Moto E4 Plus review

Extra battery on a budget phone

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Motorola has included a Mediatek MT6737 chipset in the E4 Plus, which is a setup we saw struggle on the Nokia 3. It's clocked at 1.3GHz and it’s optimized a bit better on the Moto E4 Plus, but don’t expect this to be a powerhouse device.

It works in tandem with 3GB of RAM, which means the phone is capable of handling all the apps you’ll want it to, and it should be fine for some undemanding gaming.

There was a notable graphics drop on the Moto E4 Plus compared to other devices we’ve used, though, so you may not want to go for this phone if you’re looking for high-performance game graphics.

War Wings being played on the Moto E4 Plus.

War Wings being played on the Moto E4 Plus.

All popular apps ran smoothly on the phone. You may just have to wait a little longer for your phone to load up certain apps if you have a lot running in the background.

For example, we found that if we tried to load up social media apps while the phone was playing music and running a few other applications in the background it could take a little time to load, but it was never more than a few seconds.

The Moto E4 Plus is available with either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage. We’d recommend going for the 32GB version, as that will give you much more space for your videos, music and apps, but if you don’t tend to load much onto your phone you may be okay with the smaller version.

We tested the 16GB version of the phone, and before adding our own apps and media we found the software took up almost 6GB of that; 10GB of free space isn’t all that much. That said, both versions of the phone support microSD cards up to 128GB, so you can easily add more storage if you need it.

The Moto E4 Plus arrives running Android 7.1.1 Nougat software, and like all the other Motorola devices of recent years it's running a more or less stock version, so it looks very similar to how Google intended.

These screenshots show the UI of the Moto E4 Plus.

These screenshots show the UI of the Moto E4 Plus.

There are a few add-ons from Motorola, including what the company is calling Moto Actions. These are a few little gesture shortcuts that, once you learn them, you’ll likely find yourself using without even thinking about it.

If you make a karate chop gesture with the phone you’ll boot up the flashlight on the back, while you can turn the phone in your hand to bring the camera app up immediately. When you’re in a rush, you’ll find these features particularly useful.

Having Android 7.1.1 means you’ll be able to use multitasking and newer emojis, but we’d also expect Motorola to update this device to Android O in the future. We can’t promise the company will be quick at doing so though, so you may want to opt for the Moto G5 or Moto Z2 Play if you’re looking for speedy software updates.

James Peckham

James is the Editor-in-Chief at Android Police. Previously, he was Senior Phones Editor for TechRadar, and he has covered smartphones and the mobile space for the best part of a decade bringing you news on all the big announcements from top manufacturers making mobile phones and other portable gadgets. James is often testing out and reviewing the latest and greatest mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets, virtual reality headsets, fitness trackers and more. He once fell over.

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