Motorola Moto G5S Plus
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Serious design flaws! Lenovo/Moto to remove from Market soon!
I bought a Moto G5S Plus somewhat recently and it had the following issues:
- A popping sound is heard when a notification sound finishes playing on the external speaker of the phone
- Audio is still very quiet even at max volume while headphones are plugged in (audio is fine without headphones, with the exception of the previous problem)
- Phone crashes often while using googlemaps and driving
- Phone irregularly turns off during the night
- Wifi Cutting in and out
Oh, and you know how they advertise it as having a nice camera? The actual camera is great, but the video camera is very, very bad! The camera has tons of great customization options and the video camera literally has NONE! I'm not joking... nothing. Terrible auto focus and the autolighting (that you can't disable), and it's so bad it makes your 1080p 60fps footage look grainy and pixelated.
I read on the Lenovo forums and tons of people are having the same issues (specifically the audio issues). Did all the troubleshooting (even factory reset) and it didn't fix it. They sent me a replacement and it has the same audio issues!
That means it's a badly designed, glitchy, overall terrible phone.
Just to be fair, the battery life, hardware, display, and speed of phone are all great. Nothing wrong in those departments, but it doesn't make up for the several glitchy issues seen in nearly every one of these phones.
I'm currently work with Ting (the cell phone provider I bought the phone from) and after showing them the forums and seeing everything, they're removing the Moto G5S Plus from their store soon! I'm also bringing it up with Lenovo, but I think they already know the issues with the phone, but aren't going to stop selling them because they're business ethics are questionable at best. I assume they're just stop producing them and finish selling them off quickly.
Do not buy anything from Lenovo. I'm $270 down the drain and stuck with a shit phone. Go with a different manufacturer.
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Best Moto G Yet !
The Moto G5s-Plus is available "unlocked" for every major carrier in the US. I purchased mine at BestBuy during the 2017 Christmas season while it was on sale for $229 for the 32 gb version.
Being a Virgin Mobile customer for many years I wanted to have the latest Android phone. My previous phone was the Moto G 3rd.gen. It was a decent phone but its lack of memory and inability to upgrade to the latest version of Android had me constantly deleting cache and apps to avoid slowing down.
I was told by Virgin Mobile and Motorola in September 2017 that this "unlocked" G5s-Plus model # XT1806 could be activated replacing my existing Moto G 3rd.gen. After purchasing in December, I sent an email to Virgin Mobile to get specific activation instructions. I was told that doing so was not possible and had been given wrong advice by their customer representatives.
Calling Virgin Mobile I was given the same answer.
Not giving up I called a Sprint Corporate store. This was not a local retailer like in the Mall. You have to go to a corporate store location. On the phone I was told that possibly they could help. When I went to the Sprint Corporate store, after just a few minutes, they were able to activate my new phone with a new sim card that they have. My troubles were now over and I had a great new up to date Android phone on the Virgin Mobile network.
So far so good. This is a big step up from my previous phone.
PROs:
Very Fast, no slow downs
Earphone sound quality excellent
Pure install of Android without any extra bloatware
Decent screen size 5.5"
401 ppi screen density
Great battery life
Decent camera
Rapid charger included for 6 hour recharge in just 15 minutes
Virgin Mobile compatibility
CONs:
Speaker phone not as good as the Moto G. The Moto G has its speaker on its face, Moto G5s-Plus has it on the bottom end.
Wrap Up:
For $229 it's hard to beat comparing it to others costing more than double or triple the price.
