Customer Ratings & Reviews

Lenovo does not support their devices. They promise two updates, provide one and then cease security updates. Be warned, after purchase their support is non-existent. Please don't support this company. If you need a lower cost phone I suggest Nokia, Vivo, Xiaomi, OnePlus or any other company that supports their products.

I bought this handset today, so this review might be a bit premature, but if anything significant changes, I'll return to update. Full disclosure: I love Motorola. The Moto X Pure is my favorite phone I've ever owned. For the last two years, I've been using a ZTE Axon 7, which was a fine phone in a lot of ways, but had some problems and lacked the polish of the Moto X. Some of my positive impressions of this phone might be from the familiar Motorola ecosystem, so take my review with a grain of salt. I like this phone very much. There were a few hardware choices that gave me some reservations about buying this, so I'll address those first. The display has been updated to a 18:9 aspect ratio, which makes the front of the phone look very sleek; however, that decision meant that the fingerprint sensor was moved to the right side of the phone (since Moto mods would block a sensor on the back). I've only ever seen this on Sony phones before, and Sony has abandoned that practice, so I was worried about the sensor, but it actually isn't that bad. The sensor is located where a power button would be on most phones, so it is easily accessible with the thumb of the right hand, and the sensor is accurate and reasonably fast. If you hold the phone with your left hand, the sensor might be very inconvenient. The sensor does not function as a power button, so the power button is located on the left side of the phone. For me, the power button placement is a bigger problem than the fingerprint sensor, as it is the only way to power off the screen, but hopefully I'll adjust. One thing that I'm quite annoyed by though is that the phone is thick enough to accommodate a 3.5mm headphone jack, but it is not included. If there are any ambitious Moto mod developers reading, I'd definitely buy a mod with a back fingerprint sensor and headphone jack. Another issue is the camera: the Z3 Play has dual rear cameras. The main camera is a 12 MP shooter, which is fine, but the secondary camera is a 5 MP lens that functions only to gather depth of field information for bokeh effect. This is okay but portrait mode implementation (particularly edge detection) is really difficult, so I'd rather see something like a monochrome or ultra-wide angle lens as the secondary shooter, as I would get more utility out of either those options than the depth of field lens. I have not taken too many photos yet, but the camera is fine so far, especially if they will be processed and filtered through a social media app. Now on to the stuff that I love. Motorola does my favorite version of Android! Software experience here is great. The software is pretty much stock Android, which means the OS is really clean. Motorola integrates Google apps as their default apps, so there is no bloatware, which is great. Motorola adds some really nice features: there always-on display is the best passive display I've seen, and the kinesthetic shortcuts for the camera and flashlight are super convenient. The display looks great. It is an AMOLED panel, so the colors are vibrant, the blacks are really black, and the contrast is great. It is a 1080p panel rather than a 1440p, so I was a little worried I'd notice the difference, but I can only tell the lower resolution if I'm looking at the phone from about six inches away, so no worries there. The brightness is impressive as well. One thing I've noticed in comparison to the Axon is a more accurate white point (you can also adjust the color temperature in the settings app). The phone comes in the box with a 2220 mh battery moto mod. When combined with the 3000 mh internal battery, the phone gives you over 5200 mh of power, so I anticipate this handset being a battery champ, and that is really important to me. The camera app is solid. It has full manual controls, along with some fun modes, like an option to make your own gifs, 1080p 60fps video, panoramic mode, and others. The specs are decidedly midrange, which may be off putting to some consumers, as this phone priced very closely to the OnePlus 6, which offers flagship specs for just thirty dollars more. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is also on sale for the same price at Best Buy (on sale, I believe), so if pure performance is what you are in the market for, then there are likely better value propositions on the market for you. The phone feels quite fast when navigating the OS though, as the software is not heavily skinned and seems to be well optimized to the hardware. You'll notice the difference in photography, with the imaging processing and in graphic intensive games. The phone should have no problem with most normal usage. Also, the speaker is fine. The X Pure and Axon 7 both had stereo front facing speakers which were very good. The speaker on the Z3 is not as good as either of those, but it is front facing, which means it will provide a better experience than any phone with bottom firing speakers. Motorola could have supplemented the front facing speaker with a bottom firing speaker to improve the audio quality, since the narrow chin no longer accommodates a second front facing speaker, but most people use headphones anyway, so the single speaker might be a measure to keep the price under $500. Despite the issues I have with it, I'm rating the phone five stars. That certainly doesn't mean its a perfect phone, but it does all the things that important to me well. The phone has adequate storage, a great looking AMOLED panel, the best software experience on an Android phone, and long battery life. If these things are important to you as well, then I think this would be a wise purchase. If you are interested in more performance intensive tasks, like gaming, VR, of having an elite smartphone camera, you might be better served with something else.

I was super excited for this phone when I bought it, however when It came in the mail I called sprint to get it added to my service via a new line and they told me that the IMEI shows up as a prepaid phone instead of a postpaid phone. This prevents them from activating the phone on sprint. BEWARE!

