What is the Honor 7

SummarOur Sco7/10                    Page 1: Design and display                        Page 2: Software and performance                        Page 3: Camera                        Page 4: Battery, sound and conclusion                                      16 Pictures                

Pros

• Good camera
• Decent performance
• Good value for money
• Bright screen

Cons

• Below average battery
• Heavy Android skin

What is the Honor 7?

Key Features: Fingerprint scanner; 20-megapixel rear camera; Emotion UI

Manufacturer: Honor

The Honor 7 is the latest smartphone from Huawei’s spin-off company Honor. The £250 handset follows a trend set by OnePlus in that it aims to offer buyers top-end specifications and features traditionally seen on smartphones that are close to twice the price.

From purely a hardware perspective the Honor 7 achieves this goal and, despite featuring Huawei’s dire Emotion UI skin, is a solid smartphone that offers good value for money.

Honor 7 – Design

143 x 72 x 8.5mm, 157g, fingerprint scanner, nano-SIM, microSD

Honor made a big deal about the Honor 7’s design at the phone’s London launch. Specifically, the firm made a song and dance about the fact that, unlike most smartphones in the £200-£300 price category, the Honor 7 features a “sand-blasted” metal backplate.

The plate wraps around the phone’s sides and makes the Honor 7 feel more solidly built than its key rivals: the OnePlus 2 and Moto X Play.

The Honor 7’s sturdy build is aided by the phone’s Sapphire Crystal camera lens, which helps protect the sensor from scratches. However, the phone’s premium feel is slightly let down by the addition of plastic along the top and bottom edges.

From a distance it doesn't look too bad, since the plastic panels are designed to look like metal and feature a textured finish. Up close, however, they destroy the illusion that the Honor 7 is a top-end phone as they look bolted on.

To be fair to Honor, though, the design still feels reasonably premium. However, I personally prefer the look and feel of the OnePlus 2, which features metal sides and a polycarbonate, textured backplate.

I was impressed with the Honor 7’s custom smart key and rear fingerprint scanner. The smart key is a physical button on the phone’s side that can be configured to open specific applications or services when pressed.

While this may sound insignificant, I found the ability to customise the button’s function useful. For example, during a press event where I had back-to-back interviews, I was able to set the button to activate a dictaphone app.

At a basic level the Honor 7’s fingerprint scanner offers the same functionality as that of most smartphones. Sitting on the phone’s rear, it lets you set the Honor 7 to unlock or approve certain actions only once its holder has proven their identity.

However, Honor has also loaded a few extra functions onto the scanner to make it more useful. For example, once unlocked, a swipe down on the rear scanner pulls down Android’s notification, while a swipe left or right in the photo app lets you scroll through captured images.

Also welcome is the inclusion of a microSD card slot, which enables users to add a further 128GB of storage to the Honor 7’s built-in 16GB of space.

Honor 7 – Display

5.2in, IPS-NEO Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 424ppi touchscreen

The display techonology is often the first features potential smartphone buyers notice about a handset. Aware of this, the Honor 7 comes loaded with an impressive 5.2in panel. With a resolution of 1,920 x 1080, the IPS-NEO Full HD touchscreen offers a pixel density of 424ppi.

This almost puts the Honor 7 on a par with its key rival, the OnePlus 2, which features a 5.5in, 1920 x 1080, 401ppi pixel density display. However, in real-world use, I found that the Honor 7’s display performs better than most smartphones in its price range – and this includes the OnePlus 2.

The Honor 7’s screen brightness is significantly higher than any sub-£200 smartphone I’ve used, and it made the OnePlus 2 look outright dull. In fact, it was so bright that I found myself regularly having to turn off its auto setting and manually lower the brightness.

Colours, while slightly oversaturated, are also satisfying: the RGB calibration is decent, and so makes them look reasonably realistic. Contrast levels are also superb. Overall, I’m impressed with the Honor 7’s screen.

Compared to the OnePlus 2, the Honor 7's representation of white, too, is noticeably cleaner. Viewing angles are better than the OnePlus 2 as well, which is probably down to the Honor 7's inclusion of IPS-Neo technology.

IPS-Neo is a variation of the regular IPS screen technology seen on many smartphones, such as the OnePlus 2.

It aims to improve screens’ viewing angles and contrast ratio using a special form liquid crystal, which can be uniformly aligned on a display’s glass substrate. This helps to eliminates any potential unevenness in the tech’s circuit pattern that may hamper performance.

Honor 7 – Software

Android 5.0 Lollipop with Emotion UI 3.1

When Huawei created Honor, it made no secret that the move was designed to help it tailor its mobile offering to target specific segments and regions of the mobile market.

This was a big deal: although Huawei has a strong track record creating competitively priced, well-specced handsets, its history with software is a mixed bag.

