I Love/Hate my Moto Z play

[Spelcheker]

Pre-ordered it on bestbuy. Got 40 bucks off and a free incipio power pack moto mod.

Number one priority, battery life. Love love love the battery life. Blows away my first gen Nexus 5.

First disappointment. I'm on ATT. This phone will not connect to the "nxtgenphone" Access point name on ATT. It will only connect to the "phone" apn. This limits me to HPSA+. 3G is still fast enough for me as I don't stream a lot of stuff over cellular, and when I do, it's fast enough to stream netflix. So this isn't a deal-breaker. If I hate it too much, I'll switch to T-mobile.

2nd disappointment, and this one is driving me crazy. WHY IS THE DAMN EARPIECE SPEAKER ALSO THE DAMN SPEAKERPHONE SPEAKER??!!

Try this. unlock your phone, say O.K. Google, (bedoop), call Debbie, (or whomever), (bedoop), put phone to ear, GET YOUR EARDRUM BLOWN OUT AS GOOGLE NOW SAYS "CALLING DEBBIE!"

Yeah, I might get used to it someday, but I'm still doing it once or twice a week and you should hear me cuss when I do.

THIS is the reason for the "escalating ringtone". THIS is the problem behind the soft sounding notifications, and THIS is the reason you can't crank up the speakerphone loud enough to hear google maps when you're driving.

I guess motorola doesn't remember when this was an issue back in the flip phone days when a couple of manufacturers did the same thing and got their asses sued by users with ringing ears.

STUPID STUPID DESIGN DECISION!!! What did it save? 2 dollars a phone?

O.K., rant/off

 

[Ry]

First disappointment. I'm on ATT. This phone will not connect to the "nxtgenphone" Access point name on ATT. It will only connect to the "phone" apn. This limits me to HPSA+. 3G is still fast enough for me as I don't stream a lot of stuff over cellular, and when I do, it's fast enough to stream netflix. So this isn't a deal-breaker. If I hate it too much, I'll switch to T-mobile.

My first guess is you may need a new AT&T SIM card.

 

[Ry]

2nd disappointment, and this one is driving me crazy. WHY IS THE DAMN EARPIECE SPEAKER ALSO THE DAMN SPEAKERPHONE SPEAKER??!!

Try this. unlock your phone, say O.K. Google, (bedoop), call Debbie, (or whomever), (bedoop), put phone to ear, GET YOUR EARDRUM BLOWN OUT AS GOOGLE NOW SAYS "CALLING DEBBIE!"

Yeah, I might get used to it someday, but I'm still doing it once or twice a week and you should hear me cuss when I do.

THIS is the reason for the "escalating ringtone". THIS is the problem behind the soft sounding notifications, and THIS is the reason you can't crank up the speakerphone loud enough to hear google maps when you're driving.

I guess motorola doesn't remember when this was an issue back in the flip phone days when a couple of manufacturers did the same thing and got their asses sued by users with ringing ears.

STUPID STUPID DESIGN DECISION!!! What did it save? 2 dollars a phone?

O.K., rant/off

For this one, I miss the old Moto Action/Voice feature where if you picked up the phone and put it to your ear, it would open Moto Voice for a voice command.

 

[nickname303]

Pre-ordered it on bestbuy. Got 40 bucks off and a free incipio power pack moto mod.

Number one priority, battery life. Love love love the battery life. Blows away my first gen Nexus 5.

First disappointment. I'm on ATT. This phone will not connect to the "nxtgenphone" Access point name on ATT. It will only connect to the "phone" apn. This limits me to HPSA+. 3G is still fast enough for me as I don't stream a lot of stuff over cellular, and when I do, it's fast enough to stream netflix. So this isn't a deal-breaker. If I hate it too much, I'll switch to T-mobile.

2nd disappointment, and this one is driving me crazy. WHY IS THE DAMN EARPIECE SPEAKER ALSO THE DAMN SPEAKERPHONE SPEAKER??!!

Try this. unlock your phone, say O.K. Google, (bedoop), call Debbie, (or whomever), (bedoop), put phone to ear, GET YOUR EARDRUM BLOWN OUT AS GOOGLE NOW SAYS "CALLING DEBBIE!"

Yeah, I might get used to it someday, but I'm still doing it once or twice a week and you should hear me cuss when I do.

THIS is the reason for the "escalating ringtone". THIS is the problem behind the soft sounding notifications, and THIS is the reason you can't crank up the speakerphone loud enough to hear google maps when you're driving.

I guess motorola doesn't remember when this was an issue back in the flip phone days when a couple of manufacturers did the same thing and got their asses sued by users with ringing ears.

STUPID STUPID DESIGN DECISION!!! What did it save? 2 dollars a phone?

O.K., rant/off

Didn't you do any research before you bought the phone? I'll personally never understand why someone would buy a phone and then complain about one of its built-in features. Before you buy the phone you should make sure it has all the features that you need, and also make sure it DOESN'T have any features that you hate - like the earpiece/speaker combo in the Moto Z Play, for instance. Why did you buy it if the speaker/earpiece combo is such a stupid idea? If you blindly bought the phone knowing hardly anything about its design/features then who else is to blame but yourself? The fact that it was seemingly a surprise to you about the earpiece/speaker combo tells me that you did little research. Maybe a lesson learned there?