For about the same money i would buy the newer moto z4

The phone looks great and all but coming from a z2 force my expectations were high for this device which failed on the camera and battery life.

I bought this phone for my son and at first it was nice and worked well. Then it just started shutting down on its own for no reason. I had to get it replaced twice before I gave up.

2nd time phone has shut down for no apparant reason, within one year. Trying to send it back one more time for fixing.

The sound crackles. I am returning the phone today

I recently bought the Z3 as a temporary device till I get my regular phone. This device in a few weeks will be going to a family member. With the included battery pack, I get great longevity before I need to recharge. While not a top level Snapdragon. the 636 handles itself well. It also includes all of T-Mobiles LTE bands. No drop calls, works with wifi calling, screen while not as good as Samsung devices, is easy to use. Not a lot of bloat included and stuff not wanted can be disabled. Initially wanted the Motorola Android One. bought it and returned it do compatibility issues. Its good if you can catch it on sale, plus had some Best Buy credits. Forgot, but not having a Notch is great.

Amazing battery life (averaging 30+ hours a charge without mods with moderate to heavy use), fast operations, fingerprint sensor that reads fast with no issues (placement on the side is not an issue, its just as convenient as the back placed ones and one less hole in the case in the back. Camera is great, not $1000 phone great, but if it was, it would most likely be those price levels (stop complaining when $300-500 phones aren't literally almost the same camera qualities as $1000 phones) Its a respectable camera at the price point, which can be enhanced by mods, google camera app, etc.) Get the phone, under $500 most of the time, great deal. Also the moto mods are awesome.

great for the price. good battery life. has lasted me 3 years

There were other reviews complaining about the fragility of the screen. I didn't believe them but I should have. It doesn't take much to damage it. I only had the device for two days before dropping it. There is no visible damage to the casing but it sure messed up the display.

I bought this phone last November (of 2018) and had relatively minor inconveniences: A cracked and scratched screen that was definitely my fault, and a charger that quit working around the 7-month mark, which is better than I can say for any Apple device that I've owned. However, everything changed at the end of July. All of a sudden, two programs on my phone started crashing: the Moto app launcher and something called apps.media.processing, which I'm assuming is what loads the apps. I would like to add in here that I am 100% sure that my phone did not and does not have a virus, because it behaved completely fine other than that I couldn't open anything. I had just assumed the phone had overheated, so I tried the age old method of turning it on and off again by restarting it. Instead, I got that lovely screen that said the android system couldn't be booted, my data may be corrupt, and that my only two options were to try to restart it again or to do a factory reset. At this point I did some Googling, and found that this sudden refusal to start and "corrupted data" without a cause is a relatively common problem with Android phones, specifically Google Pixels and Nexuses from what I read. In my immediate search I only found one person who posted about this problem with a Moto, although I believe theirs was a G series. This was posted in the official Lenovo/Motorola forum, and I found the reply from a customer service representative very disheartening. The customer laid out the problem, trying to turn it on and getting the "data may be corrupt" screen, and asked what could be done. The reply from the customer service rep was very rude, and basically blamed the problem on the customer, that there was ~no way~ it could be the phone, and said that there was nothing to be done short of a hard reset or getting a new phone. At this time I was planning on calling the service line when it opened, but decided against it when I read that because I wasn't in the mood to argue with someone who wasn't going to even help or explain. I did end up downloading the official Lenovo Smart Assistant or whatever it's called and performing two "rescue" using that program, and then one hard reset myself. The one saving grace of this is that all my stuff is backed up to Google, so I didn't have to worry about losing my data. After all three reset attempts, my phone still crashes, but now it's also slower than a 7-year itch. Yay. I will be getting a new phone, because I don't have the time to wait 5 minutes for a single app to open. I probably will be getting another Moto, probably a G7, because I had a G5 before this phone which I loved and because I don't have 700-1000 dollars to spend on a Samsung or iPhone. Some other thoughts: I'm not very impressed with this bootloader Moto/Lenovo is pushing to customers after their data is corrupted. I'm 18, so I've grew up with smartphone tech and know when something like this is a bad idea, but I think its very irresponsible and immoral for the company to put that on a phone that, due to the price point, probably has a lot of older folks using it. If I showed those terms of service to my parents or grandmother, they absolutely would not be able to understand any of the stuff they were agreeing to. I put no blame for this problem on the company because, as I said earlier, it seems to be a common problem with the Android operating systems not specific to one brand, but I wish the company would accept fault and not act so hostile. Also, it's not made clear but this phone has a completely unique adapter and charger (it's not the same as the charger other Androids require) that you will not be able to find in any regular department store. Ever. When mine broke I had to overnight mine off Ebay.

Bootloader can not be unlocked on this phone it is a play edition phone which is lower price Phone in exchange for ads ..... If bootloader not unlockable not much but a phone ... Not much else locked bootloader means nothing . Nothing u can do to enhance your phone example custom ROMs can't be installed and you must wait till if your lucky to get any software updates ... Unlocked bootloader = unlimited possibilities if you know what u doing ...wouldn't recommend this phone