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Budget Motorola Moto E6 Play is official

By Joshua Swingle

Published: Oct 24, 2019, 9:12 AM

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Motorola Android

Budget Motorola Moto E6 Play is official

The Moto E6 and Moto E6 Plus are two impressively cheap smartphones but there’s no guarantee everyone can afford them. That’s why Motorola is today announcing the Moto E6 Play, an even cheaper model priced at just €109 that’ll be available soon.

Max Vision display, fingerprint scanner, 13MP rear camera

Motorola’s newest smartphone certainly isn’t going to win any design awards in the near future but the overall package is more than adequate for the price. Adorning the Moto E6 Play’s front panel is a 5.5-inch Max Vision HD+ (1440 x 720p) display that’s identical to the one found on the standard Moto E6. It’s accompanied by a huge chin and pretty thick side bezels.

The Motorola Moto E6 Play in Steel Black

The smartphone also boasts a large forehead that’s home to the usual in-ear speaker and a 5-megapixel selfie camera, the latter of which supports Portrait Mode and enables Face Unlock for fast access to the phone. If you’re looking for a more secure way to unlock the Moto E6 Play, Motorola has also equipped it with a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner that’s embedded beneath the company’s logo.

In addition to the fingerprint sensor, Motorola’s new budget smartphone features a horizontal camera module in the top-left corner of the back. But unlike most devices these days, it only includes one 13-megapixel rear camera paired with phase detection autofocus and an LED flash.

Other physical elements include a volume rocker and textured power key on the right side of the phone, a 3.5mm headphone jack on top, and an outdated micro-USB port rather than the newer USB-C connector.

32GB of internal storage, Android 9 Pie, headphone jack

Powering the Moto E6 Play is MediaTek’s low-end MT6739, a chipset that is slightly faster Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 425 which powered the previous-generation Moto E5, Moto E5 Play, and Moto E5 Plus. As standard, the budget device also ships with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. But if this isn’t sufficient, microSD cards of up to 256GB are supported.

Like all recent Motorola phones, the Moto E6 Play ships with Android 9 Pie straight out of the box. In this particular case, it’s the Chicago-based brand’s flavor of Android rather than Google’s vanilla version and there’s no guarantee of future software updates. The usual security patches are to be expected, however.

Keeping the lights on will be a 3,000mAh battery that supports 10W fast charging, although only the Brazilian version of the phone will ship with the required charger inside the box. All other markets will ship with a 5W brick. The Moto E6 Play sold in Brazil also includes earphones in the box, whereas international variants don’t. Every phone does, however, ship with a case.

On one final note, it’s worth pointing out Motorola’s latest budget phone doesn’t include any type of water resistance of NFC support, which means you won’t be able to take advantage of mobile payment systems.

Motorola Moto E6 Play release date, pricing, and availability

The Motorola Moto E6 Play is available to purchase starting today in Brazil and Mexico. The international rollout will continue in mid-November when the smartphone hits shelves across Europe alongside the newly announced Motorola Moto G8 Play and Moto G8 Plus. There, it’ll retail at €109 ($121) and be sold in two colors – Ocean Blue and Steel Black.

Over the coming months, Motorola says the budget phone will reach other Latin American countries and select markets in Asia. Exact pricing and availability details for these regions are yet to be provided, however.