Pack that adds an extra day of charge according to Moto, and recharges the phone itself quickly as well as charging itself from the wall at 30 Watts of power, as well as new wireless charging rear shells.
Those might not be too crucial, though, given that Motorola says you can top up the Z2 Play’s 3000mAh internal cell with seven hours’ usage in just 15 minutes — though that’s a wishy-washy metric in itself. It’s also Moto’s first phone with pixel-level autofocus on its 12-megapixel f/1.7 rear camera — which should mean detailed photos even in low light — and the dual-LED flash on the front camera returns from the original Moto Z.
Under the hood, the Z2 Play has a mid-range octa-core Snapdragon 626 processor, which trades outright computing power for efficiency and should mean good battery life. It’s also good to see that Motorola has equipped its newest phone with Android 7.1.1, as well as all the bespoke Moto ‘Experiences’ — the nifty always-on Moto Display, gesture control through Moto Actions and Moto Voice for handsfree voice control — as well as Google Assistant, of course.
The Moto Z2 Play goes on sale today on Motorola’s website, as well as through Harvey Norman, The Good Guys and Officeworks for $699. The two new mods for the Z2 Play, the TurboPower Pack and wireless charging Moto Style Shells, can be picked up for $99 and $59 respectively.
Those aren’t the only phones newly on offer from Moto, though. Alongside the Z2 Play, Motorola also took the opportunity to launch the very entry-level $249 Moto E4 and $149 Moto C. The Moto E4, latest in the line of the basic E series, has a 5-inch 720p display and metal body which hides a 2800mAh battery, while the cameras are 8 megapixel at the rear and 5 megapixels at the front, and it runs Android 7.1 — relatively rare for a cheap phone to be up to date. The Moto C is also on Nougat but its 5-inch screen is only 480p, it has a 2350mAh battery and its cameras are 5-megapixel and 2-megapixel. [Motorola]
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2016/12/motorola-moto-z-australian-review/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/moto_z_1-410×231.jpg” title=”Motorola Moto Z: Australian Review” excerpt=”Step back, LG G5. There’s a funky new modular smartphone on sale in Australia, and it’s also — in its standard, straight-out-of-the-box guise — the world’s thinnest. Motorola’s Moto Z measures just 5.2mm from front to back, but still has the latest in high-tech hardware under the hood. Where LG’s top Android phone ejects its modular components like a pistol’s magazine, though, the Moto Z snaps them onto its rear case to add extra battery power, a high-res camera or a more powerful speaker.”]