Moto Turbo: The Dark Knight of the Smartphone World

Why would we address a smartphone with such a title. Is it really this capable to outshine other contenders like this character does. Can it not glitter like others but still grabs all the attention. Can you trust this device for all your digital needs without worrying about how long it last. And finally can it really handle all such task without sacrificing on performance? Let’s find out all these answers in the Moto Turbo review.

Moto Turbo is not a sleek smartphone, it has a bulky design, but is build like a tank

Thick, massive but an impressive design

The first glance makes it quite clear that Moto Turbo is not in the race of slim smartphones. It’s not a flashy piece of technology, nor does it shout for attention but it still grabs all the eyeballs.

However if you are among those who likes to have a sleek ultra light smartphone in your pocket, you will be disappointed as Moto Turbo is neither slim nor light. It is a thick block, measuring 8.3 mm and weighs 166 g, which for many is out of fashion and ugly, but we found that it actually makes Turbo stand out among the myriad of smartphones fighting for the title of slimmest smartphone nowadays. Moreover, this is the reason that Turbo incorporates a bigger 3900 mAh battery unit, which we will talk about in the later part of the smartphone review.

Motorola’s strategy of trying new materials is one of the key aspects of its smartphones’ designs. How can we forget the various interesting rear shells of Moto X (first and second generation), which are one of their kind.

The back panel is made of tough yet light ballistic nylon, which has a unique criss cross texture that offers a good grip

The company has also experimented something new with the Turbo. It is the first smartphone to feature the tough yet light ballistic nylon, which is used to make biker jackets, briefcases and military artifacts. The rear has the criss-cross texture made out of these nylon threads, which goes to the tapered edges offers a good grip and a tough look to the smartphone. The Moto signature sits at the bottom of the 21 MP camera with LED flash lights on either sides.

The volume rockers on the right edge also houses the nano SIM card

The right edge houses the power button and the volume rockers which also act as SIM card tray.

The front is mostly the 5.2 inch Quad HD display wrapped inside a silver metal frame. Then there is a broad metal chin at the bottom, below the three touch capacitive buttons.

The large speaker grill on the top of the display offers loud and clear audio during calls

The top of the display has a 2 MP camera and a large speaker grill which delivers loud and clear sound. The 3.5mm headphone jack sits at the top edge and the micro USB charging slot is placed at the bottom.

Overall, the smartphone is nicely put together and feels rock solid to hold. It also has a water-repellent nano coating, which protects it from the accidental water spills.

The sharpest display from the house of Moto

With an amazing pixel density of 565ppi, the texts, icons and images look brilliantly crisp on the Quad HD display

The Quad-HD resolution across the 5.2 inch screen size results in the amazing pixel density of 565ppi, which makes everything stunning. It surpasses the two best display smartphones such as LG G3 and the Galaxy Note 4 that we previously reviewed. We used the smartphone for over a week and were completely impressed by the crispness of the content.

However, the display is the regular victim of AMOLED technology and has a warmer tone which is reflected in texts, pictures and every other multimedia content. Note 4 also integrate an AMOLED panel but the colors displayed by its screen are more natural than the Turbo’s display. Another thing we noted is the brightness level, which is not at par with the G3 and Note 4, but the amazing viewing angles compensates for the same as the content is easily visible in different lighting conditions.

You also get the protection of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to prevent the screen from the unwanted scratches.

A super charged performance

There’s a reason why Motorola named this smartphone Turbo. It is backed by a 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 processor with the support of massive 3 GB RAM, making it the fastest smartphone we have tested in our labs.

Moto turbo beats all the Android smartphones in the market with an amazing score of 52,128 in Antutu benchmark

It sets a new standard in the Antutu, which is a comprehensive software tool to evaluate the Smartphone’s overall computing power. We recorded an unmatchable score of 52,000 which beats every other smartphone in the race.

And this performance is not only limited to synthetic benchmarks. There were no delays in application loading, shifting and we even lost the track about the number of active applications in the background, and still did not encounter any performance issues. These active applications also include games such as Marvel: Contest of Champions and Asphalt 8 simultaneously running in the background. The 3 Gigabytes of RAM handled everything with an ease.

Talking about the graphical performance in gaming, the Adreno 420 GPU was able to deliver a lag free experience.

Turbo runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop and is the smoothest Android UI we have tested till date

And this fluidic performance is also because of the stock Android 5.0 Lollipop. It’s simply the smoothest Android we have experienced till date. The material design of Android 5.0 with its subtle animations is a treat on the Quad HD panel of Moto Turbo.

Turbo’s only weak point is its camera module

The 21 MP rear camera is able to capture decent shots in good light conditions and have the stock Android camera UI

Motorola smartphones are victims of poor camera performances and same is the issue with the Moto Turbo. There is a 20.7 MP shooter at back, which is able to capture sharp and vibrant images, only if you are not in a hurry. It needs a noticeable time to focus a subject and to capture the shot, which does not work out if you or the subject is on a move. There are options which are fast and deliver good image quality at a lower price (Xiaomi Mi4, HTC One M8 Eye, iPhone 5S, Xperia Z3 Compact, LG G3 etc.) (Prices as per e-commerce sites)

The pictures in low light show noise and the long exposure shots mostly come out to be blurry. However, the two flash lights on the either sides of the camera unit are brilliantly bright and work well to capture images in absence of light.

Besides this you can shoot 4k videos at 24fps and 1080p videos at 30fps which were impressive but the slow motion videos with a resolution of 720p at 15fps is not up to the mark.

Decent in-built storage but with no external option

Talking about the storage, you get 53 GB free space out of 64 gigabytes in-built memory for your applications and multimedia files which were quite enough. However, there is no option for micro SD card if you want to add some extra storage.

Connectivity options

Moto turbo integrates all sorts of connectivity options such as Wi-Fi 802.11, hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0, A2DP, LE, GPS, 3G, 4GLTE, to stay connected with your friends and family.

Long enough to survive a day

In the starting we mentioned about the thickness of the Turbo. This thickness is because of a massive 3900 mAh battery unit which is a logical trade-off for sleeker design. We used it to the limits and still Turbo easily survived a day without running out of juice. In our video playback test (Full HD video at 50% brightness and sound), it touched a mark of 10 hours which is quite decent. And the icing on the cake is the Turbo charger in the package, which charges the device from zero to 100 percent in about one and half hours.

Also read: Motorola Moto Turbo Specifications