REVIEW: Moto G5S Plus

The Moto G5S and G5S Plus, with the latter featuring the first Moto smartphone with a dual-lens camera.

Lenovo's Motorola division has lately been making a living out of offering good-looking, pleasantly-specced and decently-priced mid-range smartphones.
And to show all of us how serious they are in going on with this, there's a new G5 on the block. Those of you who've been following around would say, again?!
This time around, it's the Moto G5S that's introducing itself to us. Sounds familiar?
Well, the G5S is another proof of Moto's commitment to the mid-ranger wars. Matter of factly, it's the third G5 in eight months - actually, third and fourth, because it has a little brother, the simply-named G5S - which kinda shows you how trigger-happy Moto is as of late. And if you think three in the same series in that span is a lot, I'm haven't even mentioned the Moto C, C Plus, E4, E4 Plus and, of course, the latest and hottest of the lot, the Moto Z2 Play, Moto Z2 Force and the new generation of Moto Mods, which were unveiled last week.
That's nine phones from February to October. But I'm quite sure Nokia has something to say about that, having launched six phones - the 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 3310 - in four months, and we're already hearing about the 2 and 9. Whew!
(Again, to our friends at Moto, my apologies for not being able to attend the launch of the latter - though I've seen the Moto Z2 Play from a friend; it looks hot. And I'm still not over last year's Hasselblad Mod on the Moto Z.)
Anyway, let's go back to the G5S: that 'S' is quite so because, officially, it's a 'special edition' version of the G5 line-up; whatever makes its special, we're about to find out. To start off, while up front it does look the same as the G5 and G5 Plus, you'll readily notice that its rear has a T-shaped lining on top, going across and down to its signature camera, which kinda reminds you of HTC devices.
Which brings us to one of its best suits: the G5S Plus - along with the G5S - is sort of a premium version of their predecessors, the G5 and G5 Plus. No, scratch that: they are premium versions, thanks to its redesign; they now use an all-metal unibody that - even though it's not as pricey as the big guns - makes it look like a premium device.
Personally, that redesign on the rear plus using an all-metal unibody make their predecessors look mortal, so to speak - and that's taking into consideration that the G5 and G5 Plus were rockers in their own right.
Moving forward, the G5S has a 5.5-inch full-HD screen, which is the same as the G5 Plus, though its pixel resolution is a bit lower at 401ppi compared to its predecessor's 424ppi. Well, that won't be much of an issue because the screen is still bright enough. It runs on Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box, but there is a planned update to 8.0 Oreo.
Going back to the camera, here's what probably really makes the G5S Plus special: it's the first in Moto's G line-up that sports a dual-lens camera; welcome to this side of the wars, Moto. Anyway, jack up the dual 13MP snappers and you'll find out that it's, as usual, user-friendly. And as with any dual-lens offering on a smartphone, it has the ability to take depth-of-field shots, AKA ones with bokeh, AKA ones in which you can blur the background. And while you can't really stack it up with the Apples and the Samsungs and the Huaweis (I wonder when I'll be able to include 'Sonys' here), it still does a pretty decent job. There's also a professional mode that brings up more options.
Which takes us to what I think I'll start calling 'beef of the edition' from now on: oddly, the G5S Plus has a noticeable shutter lag, even when the camera has captured what it's focusing on. You'll also get a bit of noise especially when the lights go down. Hmmm, interesting drawback, given its predecessor was quite good in this area. Given the upgrades in its parts, I don't think it's a hardware issue; maybe a software update would do the trick (Moto, you listening?).
I've had no issues with its performance, which echoes that in the G5 and G5 Plus. As for battery life, at 3000mAh, it was good enough to last me a day. My standard one-hour video-on-full-brightness knocked out 20 per cent of juice, which compares to the 15 per cent I lost when I reviewed the G5 Plus, which has the same capacity. Understandable, since, the G5S Plus has a bigger screen (the G5 Plus has a 5.2-inch display). Here's something weird: the smaller G5S also has the same 3000mAh.

AND SO...
Yup, at its specs and price point, the Moto G5S Plus will be tough to beat - but we're quite sure the Huawei Honor 9 may take exception to that. That camera bug is biting me, as well as the question of what if it had a bigger battery. This is a solid mid-range smartphone that performs well and lives up to the original G5's tagline: 'Premium for All'.
 
THE LOWDOWN