Moto has a great showing this year. From the top-end to the entry-level, Moto has something for everyone from the high-end Z2 Play to the mid-range G series. In this particular review, we’ll be taking a look at one of their budget models. Released back in July this year, let’s see if the Moto C Plus has the potential to fight the good fight in the entry-level bracket.
Moto C Plus
| Chipset | MediaTek MT6737 |
| Screen | 5.0-inch IPS, 720p |
| RAM | 2GB |
| OS | Android 7.0 Nougat |
| Rear Camera | 8MP, f/2.2, AF, LED Flash |
| Front Camera | 2MP, LED Flash |
| Storage | 16GB Internal, 32GB via microSD |
| Network | Dual-SIM, 4G LTE, 3G HSPA |
| Connectivity | microUSB, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, A-GPS, |
| Battery | 4,000mAh |
| Weight | 162g |
| Price | PhP 6,299 |
Unboxing
The Moto C Plus comes in a bright, colorful box that’s sure to get your attention in the shops. Inside are a pretty basic selection of items: the Moto C Plus, a wall charger, a microUSB cable, documentation, and the removable 4000mAh battery.
Design and Features
The Moto C Plus is a bulky smartphone due to its massive removable 4000mAh battery. At the front is a 5.0-inch IPS 720p screen with a pixel density of 294ppi. Due to its smaller screen size, you won’t really notice the individual pixels of the 720p display unless you scrutinize it up close.
Much like the Vivo Y55s, the Moto C Plus’ display brightness has a problem under daylight. It’s not as bad as the Doogee Mix, but you’ll only see a bit of information on the screen under sunlight. The handset, however, does pretty good in viewing angles. There’s isn’t much color shifting when looking at the display at an off-angle.
At the top of the Moto C Plus is are its earphones, LED flash, and its 2MP front-facing camera.
The top portion also has the 3.5mm jack and the microUSB port. It’s a weird placement of the microUSB port especially since most smartphones have them at the bottom.
The bottom portion of the handset houses the navigation buttons. To save production costs, these capacitive keys aren’t backlit, which isn’t much of an issue for a smartphone at this price.
The volume rocker and power button are located at the right-hand side of the Moto C Plus. They give a solid, tactile feel when pressing them. Allowing you to firmly know that you’ve activated one of the switches.
The whole handset is made from plastic. The rear, however, tries to detract from the fact by having a bit of texture when holding it.
Speaking of the rear, it also houses the 8MP main camera of the Moto C Plus complemented by an LED flash. It seems that Moto is set on having this circular rear camera design in their smartphones since the Moto Z2 Play and the recently released G series also have the same design philosophy.
The rear backplate can be removed by tugging on the notch on the bottom of the Moto C Plus.
This exposes the innards of the handset where you can see the Dual-SIM slot and the microSD slot of the device.
Despite its bulky design, the Moto C Plus is a well-built budget smartphone. Despite its plastic construction, the textured rear detracts a bit from the fact. The camera is also flush against the rear backplate so the backside of the smartphone is completely flat. A good job overall from Motorola.
User Interface
The Moto C Plus comes with stock Android 7.0 Nougat. There’s no traditional app drawer. Instead, you’ll need to swipe up from the home screen to go to the app drawer. The notification menu can be dropped down from the top of the screen with a single swipe. If you’re a sucker for stock Android, then the Moto C Plus will delight you. If you’ve spoiled by UIs from other brands, however, using stock Android will take some time to get used to. Since it is stock Android, only the default apps are present on the Moto C Plus out the box.
Entertainment
Due to its 5.0-inch display, the 720p resolution isn’t much of an issue when viewing the screen at a normal distance. Colors produced by the Moto C Plus are decent but not exceptional. Contrast is also well-defined especially when watching media with dark scenes. You won’t experience much color shifting when viewing in an odd angle due to its IPS display.
The speakers are surprisingly serviceable. There’s some depth when listening to music through the external speakers. Bass and highs, however, leaves something to be desired. Both frequencies sound muddled when listening to its max volume.
Camera
The Moto C Plus’ camera UI is minimalistic and doesn’t offer much in the way of customization. You only have options for beautify, flash, rear and front cameras, and HDR. Exposure can be manually set on the slider that appears when you tap-to-focus the camera. There’s also a burst mode that can be activated pressing the power + volume down buttons. Once used, the camera will capture 40 images in succession.
The 8MP rear camera of the Moto C Plus takes decent images in well-lit areas. Upon closer inspection, however, finer details are lost. Low-light performance is mediocre as you can see from the photo we took of SM City North EDSA. There’s very little definition between dark and dimly lit areas.
Much like the rear camera, the front-facing 5MP camera of the Moto C Plus lose finer details. There’s also a bit of beautification at work when taking selfies so your face doesn’t look as natural as in real life.
Performance
Inside the Moto C Plus is a MediaTek MT6737, which is a quad-core processor clocked at 1.25GHz with a Mali-T720 GPU. Based on our experience, it does a decent job under light to medium load. Under heavy load such as graphically intensive games, however, the processor does have a bit of a problem catching up with the workload. Animation is painfully slow as well but it’s nothing a few fixes from the developer options can’t fix.
Based on our benchmarks, the Moto C Plus was able to reach 29724 in AnTuTu and 2590 in PCMark’s Work 2.0 benchmark, which are decent scores keeping in mind that the Moto C Plus is only an entry-level device.
Connectivity
The Moto C Plus is loaded with connectivity options. Aside from the standard Dual-SIM, 3G, 4G, LTE, WiFi, and GPS, the handset also comes with Bluetooth 4.2 and an independent microSD slot. This means that you can use two SIM cards together with a microSD card. No more choosing from one or the other. We also didn’t have any problems texting, placing a call, or navigating using Google Maps.
Battery Life
This is where the Moto C Plus shines. Together with its low power SoC and massive removable 4000mAh, you can definitely reach more than two days under light to medium load. Under stress benchmarks the Moto C Plus reaches more than 13 hours of usage.
As far as charging the massive battery, it would take some time. In our experience 30% to 100% takes around two hours of charging. That’s a tiny concession for a long lasting budget smartphone.
Conclusion
Priced at PhP 6,299, the Moto C Plus isn’t much of a camera phone. It does, however, shine in other areas. Media consumption with the Moto C Plus is a surprisingly decent experience with its IPS display and serviceable speakers. The smaller screen and resolution does hurt it a bit but you won’t really notice the difference if you’re watching movies with the handset more than 12 inches away from your face.
The Moto C Plus really shines in its battery performance. With its removable 4000mAh battery and low-power specs, you handset can last more than 2 days with some careful considerations. This is especially helpful when you’re just using your smartphone to look at social media or for media consumption such as music and movies. If you want an entry-level smartphone with a long-lasting battery life so long as you don’t mind the mediocre photos, then the Moto C Plus will be a good buy for you.