Traditionally, Huawei has loaded its phones with a heavy Android skin called Emotion UI, which heavily caters to the Chinese market. The skin is generally viewed negatively and adds a number of superfluous applications.

It also radically changes the operating system’s native UI to make it look like the mongrel child of iOS and Android – key offences here include re-making the notifications menu and removing Android’s native app tray.

Emotion also adds a few odd features to Android. The worst of which are Huawei’s “Groufie” and Beauty photo modes.

On paper, the Groufie mode is actually fairly useful – it’s basically a panorama shot mode for the front camera. However, it winds no points for its name, with it sounding a little too much like “groupie” or “roofie” – a fact picked up on by many internet trolls.

The Beauty mode is a bizarre photo option that increases the size of users’ eyes and makes their skin tone flatter and paler.

Being a fairly pale Scot with blond hair, this mode resulted in turning me into Gollum from Lord of the Rings, rather than a dashing Prince Charming.

As a result, I’m a little disappointed to see the skin on the Honor 7. It makes the handset feel significantly less intuitive to use than key rivals, such as the Motorola Moto X Play – which runs a close to untouched version of Android Lollipop.

The skin will also hamper the phone’s ability to be upgraded to the final version of Android M later this year. This is because Huawei will have to rework Emotion’s code to work with the new version, something that can take months.

That said, I did notice a few useful software additions on the Honor 7, the best of which are its motion control and voice wake-up features.

The motion controls let you set the Honor 7 to do things such as flip the phone to mute it, tilt the screen to move app icons, and answer incoming calls by holding the Honor 7 next to your ear.

Voice wake-up is a particularly useful feature that lets you enact a variety of actions using spoken commands. These include such features as getting the phone to ring when you can’t find it, or phoning specific contacts simply by saying “dear” and an assigned name for the Honor 7.

I found find my lost phone feature particularly useful – although, be warned: you need to pick the Honor 7’s name carefully. On one particularly embarrassing morning when I’d overslept and couldn’t find my phone, my flatmate was woken up to frenzied cries of “dear [expletive deleted]” – which he didn’t appreciate.

Honor 7 – Performance

2.2GHz, octa-core, 64-bit, HiSilicon Kirin 935 CPU, Mali-T628MP4 GPU

The Honor 7 comes loaded with Huawei’s octa-core, 64-bit, HiSilicon Kirin 935 CPU, a Mali-T628MP4 GPU and 3GB of RAM.

For the price, the Honor 7’s specifications are pretty impressive. By comparison the OnePlus 2 features a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 CPU, Adreno 430 GPU and either 3GB or 4GB of RAM.

Running the Honor 7 through our standard set of benchmark tests, the phone performed admirably. On Geekbench the Honor 7 ran in with a reasonable 3,569 multi-core score.

Interestingly, in 3DMark’s gaming-focused Ice Storm Unlimited test the Honor 7 scored only 12,331.

By comparison, the 3GB OnePlus 2 scored 4,460 on Geekbench and 22,549 in 3DMark. A lower GPU test score is a regular issue with most Huawei phones. In real-world use, however, I found the Honor 7 offers decent performance.

Running on 4G and Wi-Fi, web pages opened in milliseconds and video streamed seamlessly. The Honor 7 also proved capable of running 3D games: the likes of Grand Theft Auto 3, Dead Space and The Bard’s Tale chug along stutter free.

That said, the phone displays a tendency to heat up and slightly throttle performance when faced with ongoing demanding tasks. This became evident when I tried to stream a couple of two-hour movies on Netflix.

However, this is an issue I see on the majority of smartphones. On the whole, and for the money, the Honor 7's performance is excellent.

Honor 7 – Camera

Rear: 20-megapixel, 5,152 x 3,888 resolution, with dual-LED flash and Sapphire Lens. Front: 8-megapixel, 3,264 x 2448 resolution

Camera technology is an increasingly competitive area in the smartphone industry. Motorola set the standard for affordable smartphones earlier this year when it released its stellar third-generation Moto G.

Featuring similar specifications to the Nexus 6, which costs close to three times as much, the Moto G (2015) is one of the best affordable camera-phones on the market.

The OnePlus 2 also boasts pretty impressive camera specs for its price, loaded with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front option.

Aware of it’s stiff competition, the Honor 7 comes with an impressive 20-megapixel rear camera and a 8-megapixel front-facing unit. In a bid to further improve the Honor 7’s photo-taking ability, Honor has also included a custom camera app, which adds a variety of new shot modes, controls and filters.

I was impressed with the Honor 7’s performance when shooting with the camera set to auto. Honor claims the rear camera boasts focus speeds of 0.1 seconds, and having thoroughly tested the Honor 7, I can say this is true.

The camera features Sonic the Hedgehog-level shutter and autofocus speeds. Images caught in the automatic mode universally looked crisp, displayed decent contrast and colour balance levels and were more than good enough for sharing on social media.

