The Moto Z3 Play is a mid-range smartphone featuring a unique feature that has been passed down through the Moto Z family line. Moto Mods allow the phone to be converted into other devices. It can be converted into a pico projector, 10x zoom camera, loudspeaker, etc.
Moto Z3 Play provides enough mid-range performance, and a sizable 6-inch display without a notch. It is the best design Motorola has come up with recently. Moto Z3 Play even acquires functionality with Moto Mods that are simply not available on other smartphones.
Moto Z3 Play competes with the much more potent OnePlus 6 despite being a strong budget choice for smartphone buyers on its own. The customer’s interest in that personalization will determine precisely how successfully Moto Mods can differentiate it from the competitors.
Even worse, Motorola has introduced the Verizon-exclusive Moto Z3, which simply enhances the Z3 Play while costing less. With a larger carrier availability but few additional reasons to choose it.
What you will see here!
Price
Although the UK and Australia do not yet have the Moto Z3 Play, the US has. Due to support for all four major networks, Motorola sells it unlocked. It allows you can choose from a variety of carriers. The Moto Z3 Play costs $168.50.
At the moment, Motorola only has one Moto Z3 Play variant available. A Deep Indigo edition with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. The Moto Z3 Play, however, fits firmly in the mid-range bracket and doesn’t feel poor for the price.
Moto Power Pack battery mod
When purchasing through Motorola, the Moto Power Pack battery mod is also involved in the cost. However, that modification adds 2,220mAh of battery life to the phone without requiring any cords. It is useful for practically any user.
Network Performance and Connectivity
Through Motorola or
Call quality
Solid call quality. Although certain transmissions may sound grainy and robotic, overall clarity is good. It produces good speakerphone calls but average music playback because the earpiece doubles as the main speaker.
Connectivity Options
Dual-band Wi-Fi, NFC, and Bluetooth 5.0 are just a few of the connectivity options available outside of the cellular modem enabling simultaneous wireless listening on multiple audio devices.
Design and display
Moto Z3 Play has an aluminum body with a glass back, a Gorilla Glass 3 screen, and dimensions of 76.5 x 156.5 x 6.75mm. It has a decent heaviness and doesn’t seem too weighty thanks to its 156g weight. The right side’s volume buttons are located atop a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, while the left side’s screen lock button is by itself.
This leaves narrow bezels on either side, slim strips for the microphones at the bottom, and thin strips for the speaker and selfie camera at the top. The Moto Z3 Play’s rear includes the customary huge camera bump at the top and the Moto Mods connector next to the bottom.
Jacks
There is only a USB-C 3.1 jack on the Moto Z3 Play’s bottom edge. no jack for headphones lacking a speaker grille Although the audio is clear at maximum level, the loudspeaker that serves as both an earpiece and a loudspeaker is located above the screen.
Amoled Display
Most of the architecture looks and feels fantastic. much more so when the 6-inch Super AMOLED display turns on. When a phone has black bezels, which frequently seem to blend seamlessly with the screen’s black part, the deep blacks provided by AMOLED are always something we can enjoy. Although the 2,160 x 1,080 resolution isn’t as sharp as that of the Galaxy S9 or even the Galaxy S8, you probably won’t notice the difference, and it’s still plenty crisp.
SIM Tray
The SIM tray is an incredibly subtle example of a high-quality design that most people will only come across once. The Moto Z3 Play SIM tray really lightly squeezes the SIM card to retain it firmly in position, unlike many other SIM trays that merely let the card sit loose and make insertion difficult to balance.
Processor and Battery
Here, the processor and RAM have been seriously shortchanged. Although Motorola claims the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 with 4GB of RAM is 30% faster than the Z2 Play, its performance is incomparably inferior to that of the OnePlus 6.
Moto Z3 Play’s simple UI layer doesn’t cause any lags, and the 4GB of RAM is enough for multitasking. However, the Z3 Play only managed 6.0 frames per second on the Car Chase on-screen test, indicating poor graphic performance. The Z3 Play can only handle medium graphics settings when playing demanding games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds; the gameplay is jerky but playable.
There is good battery life. When streaming video over LTE at its highest brightness, the phone clocked 5 hours, 44 minutes. That compares favorably to the OnePlus 6, but neither can compete with premium smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S9. Fortunately, you can always use one of the several Power Pack Mods if you need additional power. Although it isn’t integrated, a Moto Style Shell Wireless Charging Mod enables wireless charging.
Software
It is powered by Android 8.1 Oreo. Moto Z3 Play has stated that it would be improved but has not provided a timeframe. The phone’s operating system is a very stock version of Android with the aforementioned Motorola add-ons. Apart from the Motorola app as well as the Alexa app if you purchase it from
You have 47.10GB of the 64GB total storage available for use. You have plenty of room to add new games and apps, and external memory is always a possibility.
Camera
The two back cameras—a 12MP primary camera and a 5MP depth camera—emerge on a prominent disc with crisp edges. The purpose of that bump is to prevent the cameras from being too deeply recessed when a magnetic back cover or Moto Mod is used.
The Play captures clear images with less noise when used outside and in excellent lighting. Although greens and reds may appear a little flat if you’re used to the brighter, more saturated hues of a Samsung handset, color reproduction is correct.
The Z3 Play does average work when it comes to both focus and lighting in low-light situations, but suffers from some noise and clarity loss. In low light, it performs nearly on par with the Moto G6, although not quite as well.
Cinematography effects
Both the front and back cameras of the Moto Z3 Play support bokeh. It may create fascinating cinematography effects on the back camera, such as selective black and white and partially moving images.
Although it can be a little on the soft side in bright sunlight, the 8MP front-facing camera sensor is good and generally pretty clear. The phone delivers reasonably reliable 4K recording at 30 frames per second for video.
What distinguishes the Moto Z3 from the Moto Z3 Play?
The processor and GPU configuration are the main differences between the Moto Z3 Play and the Moto Z3. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chipset, manufactured in 14nm and clocked at 1.8 GHz, powers the Moto Z3 Play. It has an Adreno 509 GPU built-in.
Does Moto Z3 Play support 5G?
The new Moto Z3 is the first smartphone that can be “upgraded to 5G” using a 5G Moto Mod that magnetically attaches to the phone’s back and enables substantially faster data speeds.
Why are there two cameras on the Moto Z3?
The Moto Z3 can’t accomplish 2X zoom despite having a second camera. For scenes with extreme contrast, the Z3 offers a totally black mode, just like the Z2. Portrait photographs with a synthetic bokeh can also be taken with the second camera. The second camera is solely capable of these two things.
Conclusion
The Moto Z3 Play might not be the most affordable or superior mid-range phone available. The killer-on-a-budget Asus ZenFone V is still something probably suggest if carrier freedom wasn’t an issue. But for a reasonable price, the Moto Z3 Play offers lots of performance, an up-to-date Android OS, and the distinctive modularity of the Z family.
The Moto Z3 Play’s sole significant flaw is that the Moto Z3 costs almost $20 less while offering a better camera and more potent internals.
Therefore, even though the Moto Z3 Play is for anyone looking for a good phone at a great price with awesome modularity, the only situation in which we would recommend it above the Moto Z3 is if you want nothing to do with a phone.
