Moto X Play: Various Reviews

[aldo82]

Just installed Facebook which is normally a dog of an app it it runs pretty well. Better than my old phone! This app scrolls well too. I think the scrolling lag in chrome is when it is still loading. So if the page has ads its better to press the x to stop it loading them.

Also notice that if u slide your finger along the screen the page will not keep up with you. I.e. it will scroll slower than your finger. Not sure if that lag or by design but different to what I'm used to.

Sliding side menus in such as Google maps does lag and trails behind the finger.

I wonder if this the same for everyone? Perhaps this can be ironed out in a software update in the future. It's not too bad and certainly not enough to put me off. I'm pleased with my purchase!

By the way, when you set up moto voice does voice command always go through it? Ie when in the Google app you can no longer just say OK Google now?

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[Mrrikki]

So in still getting lag in scrolling. Chrome is the worst offender. I'm quite surprised it's unable to scroll smoothly and I haven't seen much mention if this. If its down to the processor then its a shame they didn't put a better one in for a little bit more! Of course that's the style but then I wouldn't want a screen that big. Everything else on the play I really like and I am enjoying it.

Battery seems great. I'm on 50% with 1h 47 screen on which includes some sat nav. But that's with over 17 hours of standby to and its my first charge so it should improve. It only lost 3% overnight. Perhaps I can go back to not charging my phone overnight which would be great!

A couple of weird things I've noticed in addition to the laggy scrolling. When I switch it on, it takes a good 30 seconds after its booted up to find a signal. Never had that on any other phone. Also ant get the camera gesture to work reliably. And in using this app, if I press the icon to open it it resets to the front screen. If I open it from multitasking then it saves state. That didn't happen on my old phone!

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Weird as u have had zero lag on this phone, Chrome has been perfect.

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[aldo82]

Weird as u have had zero lag on this phone, Chrome has been perfect.

Posted via the Android Central App

That's frustrating to hear for me. Makes me wonder if mine is faulty and worth exchanging but then it's not that bad so bet the shop would just laugh at me!

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[Mrrikki]

That's frustrating to hear for me. Makes me wonder if mine is faulty and worth exchanging but then it's not that bad so bet the shop would just laugh at me!

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Is there any sites you get real issues with? I could test them on my phone to see.

 

[aldo82]

Android central for a start!

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[Cakefish]

It heavily depends on the type of site you're visiting. Heavy, unoptimised sites will really make it struggle. Light, well optimised sites will run like butter.

I can confirm that this phone isn't as slick and smooth as the Nexus 5 in some UI animations, but it's never unbearably slow. Even the Nexus 5 is not immune to the occasional stutter and slowdown, these just happen to be a bit more common occurrences on the Moto X Play. The Android Marshmallow preview builds are said to perform much better on the Nexus devices than Lollipop does, so there's hope for improvement in the future

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

 

[Mrrikki]

Is there any sites you get real issues with? I could test them on my phone to see.

Ok, so I normally use the app as I often find Android Central laggy, used to have terrible issues with it on Chromebooks also until I used Adblock as these adverts seem to slow it down.

Yes this site does lag on the X Play, I gave it a few seconds to load and it was better, I used my LG G4 did the same test initial lag was the same. Once the page had fully loaded it was smoother on the LG G4 but it was not unusable on the Moto X Play.

 

[aldo82]

OK thanks guys. I think what I'm seeing is probably typical. If I bring up the BBC mobile website and scroll straight away there is stutter but if I wait a second then scroll it much better. Strangely it does still glitch every so often though rather than scroll totally smoothly. Hopefully just software that can be fixed!

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[Cakefish]

Just tried the AC website in Chrome and it's not perfectly smooth on my device either. This is something that we have to expect, it's not going to perform as well as a flagship device, and it's unfair to expect that it would.

Sure, I am a little disappointed that it can't quite keep up with my nearly two year old Nexus 5 in all use cases, but I keep reminding myself that the Nexus 5 launched with the top of the line processor at the time and skimped heavily on both the camera and the battery to get there. Motorola has taken the opposite approach. Whether that makes for a more rounded overall experience depends on what you prioritise more in your Android experience; buttery smooth animations and gameplay or great camera quality and long battery endurance.

