The Moto G5 Plus camera features:
- 12-megapixel sensors
- f/1.7 aperture for superior low-light performance
- dual pixels for extremely fast auto-focusing
- 1.4 um pixel size
Those are also the exact specs of the Galaxy S7's camera, which, in our own tests, is the very best camera you can find on a smartphone.
It's not yet clear if the G5 Plus uses an identical camera as the Galaxy S7, so despite the similar specs, it might not take photos quite as well as Samsung's 2016 flagship phone.
However, the wide aperture and the dual pixels auto-focusing on the G5 Plus are significant details: The wide f/1.7 aperture, for example, will help produce sharper and clearer photos, especially in low-light environments, such as indoors or night shots.
Not to get too much into the weeds about how it works, but a wider aperture essentially allow more light to hit a camera's sensor, which allows the camera to snap its shutter faster in a low-light environment.
As a result, your photos will look sharper, as your photos are less likely to turn out blurry from shaky hands.
It also offers the potential for that nice "blurry background" effect called "bokeh."
The dual pixel auto-focus on the Galaxy S7 helps you take focused shots faster than smartphones that simply tout "phase detection," like the iPhone 7.
Whereas most smartphones with phase detection have only a few pixels dedicated to focusing – less than 5%, according to Samsung – each of the Galaxy S7's 13 million pixels share a component dedicated to focusing. That's 100% of the pixels that pitch in to the camera's auto-focusing, compared to the 5% on most smartphone cameras.
The G5 Plus' other specs — like its mid-range processor, humble 2GB of RAM, new metal design, and fingerprint scanner — aren't anything to write home about, but Motorola's G line is our favorite budget smartphone because it runs a near-pure version of Android.
And, for its $230 asking price, the camera potentially makes the G5 Plus a very good contender for a place in your pocket.
With all that said, we haven't tested the G5 Plus' camera yet, but we'll be sure to put it to the test against the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 once we get our review unit. The G5 Plus will go on sale in April 2017.