From a techinical perspective, there's one negative to the Honor 7’s camera: the lack of optical image stabilsation (OIS). This is one key bit of tech that its rival, the OnePlus 2, has seen fit to include. OIS improves a camera’s low-light performance by compensating for and reducing the impact of minor hand movements, or vibrations.

Running the two head to head, I found shots taken on the Honor 7 in regular light featured slightly more realistic colours. The OnePlus 2's camera performed better in low light, however.

Taken on the Honor 7

Taken on the OnePlus 2

The Honor 7 also offers an impressive number of preset modes. While some, such as the Beauty mode mentioned earlier and “good food” – yes, you read that right: the Honor 7 has a camera mode specifically for photographing your dinner – are fairly useless, others are pretty cool.

One of the best is the camera’s light-painting mode. Light painting is a custom feature designed to create artistic shots in specific low-light conditions. These include “car light trails”, “light graffiti”, “silky water” and “star track” settings.

The settings instruct the camera to continue shooting until the user manually stops and create artistic photos that track and display moving light. The resulting effects look similar to an extended exposure photo shot taken with a DSLR.

While the feature sounds gimmicky, I found it entertaining to use and was fairly pleased with the shots I could create using it.

My only issue with the Honor 7 camera is the software's terrible UI, which hides a number of useful features.

For example, while the camera offers manual controls for key features, such as ISO, white balance, exposure, saturation, contrast and brightness, they’re hidden away in sub-menus.

Accessing them requires you to click through multiple menu screens, which is time-consuming and clunky. These features would be better included as a pull-out menu in the main camera UI – as seen in the LG G4’s camera app.

Honor 7 – Battery

Non-removable 3,100mAh battery with fast charging

Battery life is another key issue hampering the Honor 7’s overall performance. In a test where we looped a 720p video with the Wi-Fi turned off and the screen brightness set to 75%, the Honor 7 lasted an average of seven to eight hours.

This puts it below most other handsets, which generally lasted between eight and nine in the same test.

In real-world use, the lower than average burn rate was evident. Honor claims the battery will last at least two days from a single charge. Using the Honor 7 as my main phone, it never once lived up to this claim.

In regular use the Honor 7 lasted between a day and a day and a half off one charge.

Regular use entailed listening to music on the way to and from work, checking email and social media feeds, sporadically browsing the web, making and taking a few calls and playing a few levels of a Warhammer Quest.

With more intensive use, however, the Honor 7’s battery can be defeated in a matter of hours. Steaming Netflix videos with the Wi-Fi turned on and the screen brightness set to auto, the Honor 7 struggled to last more than four hours.

Gaming sessions also put a serious drain on the battery – playing games such as The Banner Saga, Shadowrun and Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition resulted in the Honor 7 losing between 20-to-30% of its charge per hour.

On the flip side, the Honor 7 does feature fast charging and a power saver. Fast charging means the Honor 7’s battery can be topped up in less than an hour – with the right cable.

The power saver is a useful feature that lets you control which applications are consuming power and manage items such as the CPU’s performance to save battery – similar to the way you can on a Windows PC. This will enable you to extend the Honor 7’s battery life – but by reducing performance.

Honor 7 – Sound and Call Quality

The Honor 7’s speaker is on a par with most smartphones. It has a reasonable maximum volume, but sounds slightly tinny and features a fairly weak low end. Cranked to its maximum volume the speaker also begins to distort slightly.

All-in-all this means that, like most smartphones, the speaker is good enough for watching TV on Netflix and for gaming, but it isn't great for playing music.

However, call quality was impressive. Taking and making calls in busy coffee shops, loud London streets and busy bars, weren't an issue at all – they remained audible and the microphone proved powerful to ensure people on the other end of the line could hear me.

Should I buy an Honor 7?

The Honor 7 is a well-built smartphone that offers great value for money. However, its heavy Android skin and lower than average battery life diminish its overall appeal.

While it will meet most buyers’ needs, people interested in a great-value smartphone would do well to consider the OnePlus 2 – which targets the same market, has a better design and offers superior performance and battery life.

Verdict

The Honor 7 is a great-value smartphone, but it's let down by poor software.

What is the Moto X Play?

Pros

• Fantastic display
• Durable build
• Detailed camera
• No ugly skins

Cons

• Poor low-light photos
• Minor performance issues
• Turbo charger not included

What is the Moto X Play?Key Features: 5.5-inch 1080p display; 21-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, 5MP front-facing sensor; 16/32GB storage; micro SD up to 128GB; 2GB RAM; Snapdragon 615 processor; Adreno 405 GPU; 3,630 mAh battery; Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n; FM radio; 169 g

Manufacturer: Motorola

The Moto X Play is the Motorola's latest mid-range device, offering up more power and a better display than the cheaper Moto G – a phone we love – but at a price that is lighter on the wallet than the incoming Moto X Style.

