How to make a good and inexpensive smartphone? Add a big screen, a big battery, a modern version of Android, and sell the whole set for a fair price. I want to tell you about Motorola Moto E4 Plus – a new smartphone, where the main feature is a high-capacity battery. I love long-playing devices, so I asked the phone for testing and I want to talk about it. Who are its competitors? Endless Meizu and Xiaomi, ZTE and Honor – in the group “smartphones under 14,000 rubles” is very hot, which is not there.

Metallic and plump

Unlike a number of Chinese counterparts, here the fingerprint scanner is located in front under the screen, which is convenient. True, the scanner itself is not particularly fast and does not unlock the phone at lightning speed, a slight pause is noticeable. Pressed, the phone thought a little, unlocked.

The touch button supports gesture control: you can hide the softkeys, launch the task manager, or go back a step by touching this pad and swiping left or right with your finger.

The case is perfectly assembled, the back panel is removable, it is made of aluminum and is combined with small plastic inserts at the top and bottom. The gray body would have looked quite ordinary if it were not for the large black spot in the center where the camera and flash are located. The designers tried to somehow distinguish the phone from a bunch of similar ones.

I won’t scold the phone for its increased thickness and weight under 200 grams, if this is too much for you, then the “regular” Moto E4 is selected – it is thinner. And here lies a large battery, hence such dimensions.

Large display

5.5 inches and HD resolution – not enough? Well, if you purposefully look for pixels, then you will find them, and if you don’t bother about this, then you won’t notice them at arm’s length. Of course, life would be better with Full HD, but then there would be performance problems. However, more on that later.

Glass with 2.5D is slightly curved at the edges, the oleophobic coating is of average quality, but I was more bothered by small scratches and scuffs on the screen. If you care about the appearance of the phone, then you definitely need a film or protective glass.

Worried about wide bezels? Yes, they are noticeable, but the model is almost the youngest in the line, what are the complaints. I liked the large margin of brightness, as well as the fact that in the evenings the backlight does not hurt your eyes when you read in the dark. If desired, you can turn on the “night mode”, then the image takes on a yellowish tint, the eyes are less tired.

A nice moment: when you pick up the phone from the table, the backlight of the screen is activated and you can see the notification icons, as well as the battery level on the lock screen.

Speed up

When I set up the phone, I noticed that it does not work too fast. Quite strange, considering that he was “naked” and without software. But in the 2 weeks that I spent with the Moto E4 Plus, the impression remained the same: it is a slow device. It tweaks the menu, applications, I was especially surprised by the wild jerks in the Google Play Games application – I went to look at my achievements, and the phone barely scrolled through the list. Gee, I haven’t seen this in a long time.
[infogram id=”nedorogie_smartfoni” prefix=”ApZ” format=”interactive” title=”Inexpensive smartphones”] The hero of the occasion is the MediaTek MT6737 processor, although I would not say that it is completely weak, I recently tested Meizu M5c with the same stuffing , so Meizu worked much smoother.

Given that there is a clean Android 7 without impurities and shells, and even 3 GB of RAM, the conclusion suggests itself: the developers did not finish something. I hope that the firmware will fix everything, but for now I have to use what I have. So, put up with lags in toys and more or less demanding programs.

The phone has NFC – Android Pay works fine, you can pay for purchases without taking out a card, conveniently. The phone has two slots for SIM-cards, Wi-Fi only works with 2.4 GHz. Another convenient point is that two SIM cards can be used simultaneously with a memory card – usually in Chinese phones, for this you need to remove the second SIM card.

Simple camera, simple sound

The camera is ordinary, “C grade”. HDR is slow, the phone takes decent pictures, you can capture text or landscape, but looking at the shots on the screen, you will notice that the dynamic range suffers and often get white rather than blue skies.

Is it foolish to wish miracles from a model of this class? Well, I don’t think Xiaomi or ZTE shoot better for the same money. The front camera with flash makes taking selfies at night a little more convenient, but overexposed faces are still not pleasing to the eye. As for video recording, HD-resolution is currently a very modest indicator, there is not even anything to comment on.

The only speaker is located on the bottom end, it is loud, the ringtone is well heard, and YouTube videos are also convenient to watch, there is enough volume margin. If you listen to music, you can play with the Dolby Atmos settings – suddenly, you will find a special mode for music. I didn’t hear that, just a normal sound.

The battery does not take out

Let’s move on to the final part of the story, to the battery life. A 5,000 mAh battery is a guarantee of long battery life, I thought. Guess how long the battery lasted on average? For 1-2 days of work, I could not squeeze more out of the phone. If you watch a video on YouTube, it takes 10% per hour – the indicator is good, but not a record, and you expect records from a high-capacity power source.

It seems that the screen resolution is low and the processor is low-power, but even such a combination turned out to be ineffective, I would not count on a long operating time. Therefore, if you are looking for a phone with excellent autonomy, I would look towards the more expensive, but more practical Lenovo P2 model.

Moreover, in the PC Mark 07 benchmark, where the operating time is measured, the smartphone showed good results – 15 hours, but not the best, I expected more from it. For example, budget Xiaomi with a 4,000 mAh battery last longer. Charging time from the supplied power supply is 3.5 hours.

I thought maybe I got a defective sample, but a friend bought himself the same phone, his operating time indicators were the same.

Opinion

The Moto E4 Plus looks good on paper, long-lasting and not very expensive (by Moto standards), but in practice it doesn’t have the most practical features. A plump smartphone with a gluttonous processor did not please with autonomy indicators in everyday use, although in tests the results were decent.

In my opinion, it is more interesting to look towards the Moto G5 Plus, and indeed there are enough alternatives for such money. Still, 13,990 rubles, which they ask for Moto E4 Plus, is a tangible amount for a smartphone with a budget filling, but for this money you want more. At a minimum, so that the phone does not slow down, it gets a good camera, and it would also weigh less.

If I were Moto, I would not release such a device, so as not to upset the fans of the brand, but where am I, and where are the company’s marketers. I remember writing about Moto G – the phone was expensive, but it left a pleasant feeling, but the E4 Plus did not catch on.