I got my Moto-G Plus 4th Gen (Black) with 32 GB on May 26th, after ordering it online via a promo on May 19th, so no complaints there. However, my peeve is that despite a month since my order, the freebies that Amazon promised haven’t come in – Ibibo travel vouchers, ebooks etc.. but that is for another story, some other time.

I have been using the MotoG4+ now for over 3 weeks. Overall, it is a sleek piece, extremely light and the set up is amazingly simple, partly due to Google uncle, who anyway has all your information. Within a few minutes, I was ready to fly..

.. so all the right boxes are ticked – the camera, the memory (32 GB), the os – Marshmallow 6.0.1, 3GB RAM, Octocore Snapdragon processor and so on.

And now for the usage:

Running Marshmallow, the phone is absolutely zippy, not a single sign of sluggishness I used to have, which was a ‘bleep’. My typical usage ranges from ‘heavy to very heavy’ and there is a significant amount of data consumption that I do on the phone. On that account, no worries. Ditto on the battery.. lasts me an entire working day, i.e around 12 hours of heavy usage. The camera works like a dream, with super sharp images (what more can you expect from a 16MP camera).

The fingerprint security works most of the time but with clammy hands in the hot and humid Delhi summer, I found some problems, so quickly moved back to the ol’ familiar pattern security.

The problem starts with the phone features, and not so much with the os. Having been used to a Samsung android, some of the essential features are found missing in the most basic of apps – the phone. For instance, you cant ‘block’ caller, nor can you delete call history of one caller – either you do it for all or for none – some kind of a mobile tech egalitarianism.

Also the logs don’t feature calls and messages, only calls. For messages, you have to go to the message app which is a bit cumbersome as I keep switching between calls and messages throughout the day. I finally downloaded Truecaller to ‘show busy’ pesky tele-callers.

Exactly at the end of three weeks, I got a fright last night – while I was setting the alarm and a ‘do not disturb’, the screen started shaking and suddenly I found that there was nothing I could do, not even switch off the phone, as no sooner I hard pressed the power button the ‘switch off’ message would come and that would vanish even before I could reach only to be replaced by flickering screens of all the apps that I have used in the recent past.. it was happening so fast that I couldn’t even track which button to hit… frustrated for over 3 minutes, I finally did what every normal Indian user would do – remove the back cover to remove the battery, only to find that Moto G Plus 4th Gen has out-thought me.. you cant remove the battery.

However, after around 10 minutes of this St Vitus’ dance, the screen went blank. It was out cold.. which was good for me. I restarted the phone and it behaved well.. whew! Such adventure at night may be ok for folks with a stout heart, but me, a definite NO.

Also while battery may not be the most powerful, it lasts, but has the tendency to heat a tad more than what I would imagine as normal. Even the heating is a little inconsistent and on days when I have really used the phone practically non-stop, the heating isn’t much, but on days when it is relatively less heavy usage, it suddenly heats up and stays hot for a few hours, only to cool down as suddenly. I am sure there is some profundity here which is too much for me.

The other problem which I was told about was the voice quality at the other end. I have had innumerable people telling me that my voice comes as if I am down in some well… well, they may be right from a philosophical perspective, but from a practical angle, there DOES seem to be an issue with the voice quality. Even normally clear people sound to me as if they are at a great distance. This is a definite issue which needs to be looked into by Lenovo.

Am I happy with the phone? With the exception of the last night dalliance and the fact that I seem to be perennially in some sort of a trench while speaking – yes. Wife is happy since she has a reason to say ‘I can't hear a thing of what you say’ and put the phone down. As for me, I have figured out it is better not to say anything, as anyway people can't hear a thing. Jokes apart, a 3.5 out of 5.

Tags : Moto G Plus 4th Gen, Moto G Review