At £279 for the 16GB version, or £319 for the 32GB Moto X, there's certainly a lot to like here. It continues Motorola's stripped back approach to Android, ditching ugly skins for a clean, stock version of Android Lollipop with a flurry of tweaks that actually make it better.

But, it really has two main selling points – the huge battery that Moto claims should last you through two days, and a 21-megapixel camera. Having these two killer features on a mid-range smartphone could really help the Moto X Play stand out against an ever-increasing budget smartphone crowd that includes the fantastic, yet hard to buy OnePlus 2, Alcatel OneTouch's Idol 3 and Honor's 6 Plus.

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Android Phones

Moto X Play: Design and Build

If you've laid eyes on any of Motorola's devices from the past two years, then you'll instantly recognise the Moto X Play. The front is as simple and clean as you can get, a near edge-to-edge 5.5-inch display is flanked by a front facing speaker (on the bottom) and a speakerphone (on the top) plus a camera. There are no ugly brand logos, which is always a bonus.

While the high-end Motorola phones, notably last year's Moto X and the upcoming Moto X Style, have a metal rim and a multitude of leather and wood backs, the Moto X Play keeps things simple. The trim is plastic, it's pretty much the same as the Moto G, as are the volume rocker and sleep/wake button. It's the little touches that have always made me like the Moto line, the slightly bevelled standby button for instance ensures you don't accidentally hit the volume button. Something I did, and still do, whenever I pick up the HTC One M9.

On the top you'll find the headphone jack bang in the centre with the sim tray and microSD slot next to it. While I'd rather the jack was on the bottom of the Moto X Play, like it is on the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6, this is only a minor quibble,

Motorola hasn't completely ditched its Moto Maker customisation tools for the Moto X Play, but the options are limited to choosing between a black and white front, a variety of brightly coloured back-panels and eight different accent trims. My review unit is all black, with a silver accent rounding the camera and the trademark Motorola dimple. The dimple itself isn't quite as pronounced as on previous models, but it's still a nice place to rest your finger.

The back-panels are replaceable, so if you pick up a vivid pink one and instantly feel slightly self-conscious about flashing it in public you can always pair it with something slightly more conservative, a dark blue or slate, for instance. They pop off easily and feel sturdy, much more so than similar panels from LG and Samsung. While the rubberised, plastic back lacks the premium finish, it certainly is durable. I doubt it will easily pick up any scratches or dings, and I must admit that I have dropped the phone on a couple of occasions already with absolutely no lasting damage.

For the Moto G, Motorola tightened everything up and gave it an IPX7 rating so you could drop it in depths of up to one meter of water for 30-minutes without seeing any lasting damage. This feature hasn't been carried over the Moto X Play, but the IP57 rating does mean taking it out in the pouring rain or accidentally spilling a glass of water over it won't cause it to break down and need replacing.

If you've followed the Moto X line for the past two years, you'll know one of their key selling points is their compact size. The original 4.7-inch display toting device was down right miniature for an Android phone at the time and even last year's 5.2-inch version was easily used with one hand. The same can't really be said for the Moto X Play, but I guess it just follows the trend of ever increasing phone sizes.

Dimensions wise, the Moto X Play is certainly not compact, coming in at 148 x 75 x .10.9mm. It's slightly thicker, though marginally smaller overall, than the OnePlus 2, which measures in at 151.1 x 75 x 9.9mm. Motorola's effort also tips the scales at 6g lighter (169g v 175g) than the Chinese start-up's effort.

But, measurements only really tell one side of the story. I can easily hold the Moto X Play in one hand, though stretching my thumb from one corner of the screen to another is just out of reach. It's also quite a dense device, there's not the hollow feeling you often get with cheaper phones and there it doesn't creak or bend when you push it hard.

Motorola's clean, simple design wins out again here and even though it's not the thinnest phone around, I'd take that extra bulk any day for the big battery tucked inside.

Moto X Play: Display

While quad-HD (QHD) panels with copious amounts of pixels are becoming more and more common at the high-end of the market, those glorious displays are yet to filter down to the mid-range. Instead, Motorola has kitted the Moto X Play out with a 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD panel with a 403 ppi (pixels-per-inch). To be honest, after using the Moto X Play I am not pining for a QHD screen at all, and if sticking with a FHD display helps keep the price low then I'm all for it.

The display is sharp, gets super bright when you need it too and nice and dark when you don't. Motorola has tended to use AMOLED panels for the previous entries in the series, and while the LCD display on the Moto X Play isn't quite as vibrant and saturated, it renders colours much more accurately and doesn't have that pinkish tinge when you turn the brightness all the way down.

