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Lenovo's Motorola Moto e5 Play Phone Comes at a Budget But Without USB Type-C or Qualcomm Quick Charge Support

When you purchase a Apple iPhone X or any other popular phone in the US chances are you will need to use a wireless carrier with the phone. This has encouraged many more new wireless mobile services to pop up including Xfinity Mobile by Comcast to benefit from the growing US phone market on top of existing mobile carriers. Other than premium flagship phones, Xfinity Mobile has also teamed up with Lenovo to offer low cost wireless options for the Motorola Moto e5 Play phone.

We recently purchased the Motorola Moto e5 Play through Xfinity Mobile as a very affordable Android phone supporting Verizon's network. This is a lower end phone that still uses a micro-B connector with no support of Qualcomm Quick Charge technology for any form of fast charging. In contrast, Qualcomm Quick Charge has been adopted by earlier Motorola phones such as the Moto G5 while the more recent Moto Z Droid has debuted USB Power Delivery rapid charging technology over the USB Type-C connector.

Click here to see how the Moto e5 Play performs over Qualcomm Quick Charge when tested with a Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 based charger.

The Moto e5 Play apparently is more similar to the much older Moto G4, Moto G4 Plus and Moto G4 Play phones which despite their low prices were able to provide a good feature set. The Moto e5 Play gets a newer Android 8.0 Oreo which is an upgrade over the previous Motorola Moto E4 but still runs on the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad core processor. Both models also support the Adreno 308 GPU, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage and 2800 mAh battery as well as most other main features.  

Here's a quick look at what's inside the packaging of the Moto e5 Play that we bought.  

Opening up the phone's box, the first thing that you see on the phone is the Xfinity Mobile branding on a removable plastic cover over the screen requesting that you activate the phone on its website before turning on the phone for the first time.

The Moto e5 Play comes with a micro-B based 10W ac adapter, micro-B cable and documentation. Rather than the advertised 10 watts, the ac adapter only supplies 5 watts to the phone which we found out here. Instead the phone can reach nearly 10 watts charging when tested with a Motorola 15W based charger in this review, which may just be hinting of any possible support of TurboPower branded charging technology by the phone.

The Moto e5 Play looks premium for a budget phone comparable to its higher end counterparts such as the Motorola Moto G6 phone.

While the previous Motorola Moto E4 had the fingerprint sensor on the front of the phone, the Moto e5 Play now has it on the back which shows off the Motorola logo. Both phones offer a similar 8 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.