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Moto G5 first impressions: The younger sibling that seems to pack a punch

The Moto G5 has made it to India. We took a quick look at the smartphone to see how good is this Moto G.

Kunal Khullar|Apr 04, 2017, 17:36:08 IST

The G series from Motorola has been quite successful over the years and just last month we saw the Moto G5 Plus launching in India. Today the company announced the Moto G5 which is the younger sibling.While it looks similar as the Moto G5 Plus, it comes with more entry level specifications. I got my hands on the G5 for a quick look at the smartphone and here is what I think about it.Build and DesignOn first look, the G5 looks very similar to the G5 Plus. The design is actually identical but there are a few differences. The G5 comes with a 5-inch display as opposed to the 5.2-inch on the G5 Plus. One may think that with the display size smaller that seen on the Moto G5 Plus, the Moto G5 will be more compact. But that isn't the case as it is thick and taller.

The biggest difference is that the G5 doesn't come with a sealed back. The back panel is removable, so is the battery. The microSD and SIM card slots are present under the back panel.The Moto G5 is thicker as well, measuring at 9.5 mm while the G5 Plus has 7.7 mm of thickness.

At the front there is the display, the oval shaped fingerprint scanner below it and the front camera, earpiece and sensors above it. The right edge has the volume rocker keys and the power button, the headphone jack is at the top and the microUSB port is at the bottom. The back panel is a mix of metal and plastic. The back also has the round camera module, the secondary microphone and the Moto logo.

The build quality on the G5 doesn't feel as good as its big brother. I am not saying its bad, it is definitely better than its predecessors. Considering I've already played with the G5 Plus, this one feels relatively inferior in quality.DisplayAs I said the display on the Moto G5 is smaller. Its a 5-inch IPS LCD which offers Full HD resolution (1920x1080) which translates to a pixel density of 441 ppi. The panel seems to be similar to the one on the G5 Plus which was pretty decent. Sharpness is really good although I wanted to test it under the sunlight as the brightness seemed to be on the lower side.

Chipset, RAM and StorageThe Moto G5 comes with a lower tier processor. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC which was seen on the Xiaomi Redmi 3S and 3S Prime. It is an octa-core processor clocked at 1.4 GHz and has an Adreno 505 GPU.The SoC is paired with 3GB of RAM. While the G5 was originally announced in 2GB and 3GB RAM variants, the company has only introduced the latter.For storage there is 16GB of internal memory which can be expanded further using a microSD card of up to 128GB.OS and SoftwareThe Moto G5 comes with Android 7.0 Nougat and the UI is stock. I didn't see any difference on the software and it is exactly the same as the Moto G5 Plus. You also get Moto's special features like Moto Display, double chop to turn on the flashlight and so on. It felt smooth for the few minutes I used the smartphone.As a special partnership with Amazon.in, the Moto G5 comes pre-loaded with the Amazon.in, Amazon Prime Video and the Amazon Kindle apps.Camera

The primary camera is also different. The G5 comes with a 13 MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus and an LED flash. At the front there is a 5MP camera with an f/2.2 aperture. The camera app comes with features like HDR, panorama, pro mode and so on. The camera feels fast in terms of shutter speeds and focusing but quality is just average.I took a few pictures which were lacking details and didn't feel as good as the 12 MP on the G5 Plus. Of course a proper testing is required to see if the camera performance is any good.Battery and ConnectivityThe Moto G5 comes with a removable 2,800 mAh battery. This is again of lower capacity when compared to the G5 Plus which has a 3,000 mAh battery. It doesn't come with Moto's Turbo charging technology which is said to offer up to six hours of backup on just 15 minutes of charge.In the connectivity department you get 4G LTE network support, dual SIM card slot, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, GPS/A-GPS/GLONASS, microUSB with USB OTG and FM Radio.ConclusionThe Moto G5 is a solid device and its nice to see Moto evolving with the times. My only issue with the smartphone is its price tag of Rs 11,999 which seems a bit high. Now the Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime comes with similar set of features at Rs 9,000. Then there is also the Lenovo K6 Power which again offers a similar package at Rs 10,000.Moto is however offering some attractive launch offers so that kind of makes up for the slightly higher price.I think the Moto G5 won't be a bad seller, but then it won't have it easy as the above mentioned smartphones offer a compelling value proposition as well.