Motorola has also included two screen modes, letting you tailor the settings to your tastes. You can pick between 'Normal', which should display more realistic colours, and 'Vibrant' which enhances vibrancy and colour saturation. I've switched between the two on a number of occasions and while there is a minor visible difference, it doesn't completely change the experience. I've stuck with the 'Normal' mode, simply because it rids the display of any over-saturation and it makes colours a little more accurate.

Covering the display is Gorilla Glass 3, again adding to the durable nature of the device. While Gorilla Glass is by no means scratch-resistant, it certainly helps when you accidentally put the phone in the same pocket as your keys.

Moto X Play: Battery Life

When I unboxed the Moto X Play, the phone's battery was the first thing I was curious about. The non-removable 3,630 mAh cell is bigger than almost every similarly sized device on the market, including the Galaxy S6 Edge+, Note 5, iPhone 6 Plus and OnePlus 2. This combined with its less demanding FHD display meant I had real hopes that the Moto X Play would end my ongoing smartphone battery woes – I'm yet to find a phone that can survive two days heavy use off one charge.

And for the most part it has, but don't pick this phone up expecting something that will last multiple days of heavy use.

Throughout my time with the device I've easily managed a day and a half of use. That's with multiple email accounts pulling down messages every few minutes, a load of social networking, gaming, browsing and so on. Basically doing everything you would normally do on your phone.

The battery stats showed I had unplugged it from the charger at 12pm Sunday and it ran through until 5pm Monday, with five hours of screen on time. It also lasted for 13 hours playing a looped 720p video at 75 per-cent brightness. The following days matched up, I averaged five hours of screen on time before I needed to reach for the charger and each time I didn't feel the need to plug it in overnight.

It did seem to lose battery quicker than other Android phones I've used when gaming, which is a little odd. A 30 minute session playing Monument Valley ate through 13% of the Moto X Play's life, whereas the same time on the Nexus 6 used up only 9%. It was a similar story with more intensive titles. Streaming a 52 minute HD show on Netflix used up 8%, with the brightness turned up to about 80%.

It outperforms the OnePlus 2, which we found lasted for just over a day, and Alcatel's OneTouch Idol 3, though as it has a much larger cell than those two you'd expect the increased performance.

Standby time, something I think is worse on Android than iOS, is particularly good here. Leaving the phone unplugged overnight would only result in a 5-7 per-cent loss. Pair this with the Doze tech that's coming in Android Marshmallow and things should only get better.

But, there's more to the battery in the Moto X Play than just capacity, it's the first phone to come with the new TurboPower feature that Motorola claims will juice up device faster than the competition.

The first thing to note here is that while the Moto X Play fully supports TurboPower, it doesn't actually come bundled with a charger capable of using it. That's a bit of a shame, but I assume it's a cost-cutting measure that can be forgiven. I've been using the Motorola block that came with the Nexus 6, this supports TurboPower. It's £24.99 from the Google Store, which is quite pricey.

It's definitely worth finding a compatible charger though, because the speed increase is massive. With TurboCharging enabled, I managed to jump from 0% to 50% in just over 30 minutes. I got a full charge in an hour. It's perfect for a quick top-up and just like Qualcomm's Quick Charge, a feature I would struggle without now.

On the whole, the battery is impressive. Especially with the addition of TurboPower. But it doesn't quite match Motorola's lofty claims and my own high expectations.

Moto X Play: Performance

Powering the Moto X Play is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 processor, paired with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 405 GPU. While far from cutting edge, that processor is a 64-bit octa-core chipset comprised of dual quad-core Cortex A53 processors and it provides the power for a number of phone vying for that £250-300 space.

The set-up is certainly capable of handling basic to mildy demanding tasks, but it does end up struggling in some surprising ways.

Running the Geekbench 3 benchmarks, it scored 1,802 on multi-core tests and 568 on the single-core versions, falling behind the older Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 (2,058) which also runs on the same processor. It also falls well below flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6 (4,547) and HTC One M9 (3,959), though both of these run on much more powerful chipsets. Testing with it AnTuTu, the Moto X Play scored 26,545 which puts its below the Nexus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S5.

But, benchmarks can only really tell you half the story. General day-to-day performance is far more important, especially for a mid-range handset that isn't out there to disrupt the big boys.

Initially, I didn't run into any lag, whether I was browsing Chrome, knocking out an email or even playing addictive, yet hardly processor intensive, games like Monument Valley or Two Dots. Apps opened up fast, swiping through homescreens was smooth and in places where lag is often present, such as swiping down the notification tray or opening up the app drawer, the Moto X Play continued to performe fine.

That isn't to say everything to do with performance was stellar. Like we mentioned in our Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 review, which runs on the same chipset, strange quirks and misplaced lag are fairly common. Opening up the multitasking overview often stalled for a second or so, as did waiting for the keyboard to show in the Messaging app. These instances were infrequent, but annoying nonetheless.

