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Motorola announces the Moto G6 and E5 with tall screens and big batteries

Motorola announces the Moto G6 and E5 with tall screens and big batteries

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Motorola is introducing its newest range of Moto G and Moto E smartphones today, which will sell in the $100 to $300 range. While these aren’t high-end phones, they’re all important ones for Motorola: the Moto G remains Motorola’s best seller, and the company says it’s the top seller worldwide in its price class; the Moto E, which sells for slightly less, apparently isn’t far behind it.

In the Moto G line, Motorola is introducing the Moto G6 and G6 Play. (There will also be a G6 Plus, but it isn’t launching in the US, so we didn’t get a chance to see it.) The G6 and the G6 Play are similar looking phones, with curved edges on the back and 18:9 displays with thin bezels on the front. They feel nice, though the standard G6 gets closest to a flagship-level build, with a really nice Gorilla Glass back (at least until it picks up your fingerprints), instead of the polymer glass on the Play.

Moto G6 Play (left) and Moto G6 (right)
Moto G6 Play (left) and Moto G6 (right)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The standard G6 comes with somewhat better specs: it has a 5.7-inch display that’s somewhere over 1080p, a Snapdragon 450 processor, and options for 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage or 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Plus, it’s the only Motorola phone announced today to include USB-C. Like last year, it includes a fingerprint sensor on the front that can detect gestures and completely replace the Android control keys, freeing up even more screen space. It has a really pronounced effect on the 18:9 screen and looks great.

The G6 also includes dual rear cameras, which allow it to offer a portrait mode. I tried it out briefly, and while I wouldn’t say the results looked amazing (they have the same obviously fake blur and missed edges as other portrait mode photos), the pictures came out better than I expected for something far from a flagship phone. Motorola’s also including a bunch of other new camera features here, including an “active photo” mode that takes videos with each picture and built-in face filters.

Moto G6 Play (left) and G6 (right)

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Moto G6 Play (left) and G6 (right)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The G6 Play has a 5.7-inch display as well, but it has a noticeable drop in resolution to somewhere just over 720p. It doesn’t look bad, but in comparison, you can tell it isn’t quite as sharp as on the standard G6. The Play only has a single 12-megapixel rear camera and a max configuration of 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage; its default model comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Its one major highlight, like most of Motorola’s Play series phones, is that it has a really large battery: 4,000mAh, in this case, which should last well over a day. The Galaxy S9 has a 3,000mAh battery, for comparison.

Moto E5 Play (left) and Moto E5 Plus (right)
Moto E5 Play (left) and Moto E5 Plus (right)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Then there are the new Moto E models, the E5 Play and E5 Plus. (There’s also a regular E5 model that won’t launch in the US.) Normally, the E line isn’t as nice as the G line, but that’s not entirely the case when it comes to the E5 Plus. The E5 Plus has a 6-inch screen with a resolution somewhere over 720p, a Snapdragon 435 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It only has a single 12-megapixel rear camera, and it has polymer glass on the back. Overall, it feels a bit rounder and bit less sturdy than the G6, but you still might want it for one big reason: it has a 5,000mAh battery, which is just huge.

The Moto E Play, on the other hand, isn’t much to marvel at. It looks a lot like older Moto E and G phones, with a plastic body and a 16:9 display. It actually feels really nice — Motorola’s made a lot of phones in this shape, and it’s really good at making them — but it’s clearly not meant to wow anyone. The real weak point is the 5.2-inch display, which is listed as “HD” but looks pixelated and washed out compared to any of the other phones Motorola announced today. It also has a surprisingly small battery for a Play phone: only 2,800mAh, though it is removable.

Moto E5 Play (left) and Moto E5 Plus (right)

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Moto E5 Play (left) and Moto E5 Plus (right)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Motorola plans to launch all of these phones sometime this spring, likely in May or June. The G6 will sell for $249 and the G6 Play will sell for $199 in their base configurations. We don’t have pricing yet for the E5 Play and Plus because that’ll be up to phone carriers. They’ll likely start in the $100 range, but it’s possible that the E5 Plus will get into Moto G territory. Even if that’s the case, Motorola is hoping that carrier subsidies will make these phones even cheaper.

By the way, if you’re super confused by the very slight distinctions between all of these phones: you’re not alone. Here’s a graphic we made breaking down some of their top-level specs to clear things up. You’ll note they sort of start to blur between the E5 Plus and G6.

Graphic by Phil Esposito

The Moto G phones are launching globally, except for the G6 Plus. The G6 Plus actually comes out sooner than everything else, launching in Brazil today and Mexico next week. It’s supposed to come to parts of Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America in the future, selling for around €299 (about $370 USD). The Plus model will be somewhat larger and higher-end, with a 5.9-inch display and a Snapdragon 630 processor.

The Moto E5 Play will launch globally, but the E5 Plus is only going to be available in the US. There’s also a standard E5 with a 5.7-inch screen and an 18:9 aspect ratio that’ll sell for €149 (about $185 USD) launching in the regions listed above.