Lenovo introduced their Moto Z family last year with high hopes of being something different. The evolution of smartphone design has been more iterative than innovate in recent years from most manufacturers. The Moto Z smartphones, however, offered modularity to allow the phones to adapt to a user's in-the-moment needs.

However, for the most paired down member of Motorola's Moto Z family, the Moto Z Play, the intrigue for many users had little to do with the its Moto Mods functionality and more to do with its seemingly endless battery life. In a world where many flagship phones fade after four or five hours of actual screen-on usage, the first generation Moto Z Play presses on for ten or twelve hours.

Now the second generation Moto Z2 Play is here with modest hardware improvements and a slightly scaled-back battery capacity. Is this successor still up to the task of powering through our workday?