For gaming, we put it to the test with Real Racing 3 and Dead Trigger 2, two of the more graphically demanding games on the Google Play Store. The Moto X Play was capable of running both of them smoothly, with no frame drops or stutters in sight. In 3D Mark using the Sling Shot ES 3.0 test, it scored 217, a fairly low score but slightly better than Alcatel One Touch's Idol 3 (175) and the Vodafone Smart Prime 6 (173).

Middling benchmark scores aside, the Moto X Play is a fine, if not standout, performer. Don't come here expecting Samsung Galaxy S6 like performance at a bargain price, but there's more than enough grunt under the hood for the majority of users.

Moto X Play: Camera

Along with the battery, Motorola has high ambitions for the camera on the Moto X Play. And if you can take a look through the specs, you would probably think it had done a great job.

The 21-megapixel rear sensor is a massive step-up from the usual 13-megapixels that are common in this price-range, and the f/2.0 aperture should in theory help it capture acceptable low-light pictures. Situated under the camera is a CCT (colour correlated temperature) two-tone flash for capturing softer skin tones without causing blow-outs.

Right, first things first. The camera on the Moto X Play is fast. You can quickly jump straight into shooting mode by shaking the phone and focusing was accurate and locked on to our target almost instantly. It lacks any sort of laser auto-focus (AF) system, like the OnePlus 2 and LG G4, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

Another handy addition is the auto HDR (high dynamic range) mode, which intelligently switches mode depending on your surroundings. This means you don't need to either leave HDR on all the time, which can lead to blown-out and oddly coloured shots when the conditions aren't right, or manually toggle it on and off every time you take a shot.

If you're shooting during the day, with good light and capturing still subjects – think landscapes, portraits and macro shots – the Moto X Play is very impressive. Pictures are absolutely packed full of detail and you can zoom right in without running into any sort of distortion.

Take the below example of the Olympus camera, you can clearly make out the intricate detailing on the plastic body and the circular pattern on the jog dial. Detail is certainly not an issue here.

Again, colour accuracy and saturation were spot-on with daylight shots. The greens of the shrubs and purples of the flowers are represented accurately, not too bright or overly colourful, just right. Really impressive.

Things take a bit of downturn when you start shooting moving subjects. I found even the slightest hint of movement threw the sensor off and the results were more often than not out of focus. If you're trying to capture the kids playing sport and even a live football match, then results are definitely going to be varied.

The most disappointing part of the camera though, is the low-light shooting. As you can see from the images below, pictures taken in less than ideal lightning don't come out very well at all. Detail is completely missed, the focus is off and the results aren't even worthy of Snapchat. These examples weren't even shot in a really dark room, there was a smattering of light and I was expecting far better results.

The lack of OIS (optical image stabilisation) could be one of the problems here, as it the seemingly slow shutter speed. Don't expect the built-in Night Mode to help your churn out better results, this seems to just up the exposure level a bit and leads to noisy, grainy shots.

I've never been a big fan of flashes on smartphones, but at least the dual-LED set-up here performs better than single LED offerings. You need to use it sparingly and carefully though. I didn't get good results when trying to take portraits with the flash, as skin tones become far too bright and unrealistic. But landscapes were marginally better. Only use the flash if you really have to.

Another let down is the camera app itself, which actually tries to be even more simple than Google's stock option. It does away with the shutter button entirely as tapping anywhere captures a picture. If you're unfamiliar with this, like I was, you'll end up taking a load of photos when you just meant to be focusing.

Under the focus ring is an exposure slider which lets you make your shot brighter or darker. The rest of the options are hidden behind a menu, accessed by a swipe in from the side. Here you can alter your image size - either 21-megapixel at 4:3 or 16-megapixel at 16:9, choose your flash and enable auto HDR.

When there's plenty of megapixels in the camera, I like to see a far larger array of manual options in the app. Even an option to turn off tap to shoot would be nice.

On the front is the now standard 5–megapixel selfie shooter. The sensor used here lets in plenty of light and captures enough detail. But it's nothing special. Video is capped at 1080p, no 4K here sorry, and slo-mo, while a nice feature, is limited to 540p.

Moto X Play: Software

Android was once the ugly rival to Apple's iOS. It lacked the sheen, polish and visual flourishes that made iOS a joy to use and even just to look at. That all changed with Android 5.0 Lollipop and the introduction of Material Design.

Now, Google's operating system in my opinion looks and works much better than iOS. From the notification panel and its straightforward organisation to the swathes of customisability and well designed stock apps, Google just got it right with Lollipop. And even though the likes of Samsung, Sony and to an extent HTC have all scaled back their horrendous skins, the changes they make to Android are still detrimental. That's why I really appreciate Motorola's approach to software on the Moto X Play.

