<p><strong>Motorola Moto Z3 Play </strong>$499.00</p>

- Sascha Segan

Moto Mods live. The new Moto Z3 Play, which will be available this summer, extends Motorola’s three-year run of modular addons, providing a new phone to go with your extra battery, boombox speaker, or Polaroid printer Mods. I got a chance to take an early look at the phone, and while I have some reservations about its price, I’m happy to see that Motorola hasn’t abandoned its commitment to modularity.

DESIGN AND SPECS

The Z3 Play looks like a flagship phone from a design perspective. It’s quite attractive, with a shimmering ultra-dark-blue glass back, and super-thin at 0.27 inches. The rear cameras (one 12MP, one 5MP for depth effects) pop out on a pronounced disc with sharp edges. That bump is there so the cameras aren’t recessed too far when you put on a magnetic back cover or a Moto Mod.

The front is an 18:9, 6-inch, 2,160-by-1,080 AMOLED screen with very rich colors. There’s no physical home button; the fingerprint sensor is on the side. At the bottom of the screen, you can switch between standard Android virtual buttons or a new, Android P/iOS-like horizontal bar, which you can tap or swipe to navigate. The phone is running Android 8.1; Motorola assured us that it will get upgraded, but not on any specific time frame. “We continue to embrace a pure Android platform,” said Jeff Snow, Moto’s GM for premium smartphones.

The phone is splash-resistant but not waterproof. It has no headphone jack—the phone comes with a USB-C dongle. It has a 3,000mAh batte

This story is from the July 2018 edition of PC Magazine.

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