Also, youre just ASSUMING that the low notification/ringtone thing is because of the earpiece/speaker combo. It doesn't really seem logical to me though. If the speaker/earpiece combo is the reason for it then why wasn't it like that from the start? The low ringtone/notification volume only happened after an update. If low volume was needed because of the combined earpiece/speaker then it would have been low volume from the very start when the phone was released.

 

[PowrDroid]

2nd disappointment, and this one is driving me crazy. WHY IS THE DAMN EARPIECE SPEAKER ALSO THE DAMN SPEAKERPHONE SPEAKER??!!

Try this. unlock your phone, say O.K. Google, (bedoop), call Debbie, (or whomever), (bedoop), put phone to ear, GET YOUR EARDRUM BLOWN OUT AS GOOGLE NOW SAYS "CALLING DEBBIE!"

Yeah, I might get used to it someday, but I'm still doing it once or twice a week and you should hear me cuss when I do.

I guess I'd wait until I heard Google say "Calling Debbie", THEN put the handset up to my ear.

STUPID STUPID DESIGN DECISION!!! What did it save? 2 dollars a phone?

Where on the handset should the speakerphone speaker be placed where it wouldn't be near to your ear when holding the phone next your head?

 

[honda1k]

I must say I really like the speakerphone design I work in construction so sometimes I'm in a noisy environment and I just sometimes need a little extra volume so with it turn down I use the speakerphone as the regular phone.

 

[Sailindawg]

Finally somebody else with this problem, I'm seeing the same crap regarding LTE on my MPZ. I put my sim from my Moto X 2014 in the new MPZ when I received the phone from BB on the 20th October.

LTE worked fine, then after 2 weeks, it stopped. Numerous calls to AT&T, NEW SIM CARD, visit to BB and still no LTE.

The new sim works fine with my old phone, LTE all day.

What I'm coming to the conclusion is that MOTO/Lenovo didn't get AT&T's IMEI "approval". Probably because moto is not selling the phone through AT&T. Really pisses me off. It should not matter from whom I purchased the phone from, but welcome to the world of AT&T and Verizon.

I have one call back to respond to from AT&T still to try to resolve this matter.

Let me know if you resolve the LTE issue.

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

I don't know. I like the design decision as it means that the main speaker is pointing directly at you and if you need to turn a call into loudspeaker audio, you don't have to dance the phone around to point the speaker into your ear.

Maybe it's because I used other phones with the same setup (notably those with dual front firing speakers) but it's not hard to get used to.

 

[Sailindawg]

The built in speaker gets the job done. One has the speaker mod if you want quality sound. That's the design of the phone. It makes sense of the modularity concept.

At OP, have you had any luck getting the LTE thing figured out? I'm in Boston, what city are you located in?

 

[Spelcheker]

O.K., so yeah, maybe I was Hangry when I wrote the original post. Sorry. I do love the phone, and I'll get used to the stupid speaker.

As far as research goes, I read every review out there. I even knew about the issue with LTE channel 17 and the fact that it may or may not be in this phone depending on who you are talking to. (turns out the box lists it, but motorola's website doesn't.) But I never thought in a million years to research "Is the speakerphone speaker the same as the earpiece speaker?", and I doubt anyone else would either. If you did, you're a better man than I Gunga Din.

Salindawg, I'm in Dallas. There's another thread that says if you have an old ATT phone you can use that IMEA to get a new sim and plug it in your moto and get LTE, but it looks like you kind of did that already. I guess the trick is making the system believe your phone is a phone sold by att. I'll keep researching like you are.

 

[Spelcheker]

Where on the handset should the speakerphone speaker be placed where it wouldn't be near to your ear when holding the phone next your head?

My nexus 5 had a downward firing speaker out the bottom edges of the phone. Even if it was forward firing speakers on the bottom of the phone they wouldn't be RIGHT next to your ear. But like you say, I'll eventually get the hang of it.

 

[nickname303]

O.K., so yeah, maybe I was Hangry when I wrote the original post. Sorry. I do love the phone, and I'll get used to the stupid speaker.

As far as research goes, I read every review out there. I even knew about the issue with LTE channel 17 and the fact that it may or may not be in this phone depending on who you are talking to. (turns out the box lists it, but motorola's website doesn't.) But I never thought in a million years to research "Is the speakerphone speaker the same as the earpiece speaker?", and I doubt anyone else would either. If you did, you're a better man than I Gunga Din.

Salindawg, I'm in Dallas. There's another thread that says if you have an old ATT phone you can use that IMEA to get a new sim and plug it in your moto and get LTE, but it looks like you kind of did that already. I guess the trick is making the system believe your phone is a phone sold by att. I'll keep researching like you are.

Sounds like you did research it then, so I can't understand how you didn't find out about the speaker setup. Reviews will more often than not mention the speaker setup in my experience, so you were darn unlucky to only read ones that didn't mention it.

On a similar note - the only thing that I'm slightly disappointed with on this phone is the speaker quality. It's OK, but the quality was better on my Moto X 2014, so it seems like Motorola went backwards there. It will do though. And I got the JBL mod free with the phone so all is not lost.

 

[Spelcheker]

I'll have to disagree with you there nickname, I think finding a review that points that out is rare, for instance, here's the main review that influenced me.

https://www.cnet.com/products/motorola-moto-z-play/review/