Instead of covering Android with a skin, the Moto X Play runs a near stock build of Lollipop 5.1.1, with just a few tweaks and extra apps that actually improve on Google's offering.

The best addition is Moto Display – an updated lock screen that lights up with incoming messages and lets you quickly scan through multiple notifications without unlocking the device. It has been one of Motorola's standout features in recent years and while the lack of an AMOLED panel does reduce the battery saver benefits of the feature, I'm glad it's been kept around.

Another feature making its return is Moto Voice, though it's nowhere near as highly billed as it was on previous versions. It works in the same way though; you teach the phone your voice by saying a number of phrases and then it should respond only to you when you call out, for instance, 'Hey Moto X'.

I had real trouble getting the phone to recognise my voice, having to retry the set-up process on numerous occasions before it finally let me in. It works now though and I can finally ask it to send a messages or answer simple questions without having to repeat myself multiple times. As it works without the screen being on, it's great to ask it to set an alarm for the morning when the phone is charging and you've already gotten into bed. Lazy yes, but handy.

Motorola's suite of services, all bundled under in the single Moto app, is rounded off with a handy Migrate tool to transfer data from your old phone and Assist, a sort of powered-up profile switcher. Stock Android's current lack of a decent 'Do Not Disturb' mode makes this all the more necessary. You can set the phone to automatically alter settings depending on the time or what you have in your calendar. This lets you do things like turn off all sounds and notifications off between midnight and 6am or when you've labelled something in your Google Calendar as a meeting.

Aside from these additions, everything else is pretty much what you'd get on one of Google's own Nexus devices. There's, thankfully, a complete lack of bloatware, very few remodelled applications - just the camera and a separate gallery app - and just the usual array of preinstalled Google applications.

Another bonus of having a Nexus-like experience is that you'll be one of the first in line to get Android 6.0 Marshmallow when it lands later in the year.

Moto X Play: Call quality and speaker performance

You'd be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that the two speaker grills on the front of the device were in fact dual front-facing stereo speakers. However, they're not. Instead, the bottom one acts as the speaker and the top one takes is the microphone for phone calls. That minor disappointment aside, the speaker is actually much better than most other phones in this price-range.

First off, it's front facing so the sound is directed straight at you and doesn't get blocked by stray hands when you're watching a movie or YouTube video. So many phones, like the iPhone and lots of Samsung devices, still use down or back facing speakers and you have to manoeuvre your hands around them to ensure the noise fully comes through. Well done Motorola for not falling into this trap.

Even though it's a single speaker, it has plenty of oomph and gets quite loud, though I found that distortion become quite common when you jacked it up to full volume. Keeping it down to a mid-way point gave it plenty of clarity and while I wouldn't recommend ditching your Bluetooth speaker, it's certainly good enough for the odd internet clip. There isn't a phone out there, even HTC's well regarded BoomSound, with speakers that are good enough to listen to music through.

Call quality, a feature that is still wildly important yet often underrated, is stellar on the Moto X Play. I've been using the device on Three's UK network and found call quality to be excellent, with plenty of volume and voices were easily heard.

Moto X Play: Everything else – storage, connectivity

Unlike the recently announced OnePlus 2, a device that sits in the same price bracket as the Moto X Play, Motorola has decided against replacing the ubiquitous microUSB port with a USB-C version here. While it might be quite so forward thinking, for me it's a plus. USB-C is the future, but there aren't enough devices that use it yet for it to be a valid feature on a smartphone. All your microUSB cables become redundant and it lacks basic features like Quick Charging.

With the base model, you'll get 16GB of storage. Though only 11GB of that is available for your use. I'd recommend laying down an extra £30 and going with the 32GB model, even just for that bit more breathing space. I installed my regular slew of apps, a couple of games and some Spotify playlists and now i'm left with a mere 1GB free.

There is a microSD slot too, so even if you pick up the 16GB option you can supplement it with anything up to a 128GB card. I've been using the review unit with a speedy SanDisk Extreme 64GB card and I haven't had any problems, even playing games from the card doesn't cause any slow-down and deteriorate performance. You can move apps to the card easily, automatically save all your media to it and use it as your main point of storage.

LTE/4G support is included for speedy data-connections when you're away from home, while dual-band (important if your home router splits the signal into 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands) a/b/g/n Wifi takes care of things when you're all connected up at home.

NFC is included, a feature left out by some similarly priced phones including the OnePlus 2, and even if you don't use it for much more quickly hooking up a Bluetooth speaker currently, the introduction of Android Pay later in the year should finally make it a vital feature. Apple Pay showed that mobile payments can easily be widely accepted and hopefully Google's interpretation can work just as well.

Should I buy the Moto X Play?

If you want a well built smartphone with a fantastic display, great daylight camera and true all-day battery the Moto X Play is a fine choice. It just makes the package even sweeter that it can be had for £279.

