Moto X Play is an Android

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

developed by

Motorola Mobility Motorola Mobility LLC, marketing as Motorola, is an American consumer electronics manufacturer primarily producing smartphones and other mobile devices running Android (operating system), Android. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese te ...

, a subsidiary of

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

. Unveiled on July 28, 2015, it was one of three devices that succeeded the second-generation Moto X. In contrast to the high-end

Moto X Style The Moto X Style (branded as Moto X Pure Edition in the US) is the flagship third-generation of Moto X Android smartphone developed and manufactured by Motorola that was released on September 2, 2015. Release The Style was announced on July 28, ...

, the Play is a mid-range device distinguished by its high battery capacity. It was released in Canada, Europe, and Latin America in August 2015. In the United States, it was unveiled in October 2015 as the Droid Maxx 2, as part of the Droid line of smartphones that are manufactured by Motorola exclusively for

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

Specifications

Design

The Moto X Play's chassis features a faux metallic bezel and a textured rear cover, and is splash-resistant. The phone has a 5.5 inch display with sizable bezels; the upper bezel houses the front-facing camera and a speaker/earpiece grill while the lower bezel houses a speaker grill. On the side frame; there is a power button and a volume rocker at the right, a SIM/microSD card tray and a 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top, and a microUSB 2.0 port at the bottom; the left side is empty. At the back, there is the rear-facing camera, the LED flash and a "Motorola" logo. When purchasing the phone it was possible to choose the colour of the microphone and speaker inserts, new central area on the back around the camera and flash and the rear cover from a range of colours and finishes. The rear cover can be removed and replaced with differently-colored versions to customize the phone; no other user-replaceable parts are present under the cover as the battery is non-removable.

Hardware

Moto X Play is powered by

Qualcomm Snapdragon Snapdragon is a suite of system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm, who often refers to these SoCs as "mobile platforms". They typically integrate central processing units (CPU) based o ...

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system-on-chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and da ...

with a 1.7 GHz octa-core

ARM Cortex-A53 The ARM Cortex-A53 is one of the first two central processing units implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre, along with the Cortex-A57. The Cortex-A53 is a 2-wide decode superscalar p ...

64-bit

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

and an

Adreno Adreno is a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) semiconductor intellectual property cores developed by Qualcomm and used in many of their SoCs. History Adreno is an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) within Qualcomm's Snapdrago ...

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GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

. The phone features a 5.5-inch

1080p 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the sc ...

IPS LCD IPS (in-plane switching) is a screen technology for liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). In IPS, a layer of liquid crystals is sandwiched between two glass surfaces. The liquid crystal molecules are aligned parallel to those surfaces in predetermined ...

display with 1080x1920 pixels resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio and 424 ppi pixel density. It is available with 2 GB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

and 16 or 32 GB of internal storage expandable via

microSD Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...

card. The Moto X Play includes a non-removable 3630 mAh battery, which Motorola rated as providing 48 hours of mixed usage on a single charge. It also features a 21-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with wide-angle lens.

Software

The Moto X Play shipped with Android 5.1.1 "Lollipop", customized with Motorola's suite of apps including Moto Display, Moto Voice, and Moto Assist. In January 2016, Motorola began to release an update to Android 6.0 "Marshmallow". It enables new features such as " Google Now on Tap", which allows users to perform searches within the context of information currently being displayed on-screen, and "Doze", which optimizes battery usage when the device is not being physically handled. An update to Android 7.1.1 "Nougat" was released in June 2017 for international models and February 2018 for U.S. Droid Maxx 2 models.

Variants

The Moto X Play has several variants to support 3G and 4G networks of different carriers: All variants support the four 2G GSM bands 850/900/1800/1900.

Reception

''The Verge'' considered the Moto X Play to be a "more perfect

Nexus 5 Nexus 5 (code-named Hammerhead) is an Android smartphone sold by Google and manufactured by LG Electronics. It is the fifth generation of the Nexus series, succeeding the Nexus 4. It was unveiled on October 31, 2013 and served as the laun ...

" due to its balance of capabilities and value, and arguing that its camera was one of the best seen on a Motorola to date (although struggling in low-light conditions), but noting that the software on their device appeared to have performance issues. NotebookCheck was generally positive about the device. The rear camera image quality, the display quality and the battery life were praised. It was concluded that the Moto X Play could "easily cope with 99% of all everyday situations, apps and games" but some of the opponents such as

OnePlus 2 The OnePlus 2 (also abbreviated as OP2) is a smartphone designed by OnePlus. It is the successor to the OnePlus One. OnePlus revealed the phone on 28 July 2015 via virtual reality, using Google's Cardboard visor and its own app. OnePlus sold ...

had more "computing power". ''Mobile Syrup'' gave Moto X Play an average review citing poor build quality and as it "it feels closer to a higher-spec

Moto G Motorola Moto is a range of Android mobile devices manufactured by Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Lenovo, since 2013. This article lists the various Moto series of devices as well as discontinued series. The Moto brand is also used and marke ...

than it does to a whittled-down

", and was also critical about the Moto X Style's absence from the Canadian market. https://mobilesyrup.com/2015/08/26/moto-x-play-review/

References

{{Motorola phones, state=collapsed Android (operating system) devices Motorola smartphones Mobile phones introduced in 2015 Discontinued smartphones