Moto G7 Play with Alexa Push-to-Talk – Locked – 32 GB – Deep Indigo (US Warranty)

I know people tend to love their smartphones -- but that's never been me. I've always found them more disappointing and/or frustrating than anything else. Now, part of that is that I've always bought cheap phones, as you can tell from the fact that I bought this one. But I've also had flagship Android phones through my job, and the fact that they never seemed much better than the cheap ones is a big reason why I refuse to spend much.I've had the G7 Play for three days now, and I think it's safe to say that I'm officially in love. I read before buying it that the processor is usually found in far higher-end phones, and it shows in its lack of lag time. When I tap an icon, the app actually opens, immediately. Web pages load in a snap. There's no delay in taking a photo. I've had phones before that hit some of those marks, but never really all of them. I bought this now because satellite navigation had more or less ceased to work on my old phone, an LG -- Google Maps would take around five minutes to open and Waze didn't seem to know where I was. Now I just say, "Hey Google, take me home," and I'm getting directions before I even turn my car on.The screen is bright, sharp and vivid, and photos look great. The notch at the top sometimes gets criticized as unnecessary, but it provides valuable extra screen space, as does switching from the old-fashioned navigation buttons to the new gesture-based navigation bar. Charging is lightning fast with USB-C -- I get about a percentage point a minute. The stock Android experience seems like what I've been missing all this time -- this is my first unlocked phone, and I think I'm going to have to go in that direction from now on. I'm a Metro by T-Mobile customer and using native Android visual voicemail instead of Metro's clunky equivalent is a great experience.I only have a few criticisms. The first is also a compliment, because I love Motorola's Peek Display feature, which shows you the time, charge level and notifications when you bump the phone with the screen off, but it turns off after just a couple of seconds and there's no way to change the timeout -- I checked. Second, a Motorola feature that keeps the screen on when you're looking at it could be a game changer but doesn't seem to work very well, or at all. There's also no NFC -- shouldn't every phone have NFC by now? But I've actually never had a phone with NFC and I'm not going to dock this phone a star for what might have been.I've never had any brand loyalty whatsoever with my smartphones, and in fact have never purchased from the same manufacturer twice. Over the years I've owned phones from Samsung, HTC, ZTE, LG and now Motorola. I haven't liked any of them much until now. We'll see what happens in the next couple of years, but three days into this one, I have a hard time imagining buying my next phone from anyone else.

I needed a new phone but 5G just isn't ready right now for the mainstream so I picked this one up instead. 2021 will be the year for entry-mid-level 5G, but until then...hello Moto G7 Play! My thoughts so far after about a week of owning it:+Adreno 506 graphics plays Pokemon GO and Final Fantasy War of the Visions well enough. (see -'s) I've also seen some videos with PUBG Mobile running on it.+Solid battery+Offers the latest Android updates and is expected to get updated to the new version+Modern fancy Android features (going from 6 to 9 is a world of difference)+Works great with T-Mobile, and it's compatible with just about every network+Moto features and gestures are quite niftyBut it isn't without some faults.-2GB of LPDDR3 memory can cause things to get unresponsive in games. This is the bottleneck where they cheaped out on-Mono stereo is a bit lower quality than I was expecting-Camera flash is blinding and raw-A little disappointed that after they preinstalled Amazon apps, that the Amazon Appstore wasn't included by default and Google Assistant is enabled over Alexa-No built-in optimizing software for cleaning junk or clearing RAM, just android/google defaults. My previous phone had software just for that purpose (and an ad-free Avast scanner inside of it)For the sales price of $129.99 though along with its network compatibility it's a clear winner for budget users and holdover phones as long as you have realistic expectations for it. I haven't maxed out the SD card and don't really plan to run into that one reviewer's issue since for $7 I put in a 32GB expansion. Android 9 lets you format an SD card as "Internal Storage" if you need to.Overall, 4.5 Stars and worth getting at this time!

Update#2: Pictures take a really long time to process phone can be sluggish at times I am sure it's because of only 2 gigs of ram. As a phone its great.Update#1: The phone stopped sending\receiving texts and would only send\receive with Cellular Data on it would not work with Wi-Fi even if the phone was on top of the box!!! I also remember my mom telling me she cant receive pics in text she just gets the spinning circle I figured she was doing something wrong as I can only talk to her by phone.THE FIX - hit the messages app - 3 dots (upper Right) - "Settings" - "Chat features" - turn off "Enable chat features". All texts and pictures now are instant again.I bought one for my mother 5 months ago and other than sometimes pictures won't show up in texts she has had no problems. I just bought another one for myself and this phone is a downgrade from the Razer Phone2 and boy do I miss the CPU and extra memory. Camera is mediocre but don't forget you only paid 130 dollars. Comes with android 9 but can be upgraded to 10. I have yet to have any of the issues that people have posted. I am on AT&T network. I don't use face recognition so I cannot comment on that feature. Battery lasts me all day. AND best of all Otterbox makes a case for it.