After almost 4 years of using my Blackberry Z30, it was finally time to retire it and get something new.
I decided to get another mid range device since my Z30 gave me such terrific service life. Let me tell you, shopping mid range is mind boggling because there are so many new and old names on the market to choose from. Flagships are much easier to shop in that regard.
After some very extensive research my weapon of choice is a factory unlocked Moto G5s Plus with 4GB ram and 64GB storage, which is also expandable.
So far here is what I like/dislike about it.
Dislikes:
- no LED notifications. Yes it has the on-screen notifications, but having LED notification with customizable colors on my Z30 was super useful.
- the rear camera sticks out like on an iPhone or some other devices. I like to carry my phones naked, so it looks like I'll have to get some sort of cover.
- the aluminum body is very slippery. I already had a few close calls with it. That cover looks better and better now.
- the battery is built in. My Z30 also has a built in battery and I never had to change it and it still holds the charge pretty much the same, but who knows how long this battery will last.
Likes:
- The phone is very well built for the price.
- the capacitive fingerprint scanner is fast and it also doubles as a gesture devise for the back and recent apps function. This way you can have more screen real estate. This feature can be turned off and the regular, on-screen buttons will be visible.
- it has expandable memory.
- works with GSM and CDMA networks.
- The price.
- It will get updated to Android 8.
- The battery life is very good, not quite my Z30 good, but better than most today's phones. My wife has an iPhone 7 Plus and we were out all day long, with my phone being used for navigation, looking stuff up online or using google maps, since her data was almost used up and turned off. At the end of the day, her iPhone had about 25% battery life left, while mine was about 45% and did quite a bit more work.
- it offers pretty much stock Android experience, which is something I was looking for. It has some very specific Moto apps, that are actually useful, like that capacitive button navigation I mentioned earlier. Everything else is stock Android.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting this device to be this good, considering that it costs about a third of the current flagships. I'm hoping that it will serve me well for 3-4 years as well.
