A new year brings a new wave of smartphones, not least from Motorola, which launched five series of smartphones in 2017. We'd expect successors to the majority of them this year and the first to be leaked is the Moto E5.

An image purporting to be the likely-budget-friendly device has appeared on MySmartPrice, which has been a relatively reliable source for smartphone render leaks in the past. On first glance not a lot has changed, but look closer and you'll see the fingerprint scanner has been moved from the front of the phone and embedded into the Motorola logo on the back.

If it is indeed a legitimate picture and scanner has moved, it could pave the way for Motorola to make the same change for its other smartphones such as the G-series.

Motorola Moto E5 render leak shows repositioned fingerprint scanner image 2
MySmartPrice

Other specs and features for the E5 are based purely on speculation at the moment, although it's pretty clear the screen size hasn't increased. The space left by the old scanner has been taken up with the Motorola logo, rather than the company slimming it down and increasing the screen size.

From the image we can see the E5 will stick with a single-lens camera with LED flash on both the front and back and it will stick with Micro USB for charging, rather than change to USB-C.

Specs-wise, we'd expect things to be pretty similar to the E4, which used a Mediatek processor with 2GB of RAM and has 16GB of onboard storage and a 2,800mAh battery. We can't be sure for now what the E5 will come with, but it should at least be the same as the E4.

With an image already leaking this early in the year, we could possibly see the Moto E5 at MWC next month, however Motorola didn't launch the Moto E4 until June 2017, so if it's following a yearly launch cycle we still have some time to wait. We can also be pretty sure that the company will launch the E5 Plus and E5 Play, not only because there was an E4 Plus in 2017, but because reliable leaker Evan Blass revealed the names in a tweet in November last year