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

 

[Mrrikki]

OK thanks guys. I think what I'm seeing is probably typical. If I bring up the BBC mobile website and scroll straight away there is stutter but if I wait a second then scroll it much better. Strangely it does still glitch every so often though rather than scroll totally smoothly. Hopefully just software that can be fixed!

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Ok so I just did a few tests on the X Play with the Android Central site:

Firefox worked perfect no lag at all but I prefer to use Chrome as it saves my passwords across devices etc.
Chrome Beta - Seems to be better, I then switched to desktop site and this was far better than the mobile site.
Chrome normal - thought I would try desktop site here, again far better than the mobile site.

Hope this helps, I will go back to using the AC app anyway

 

[Cakefish]

I think we can all agree that the AC app is fantastic. The apps for other sites like Phandroid, Android Authority and Pocketnow are not even close.

Lollipop has been notorious for slowing non-flagship class devices down. Android Marshmallow makes big improvements to RAM management. And because this a Motorola device we can expect the update not long after the Nexus devices.

I was able to get 35,693 in the Antutu benchmark with this phone. My Nexus 5 got 39,526. This device isn't that bad, it's the Android OS itself that needs optimising. Specifically for multi-threaded workloads which is the Snapdragon 615's strength rather than single-core performance, which is its weakness.

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

 

[aldo82]

Thanks for the inputs. I do like the approach moto took on the play. Good camera, good battery, good screen and nice form factor for a great price that doesn't break the bank. It's only chrome I seem to have issues with so hopefully that might improve with updates and marshmallow.

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[Ogdin]

Firefox syncs across devices too.

Posted via my Moto x

 

[Mrrikki]

Firefox syncs across devices too.

Posted via my Moto x

Of course but I use Chrome for everything and don't want to swap to Firefox which is what I was trying to get at.

 

[Cakefish]

I did a bit of research online on how one could optimise mobile web browsing for non-flagship class CPUs and discovered that it is possible to block mobile ads without the need for root access! The app is called Adguard and it works wonderfully. Webpages that were horribly slow before now scroll like butter and load much faster. I tested it out on several websites - you wouldn't believe the difference it makes. Literally butter!

I won't link directly to the .apk but this PhoneArena article about it: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Spot...roid-ad-blocker-you-want-in-your-life_id70298

Hope it helps you guys, I'm certainly keeping it installed. It's a night and day difference. Sad to think that the majority of mobile website choppines is solely created by bloated, unoptimised adverts, but couldn't be happier that there's an easy solution out there.

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

 

[Mrrikki]

I did a bit of research online on how one could optimise mobile web browsing for non-flagship class CPUs and discovered that it is possible to block mobile ads without the need for root access! The app is called Adguard and it works wonderfully. Webpages that were horribly slow before now scroll like butter and load much faster. I tested it out on several websites - you wouldn't believe the difference it makes. Literally butter!

I won't link directly to the .apk but this PhoneArena article about it: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Spot...roid-ad-blocker-you-want-in-your-life_id70298

Hope it helps you guys, I'm certainly keeping it installed. It's a night and day difference. Sad to think that the majority of mobile website choppines is solely created by bloated, unoptimised adverts, but couldn't be happier that there's an easy solution out there.

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

Looks good, will he interesting to see if it drains battery being on all the time.

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[aldo82]

Interesting, will have to look into that. By the way that website is seriously bad on my phone. The laggiest site I've seen!

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[Mrrikki]

Interesting, will have to look into that. By the way that website is seriously bad on my phone. The laggiest site I've seen!

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Weird that website was OK for me, this adblocker really speeds up a number of sites though.

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[Cakefish]

Looks good, will he interesting to see if it drains battery being on all the time.

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This explains it:

https://kb.adguard.com/index.php?/K...ndroid-battery-and-traffic-consumption-issues

According to the article Android associates the consumption of all other apps to the Adguard app. I'll just have to monitor my battery life over a few days and see if it drops noticeably.

 

[aldo82]

I decided to factory reset mine before I got too much installed to see if it made a difference to the general jerkiness I'm seeing in the OS. Well it didn't! So was a bit of a waste of time but never mind. I'm disappointed by the lag im seeing especially as others aren't but if there was a hardware fault then I assume there would be more problems than just a bit of lag. Maybe I am just OCD about it and everyone's is actually the same! Have wondered if it could be a display refresh issue although some things seem so not sure that can be it.

Oh well more than happy with every other aspect of the phone so hopefully some software updates in the future will sort it out

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