Yesterday Motorola announced 3 phones. If you want to read the full specs head over to Motorola.

Following the announcement the inter webs go crazy with news of the flagship killers from Motorola. The same happened following the OnePlus 2 announcement. Well, none of the phones are total flagship killers. However, they are super good phones.

If you look at the new Moto X Play for starters. This has a less powerful processor than the Moto X Style.  This in turn means that despite have identical components for the camera as the X Style, the Style will take better shots. This is because it has a better ISP and also includes Phase Detection. And all of these processors are not top of the league offerings. The Style only has a Snapdragon 808. The more powerful the processor and GPU, the more capable the gaming and camera should be. Plus 4GB ram is flagship status now. Neither of these phones include this amount of ram. 

Why on earth didn’t Motorola have the same large battery in the Style as the Play confounds me. QHD displays eat battery. Next, neither phone includes a fingerprint sensor which would be needed for Android Pay when it arrives. USB C connectors are not provided. 

The display. Gorilla Glass 3 is used instead of Gorilla Glass 4. Sounds like a small difference but all of the differences all reduce the costs of manufacture and in turn the selling price. 

As to the selling price, neither of these phones are dirt cheap. They are reasonably priced for the specification. 

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. What you do have is a phone built for a very good price. Components and manufacturing costs have reduced over time. Not only have the component parts reduced in cost, but the quality or what you can get for your money has improved too.

At the end of the day it all depends on what you need your phone to do. If you’re not in to photography or gaming, the Snapdragon 615 processor will be excellent. That also means you can spend less too. 

A positive aspect of the new phones is the customisation options. These should make these phones standout from the competition ,and is also likely a money maker for Motorola as the pricing is at the full retail price. 

We are still waiting for the next tranche of phones to be released along with the new iPhones. Then and only then can we truly decide what is a flagship phone or not. Always remember cracking specs don’t always translate into a good handset!

In my book, a flagship is a phone that has the best of everything. Unfortunately this comes at a premium and I do wonder if it would be better to spend a few hundred pounds on a basic or mid priced phone and use the rest of buy something like a Sony RX100 MK2 or Panasonic TZ70 camera. The final combination will be substantially better !

PS. I wish Motorola had made the Moto X Play with the same processor as the X Style, thereby giving it an equal footing with the camera, along with 4gb of ram. That would be a near perfect smartphone for many people.