Lenovo today added Moto G5S and G5S Plus smartphones to its Moto G5 line-up in India. The ‘S’ in Moto’s G5S and G5S Plus stands for ‘special edition’, which is why the smartphones carries the fundamentals of its predecessors while adding some new enhancements. Moto G lineup of smartphones are known to be budget friendly, offering some compelling specs at an affordable price. These smartphones are daily drivers for many consumers as they are known to pack in really good hardware along with stock Android on board every iteration. This gives the lineup an edge over its other competitors who have a customised skin running on their smartphones in this range.
It is worth noting that the first generation Moto G was priced starting at Rs 9,400 while the base variant of the Moto G (2nd Generation) cost Rs 8,999 for the base variant going up to Rs 12,999. This was followed by Moto G (3rd Generation) which was priced at Rs 11,999 for the base variant and Moto G (4th Generation) at Rs 12,499 going up to Rs 14,999 for the Plus variant. With the fifth generation Moto smartphone, the company amped up the price again as the base variant was priced starting from Rs 14,999.
The Special Edition Moto G5S Plus essentially replaces the Moto G5 Plus which begs the question as to why is Moto doing this? It's not even been six months from the day it launched the fifth iteration of the Moto G smartphone in India. Top it with the fact that there's nothing ground breaking new with the Special Edition model except the dual camera system, we are looking at some late realisations which led the company to launch these new variants.
The Moto G5S Plus is thick at 8mm and weighs 168g while its predecessor measures 7.7 mm thick, weighing 155g.
The smartphone retains the all-metal unibody design with curved corners to give it a good in hand feel. The display on the smartphone has also been bumped up, down from 5.2-inch to 5.5-inch, full HD IPS panel protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. The G5S Plus is also splash resistant courtesy of advanced nano-coating.
Under the hood, Moto G5S Plus is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor with Adreno 506 GPU backed by 4GB RAM and 64GB memory with an option to increase the storage via microSD card for up to 256GB.
As with all the Moto smartphones, the Moto G5S Plus is running a stock Android 7.1.1 Nougat with some added Moto customizations.
The G5S Plus sports a dual-camera system which includes two 13-megapixel, f/2.0 aperture camera modules backed by dual-LED dual tone flash. The front-facing camera has been upgraded with an 8-megapixel wide-angle sensor and LED flash.
Moto has also tweaked the software to include a feature it's calling “Depth-enabled” which blurs the background surrounding focused objects. The “Depth Editor” also enables users to make use of layers in the picture. With this, they can place an object from one image to another and can make the background or foreground black-and-white, a technique known as selective colouring.
Along with this, the fingerprint sensor on the front doubles up as the back and recent button making it usable through left and right swipes. On the connectivity front, the Moto G5S Plus comes with dual-SIM slots, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and NFC among others.
The battery on the smartphone has been kept at 3,000 mAh which supports TurboCharging. Moto claims that users will be able to get 6 hours worth of juice in just 15 minutes of charge.
Lenovo also launched the G5S alongside the Moto G5S Plus, which runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out-of-the-box. It features a smaller, 5.2-inch full HD IPS LCD display with a coating of Gorilla Glass 3. The smartphone is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 coupled with 4GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage which can further be expanded up to 256GB via microSD card. Moto G5S bears a single rear camera with a 16-megapixel sensor and an aperture of f/2.0 supported by PDAF and LED flash. On the front, it comes with a 5-megapixel wind-angle f/2.0 aperture sized sensor.
Along with the usual set of sensors and connectivity features, the Moto G5S is outfitted with a 3,000 mAh battery, same as its elder sibling, the G5S Plus and supports TurboCharge. It weighs 157 grams and is the thinnest at 8.2mm.
Price and availability
The Moto G5S Plus is priced at Rs 15,999, while the Moto G5S costs Rs 13,999 only. Both the Moto G5S and Moto G5S Plus are exclusive to Amazon India and will go on sale starting midnight, August 29. They will be available in Lunar Gray and Blush Gold colour options.
