Motorola One Zoom has four cameras, huge battery and a freaking glowing logo (hands-on)
The Motorola One Zoom seems to have it all: four cameras on the back, a beautiful modern design, huge battery, a gorgeous AMOLED screen with a fingerprint embedded in it, and a $450 price that undercuts most rivals. It also comes with a glowing Moto logo on the back that replaces a traditional notification light in a really cool way.We got to spend some time with the brand new Moto One Zoom at IFA 2019 in Berlin, but before we tell you all about our first impressions, let’s start by taking a quick look at the specs:
Specs | Motorola One Zoom | Motorola One Action | Motorola One Vision |
---|---|---|---|
Platform | Moto UI on top of Android 9 Pie | Android 9 Pie with Android One | Android 9 Pie with Android One |
Size | 75 x 158 x 8.8mm, 190g | 160.1 x 71.2 x 9.15 mm, 176g | 160.1 x 71.2 x 8.7 mm, 180g |
Display | 6.4″ 1080p, AMOLED | 6.3″ 1080p, LCD | 6.3″ 1080p, LCD |
Aspect Ratio | 19.5:9 | 21:9 | 21:9 |
Processor | Snapdragon 675 | Exynos 9609 | Exynos 9609 |
RAM | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB |
Storage | 128GB | 128GB | 128GB |
microSD support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Main Camera | 48MP ‘Quad Pixel’ | 48MP ‘Quad Pixel’ | 48MP ‘Quad Pixel’ |
Camera #2 | 3X Telephoto with OIS (81mm) | x | x |
Camera #3 | 16mm Ultra-Wide (13mm) | Ultra-Wide with Action Cam support | x |
Camera #4 | Depth Camera | Depth Camera | Depth Camera |
Front Camera | 25MP ‘Quad Pixel’ | 12MP | 25MP ‘Quad Pixel’ |
Battery | 4,000 mAh | 3,500 mAh | 3,500 mAh |
Biometrics | In-Screen Fingerprint Scanner | Rear fingerprint scanner | Rear fingerprint scanner |
It’s all about the cameras
Four cameras for a lot of versatility
As evident by its name, the Zoom comes with a telephoto lens in addition to the main camera and this tele lens has got serious zooming capabilities. It is an optically stabilized (OIS) lens that gives you a 3X native zoom. And while 3X is the native zoom level, you can also smoothly zoom in even closer, up to 10X using a combination of the telephoto lens and the main camera (hybrid zoom).
The main camera, on the other hand, features a 48-megapixel resolution, but by default it is set to 12MP. This is done so that Motorola can combine the information from four adjacent pixels into one to get more light and ultimately a better looking image, and Moto calls the technology Quad Pixel (we have already seen it on previous One series devices).
Lastly, you have a depth camera sensor that comes in handy when shooting portraits as it allows you to get a better bokeh and better separate your object from the background.
Up front, the Moto One Zoom sports a 25-megapixel shooter that uses the same Quad Pixel technique as the main camera to capture better low-light photos.
Yes, a glowing logo instead of a notification light
A really cool idea
The coolest thing about this phone is a little touch: the M logo on the back glows whenever you get a new notification. It’s just one color, but it looks really cool. The phone does not have a traditional notification light, so this solution replaces it.
Under the hood
The Snapdragon 675 chip under the hood is not quite on par with flagship hardware like the Snapdragon 855 chip you find on expensive phones these days, but we found the phone to be quite snappy and perform very well in daily use. You get 4GB of RAM, which is not a ton, but again, we did not encounter any issues with speed.
Storage is 128GB and we find this to be enough for most users, but it’s also nice that Motorola has left the option to use a microSD card and expand the storage even further.
Battery and Charging
The One Zoom sports a big, 4,000mAh battery that should provide enough juice to last through a full day for even the heaviest of users.
The phone does not support wireless charging, but it does come with a fast charger in the box. The adapter support 18 watt speeds (the phone will charge at a maximum of 15 watts).
Price, Release Date and US Carrier Availability
The One Zoom price is set at $450 in the United States, where the phone will be sold as an unlocked phone exclusively via the Motorola.com portal. Remember that this is a GSM phone, so it is only compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, but will not work with Verizon Wireless and Sprint.
In Europe, the price of the phone is set at 430 euro.
All in all, we quite like this new Motorola One Zoom: it brings a capable telephoto camera, it feels fast, its battery will last a long time, it feature the clean and clutter-free Android experience that we like, and it has a beautiful AMOLED display. Add to that an elegant design and you have a very strong contender in the $400-$500 price range that we can recommend to pretty much everyone.