It was a pleasant surprise for me too, when I realized that most of these series of phones were still in production, and also available in Ghana. Lenovo Mobile Business Group West Africa recently revealed their latest range on phones in Ghana and I was fortunate to get a Lenovo Moto G5.
Design and functionality
The Moto G5 is a great budget Android phone with some elements that give it a touch of class. The Moto G5 has a 5-inch screen and is fairly slim, making it a perfect fit for people like me who do not like using big and heavy phone. The screen a good size for just about anything, from reading articles to playing games. The specs of the screen are perfect budget phone of its caliber, with 1080p resolution. It’s sharper than an iPhone 7, with the same number of pixels as the iPhone 7 Plus.
Beneath the screen is a very good fingerprint scanner, which can be programmed to be used for many other functions. Dig into the Moto app and you can make it replace all the home keys. Swipe left for ‘back’, right for ‘recent apps’ and a tap for Home: it works well.
The Moto G5 also uses a microUSB. It has 16GB of internal storage, and has a microSD slot. It has an easy to remove back cover, which stores the battery, SIM cards and memory card.
Performance
The Moto G5 runs Android 7.0 Nougat. Android 7.0 comes with many changes key amongst them being the way the basic navigation and notifications have changed. There are a few Moto additions, which add to make the phone a fun experience. When you get a notification, the Moto G5’s screen phases in and out intermittently, letting you see them while the phone is on a desk.
The phone uses gestures for many functions too. You can double ‘karate chop’ the Moto G5 to toggle the flashlight, while a double twist opens up the camera.
Moto G5 has the Snapdragon 430 processor, a 1.4GHz octa-core CPU that comes with a newer-generation graphics processor. It runs pretty smooth and fast, when too many apps are not running.
Camera
The Moto G5 has a 13-megapixel camera on the back, with a single LED flash. The Moto camera app is one of the most distinctively customized parts of the phone.
The app is simple to use and lets you focus on picking a subject, fiddling with the exposure if needed, but then leave the rest to the phone. It comes with a little exposure control, bringing some professional photography feel to the phone, for those who can understand how exposure affects the quality of a photo. Simply put, the camera is very handy if you’re shooting in conditions with a lot of light variance.
Generally in good lighting you can take great photos, and when taking non-HDR shots the Moto G5 camera feels fast.
The Moto G5 has a 5-megapixel selfie camera and the pictures are pretty standard for a budget phone.
Night shot without flash
Night shot with flash
Battery Life and multimedia
The Moto G5 has a 2800mAh battery. The phone has semi-fast battery charging, with a 5.2W 2A (10.4 watt) charger. It’ll get you most of the way charged in an hour.
With normal use it’ll last a full day, but runs out quicker when running heavy media operations for long time.
The phone has a speaker that sits on the front, doubling as the earpiece speaker, useful for YouTube watching and podcast listening. It comes ready with an in built radio, which connects with the earpiece.
The likes
- Sleek and classy design
- Light and fits easily in my pocket
- Good back camera
- Affordable
- Intuitive gesture controls
The dislikes
- Speaker sound low in surrounding noise
- Front camera a little grainy
