With releases such as the G series, Z2 Play, and the Moto C Plus, Moto has been making their presences felt this year to the people. Today, we’ll still be taking a look at one of their entry-level offerings in the sub-10k market, the Moto E4 Plus. With a massive 5000mAh battery, how will it live to our tests? Well, let’s find out.
Moto E4 Plus
| Chipset | MediaTek MT6737 |
| Screen | 5.5-inch IPS, 1280 x 720 |
| RAM | 3GB |
| OS | Android 7.1.1 Nougat |
| Rear Camera | 13MP, f/2.0, AF, LED Flash |
| Front Camera | 5MP, f/2.2, LED Flash |
| Storage | 16GB/32GB expandable up to 128GB via hybrid microSD slot |
| Connectivity | Dual-SIM, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, microUSB |
| Battery | 5,000mAh |
| Others | Fingerprint Sensor |
| Weight | 198g |
| Colors | Iron Gray, Fine Gold |
| Price | PhP 8,999 |
Unboxing
Much like the Moto C Plus, the Moto E4 Plus comes in a bright-colored box. Inside its box is a charger, a microUSB cable, earphones, and documentation. Pretty basic stuff.
Design and Features
The Moto E4 Plus is a bulky, beast of burden compared to other smartphones in this price range such as the OPPO A71 and the Vivo Y55s. This is due to the massive 5,000mAh battery inside the handset.
The screen is a 5.5-inch IPS display at a resolution of 1280 x 720 which totals for a pixel density of 267ppi. It’s bright enough to use outdoors under a bit of sunlight but don’t expect any miracles. Viewing angles are also good without any noticeable color shifts at any kind of weird angles.
At the top of the front-facing section of the Moto E4 Plus is the 5MP f/2.2 camera and its LED flash as well as a light sensor and the speakers. Beyond that is the 3.5mm audio jack.
Moto has integrated the navigation keys to the screen, however, the Moto E4 Plus still has a large bottom lip due to the fingerprint sensor. It would’ve been more sense if Moto just used physical navigation keys instead of on-screen ones since there’ still a sizeable bottom lip. Further down the handset are the microUSB port, microphone, and the grilles for the stereo speakers.
At the right-hand side of the E4 Plus are the volume rocker and the power button. The latter having ridges to differentiate itself from the rocker. This helps if you want to adjust the volume without taking out the handset from your bag or pocket.
The Moto E4 Plus doesn’t have a SIM tray. The rear, however, can be removed by tugging on a little notch on near the bottom of the smartphone. The handset can house either two SIM cards or you can sacrifice a SIM card and replace it with a microSD slot since one of the slots is a hybrid slot.
The rear of the Moto E4 Plus is completely made out of plastic. Despite its rough look, the rear is actually quite smooth, too smooth for our liking. We found our grip constantly slipping when quickly picking up the handset.
Much like with other Moto smartphones, the rear camera of the Moto E4 Plus sports a circular design with both the camera module and the LED flash inside. In this case, the E4 Plus has a 13MP, f/2.0 camera supplemented by autofocus.
Weighing in at 198g, the Moto E4 Plus is a pretty hefty smartphone for its size thanks to the 5,000mAh battery. Overall though, the smartphone is pretty solidly built despite its slippery rear.
User Interface
Much like other Moto smartphones in recent memory, the Moto E4 Plus comes pre-installed with a stock version of Google’s Android 7.1.1 Nougat. The app drawer can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom while the notification menu can be brought down by doing the reverse. It’s pretty standard stuff and it’s a love it or hate it situation to have stock Android on your smartphone. We’ll let you be the judge of that.
Entertainment
As you can probably notice from the photo above, there’s a bit of a problem when viewing the 1280 x 720p display up close. Its larger 5.5-inch screen also doesn’t help the lower pixel density when viewed up close. On normal usage, however, you probably won’t notice the individual pixels. As we’ve said colors are pretty good as well as its viewing angles due to the display’s IPS nature.
Much like the Moto C Plus, the E4 Plus’ bottom-firing speakers are pretty decent considering its price. You won’t get the best audio reproduction of bass and higher-ranges but it does an okay job when it comes to regular use.
Camera
The camera UI of the Moto E4 Plus is fairly basic. You have options for beautification, flash, switching rear and front cameras, HDR, and a timer. You can activate a burst mode by tapping on the capture icon or by pressing power and volume down simultaneously. Adjusting the exposure is pretty easy. Once you tap to focus, you can adjust the exposure by sliding the meter that appears on the focus area to either the left or right.
Much like the Moto C Plus, the rear camera of the Moto E4 Plus takes good images in well-exposed conditions. Colors are well-saturated without being overly so, though some of the finer details are lost upon closer inspection. Low-light performance is a bit better than its sibling, but the camera does have a tendency to use slower shutter speed instead of higher ISO when taking photos. This is problematic only if you have shaky hands.
Meanwhile, the 5MP f/2.2 front-facing camera does take serviceable selfies although some of the details are a bit smudged even in good-lighting conditions.
Performance
In terms of processing power, the Moto E4 Plus has a MediaTek MT6737; a quad-core SoC clocked at 1.30GHz with an on-die Mali-T720 GPU. It does an okay job running the handset. But since this is the same SoC on the Moto C Plus, the Moto E4 Plus does slow down a bit under heavy workloads.
As far as benchmarks go, the MT6737 SoC inside the E4 Plus was able to get a score of 31757 in AnTuTu and 2848 in PCMark’s Work 2.0 benchmark.
Connectivity
It’s a bit disappointing that Moto didn’t use a triple SIM slot on the E4 Plus. OPPO’s A71 fares much better in this area. With the E4 Plus, you will either use a dual SIM setup or sacrifice one of the SIM cards for a microSD card to expand its 32GB internal storage.
As far as connectivity goes, we didn’t have any problems with the E4 Plus. WiFi and Bluetooth are stable and the 4G LTE connection is stable given that you’re in a well-covered area by your choice of provider.
Battery Life
Due to its large 5,000mAh battery, the Moto E4 Plus is able to last a very long time. Under careful usage you can reach more than two days with this handset. As far as benchmarking goes, the E4 Plus was able to reach 12 hours and 6 minutes with medium brightness and volume.
Charging the Moto E4 Plus is its drawback. It’s large battery needs around 2 hours of charging to reach 100% but it’s a price worth paying for its long battery life.
Conclusion
Based on what we’ve seen from the Moto E4 Plus, it essentially a bigger version of the Moto C Plus. It has the same battery size, SoC, and resolution. With bigger components does come a bigger price. The E4 Plus is priced at PhP 8,999, a full PhP 2,700 more than the C Plus. It, however, does improve in some areas such as a larger screen and the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner at the front
The E4 Plus does have the same advantages as the C Plus. The big battery allows you to have more screen time outside and the SoC enables you to compute decently without any major slowdowns except in heavy workloads. The cameras are decent, however, the offerings from Vivo and OPPO in this price range do shine more in this area compared to the Moto handset.
If you can sacrifice screen size and a fingerprint scanner, then the Moto C Plus would be a much better deal. If you want a larger screen (but the same resolution) with the same big battery as the Moto C Plus, then by all means the Moto E4 Plus can be your daily driver
