Motorola’s latest budget smartphone features a removable battery, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader — all things you won’t find on the latest flagships.
But the new Moto E6 only seems like a modest upgrade over last year’s Moto E5… and in at least one way it might be a downgrade — this year’s model has a smaller battery.
The Moto E6 features a 5.5 inch, 1440 x 720 pixel IPS LCD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.
It supports microSD cards up to 256GB, a 13MP rear camera, and a 5MP front-facing camera. The smartphone features a 3,000 mAh removable battery. The Moto E5 had a 4,000 mAh non-removable battery.
Aside from the new battery, this year’s phone has front-facing stereo speakers (up from a mono speaker), support for software-based portrait photography with blurred backgrounds, and a little water resistance thanks to a water repellent design with P2i nano coating.
The Moto E6 is available in black and navy blue color options and it sells for $150 without a contract.
I have an e4, which serves me well. It actually replaced a more-powerful phone that was having call issues. This line is always modest upgrades. This one goes from four cores to eight. I was hoping to see one of the more recent SD400 SoCs for even better power and efficiency. I do expect battery life to be good in these, based on my experience. I consider the battery in this a slight upgrade compared to the e5 Play which was the variant with a removable battery. The e5 models with the larger battery had them sealed. I am always happy to see models with access to the battery, so I’m glad to see it continue in this line.
Ironic that throw away phones come with replaceable batteries, where flagships that should have a long life do not.