Motorola has continued its impressive run and with the Moto G setting new standards for the low-end, I think the Moto X Play can do exactly the same for the mid-range.

Instead of trying to pack the phone with new features like OnePlus 2 did with USB-C and a figerprint scanner, Motorola has ensured all the most important parts are the best they can be. From the camera, to the battery and the screen. Adding in TurboPower capabilities just adds to the package. It's just a shame you have to buy the compatible charger separately.

Yes, there are some annoying performance niggles and the low-light camera performance isn't good, but that doesn't stop me recommending the Moto X Play.

Verdict

With a fantastic display, detailed camera and a battery that can last all day, the Moto X Play continues Motorola's impressive run of smartphones.

Full Review and Specification for the Samsung Galaxy J1

Full Review and Specification for the Samsung Galaxy J1

Samsung might be most well-known for its flagship Galaxy S line but you don’t need to spend hundreds of pounds to get a smartphone from the South Korean company.

In fact it’s just launched a new handset dubbed the Samsung Galaxy J1, which at around £80 SIM-free is about as cheap as a smartphone gets.

But can you really get much for under £100 or are you better off spending a little more? Read on to find out.

Design

While the Samsung Galaxy J1 doesn’t have a premium design it’s actually a pretty nice looking phone for the money. It’s compact for one, at 129 x 68.2 x 8.9mm and light too at 122g, so you can easily fit it into the smallest of bags and pockets and use it for hours on end with getting wrist ache.

The phone has a plastic build, but with an unmistakeably Samsung style, including a physical home button and slightly curved edges which make it comfortable to hold. There’s no metal or glass here (other than the screen) but it looks like a phone which could have easily cost twice as much, which is pretty impressive.

Screen

The Samsung Galaxy J1 has a 4.3-inch 480 x 800 display with a pixel density of 217 pixels per inch. That’s a fairly small size, making this a distinctly compact phone. As such it’s not the best canvas for watching movies, but it does make it all the more portable and it’s not exactly tiny, topping the 4.0-inch iPhone 5S for example.

While its fairly low resolution the small size also means that’s not such an issue, with its pixel density almost matching the slightly more expensive Moto E (2nd gen).

Put it side by side with a higher resolution phone and you’ll notice the relative lack of clarity, but taken on its own it’s not bad at all, especially for the money.

Power

There’s a 1.2GHz dual-core processor humming away inside the Samsung Galaxy J1 and it’s paired with 512MB of RAM.

Those are some fairly low end specs. The processor is a match for the original Moto E, which is likely to be one of its main competitors, but it has half the RAM of that phone.

Still, there’s enough power here to run Android comfortably and while it’s not up to demanding games you can smoothly use it for apps, media, calls and web browsing, so it has the smartphone basics covered, which is all you can really hope for at this price.

One slight disappointment is that it runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat, rather than Android Lollipop. That’s only one major release behind, but it’s still a shame that a new phone isn’t running the latest software.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy J1 has a pretty good camera for the money with a 5 megapixel snapper on the back and a 2 megapixel one on the front. They’re fairly basic offerings sure and video is capped at 720p and 30fps, but there’s a flash so you can shoot in darker environments and some low cost phones don’t even have front-facing cameras. The original Moto E for example doesn’t and even the Moto E (2ndgen) only has a VGA one.

Pictures won’t impress if blown up to anything much bigger than the J1’s screen, but if that’s where you plan to show your photos off that won’t be a problem.

Battery life, memory and connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy J1 has an 1850 mAh battery, which might sound on the small side, but then this is a small, low power phone, so that’s all it really needs.

Indeed battery life is actually pretty good, lasting for up to 10 hours of talk time or 40 hours of music playback, while if you run low you can always enable Ultra Power Saving mode to eke out even more life.

There’s only 4GB of built in storage which is an absolutely tiny amount, but again it matches the original Moto E so it’s competitive for the price and it also has a microSD card slot with support for cards of up to 128GB, so you can easily expand it to the point where you’ll have more storage than you know what to do with.

Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth 4.0. There’s no 4G here but it does support HSPA+, for the fastest 3G speeds around.

Check out the Samsung Galaxy J1 in-store

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy J1’s main selling point is its price. At around £80 SIM-free, even less on pay as you and for nothing upfront on very low cost contracts it’s cheaper than a smartphone has any right to be.

Yet it is a smartphone, with full access to apps from Google Play, as well as a reasonable camera, a decent design, good battery life and a respectable screen.

It’s a little lacking in RAM even for the money and the fact that it’s on an older version of Android is disappointing too, though it’s only slightly outdated, but those are the only major marks against it, so if you can live with that then the Samsung Galaxy J1 is a great value purchase.

Samsung Galaxy J1 Review Scoring

• Style and Handling
• User Friendliness
• Feature set
• Performance
• Battery
• Overall Score

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