Motorola Edge + smartphone review with unexpectedly good ergonomics and unrealistic cost

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Last year's flagship shouldn't cost as much as a modern one.

Manufacturers who are moving away from the form factor of flat smartphones with rounded corners need to erect a monument. Because in order to violate the canons, one needs good reasons and a lot of courage. Motorola Edge + has a reason - the screen is curved enough on the sides, which led to a noticeable change in the proportions of the smartphone itself. Oddly enough, this solution turned out to be convenient.

Table of contents

• Specifications
• Design and ergonomics
• Display
• Iron
• Operating system
• Sound and vibration
• Cameras
• Autonomy
• Outcomes

Specifications

Operating system	Android 10
Screen	AMOLED, 6, 7 inches, 2,340 x 1,080 pixels, 385 ppi, 90 Hz
CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G (7nm)
Memory	12 GB - operational; 256 GB - built-in
Cameras	Main: main - 108 Mp, f / 1.8 with sensor 1/1, 33 ″, 0.8 μm, PDAF and OIS; wide-angle - 16 megapixels, f / 2, 2; telephoto - 8 megapixels, f / 2, 4. Front: 25 MP, f / 2.0.
SIM card	1 × nanoSIM
Connectors	USB Type ‑ C; 3.5mm
Communication standards	2G, 3G, LTE, 5G
Wireless interfaces	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1
Battery	5000 mAh, charging - 18 W
Dimensions (edit)	161, 1 × 71, 4 × 9, 6 mm
The weight	203 g
Additionally	NFC, optical fingerprint reader, stereo speakers

Design and ergonomics

The Motorola Edge + is both plump and narrow. It is somewhat reminiscent of Sony's flagships from the Xperia 1 line - the same elongated, "square", similar to a TV remote control.

We got a model in the Thunder Gray color for the test - such a gray-blue shade of a stormy sea would have been the envy of Aivazovsky himself. The color shimmers beautifully under the protective glass, but it was not easy to catch it with the camera. The glass itself, front and back, is Gorilla Glass 5 with a good oleophobic coating. Due to the iridescent texture of the back, the prints are almost invisible.

The camera block is moved to the side. Three lenses rest on one common step, and each one is still slightly raised above it. Next to them, a unit of flashes and sensors is already built into the main body.

The sides and ends of the Motorola Edge + are decorated with a metal strip that protrudes slightly relative to the protective glass. Above and below, this strip is slightly concave inward. At the ends there are USB ‑ C and 3.5 mm jacks for headphones, a SIM card slot, as well as speaker and microphone holes.

The selfie camera is "punctured" in the screen closer to the left edge. There is a mesh of the upper speaker in the gap between the front protective glass and the metal end. The frames around the screen are not the largest - they are quite standard for modern flagships.

All buttons are collected on the right side. It's a volume rocker and a ribbed power key.

With a thickness of almost a centimeter, due to its small width, it is incredibly pleasant to hold the smartphone in your hands. It somehow fits correctly in the palm of your hand, it feels solid, it is convenient to type on it. The non-standard proportions are good for Motorola Edge +. It weighs, of course, like a brick, but it is a very stylish and ergonomic brick.

Display

The Motorola Edge + has an unusual screen - 6, 7-inch AMOLED, strongly curved around the edges, literally by 4-5 mm. It looks cool, and, oddly enough, even with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,340 pixels, the image is quite clear, without noticeable steps. Smoothness is also added by support for a frequency of 90 Hz.

Some of the settings are related to the screen format. For example, there is an edge highlighting point - the curved sides act as an indicator and light up when notifications arrive.

In a separate menu, you can configure gestures that use the area at the edges of the screen. With a swipe to the center, you can open a small list of applications that the user will choose, with a swipe up - a list of recent applications, and a swipe down brings up the notification panel. By default, double-tapping enables or disables the "endless screen" mode: if suddenly the application interface is not very friendly with curved sides, you can narrow it down a little so that it does not affect the curved area.

More familiar on-screen settings include screen refresh rate adjustment, lock screen interface, Always On Display mode, and personalization functions.

The user has three options for color rendering: "Natural", "Vivid" and "Saturated". The first one seems too gray, the second - too red, so during the test we settled on the "Bright" color scheme.

Always On Display is very sensitive and reacts to the slightest movement within a meter of the smartphone, so the screen lights up constantly. It goes out quickly.

And yes, the screen is cool, it is convenient to use it, even though it is very elongated. Edge gestures help you access all the features you need and adapt apps to uneasy aspect ratios.

But he also has a problem: for some users, those curved sides start to fade, sometimes after just a couple of weeks. Our test device was fine, but the official forum has more than 120 pages devoted to the issue on the Motorola Edge + / Lenovo Community.

What's more, you expect to see a QHD + screen in a flagship smartphone, rather than a screen that rivals mid-range smartphones in graininess.

Iron

Motorola Edge + was the flagship of the spring of 2020, and its hardware is appropriate: a solid Snapdragon 865 5G chip, an Adreno 650 graphics core, 12 GB of RAM and a 256 GB user module. There is no possibility to expand memory with cards. And there is only one slot for a SIM-card, but it is waterproof, supplemented with an elastic band and a special coating.

This is not the most top-notch combination, but it is more than enough for solving all everyday tasks. The Snapdragon 865 has a good balance of power and power consumption - and heavy games are going on, and the battery does not drain to zero in nanoseconds, and there is not even much heating. But Motorola Edge + will remain relevant literally for another year or two.

The fingerprint scanner is hidden under the screen and works completely without problems, clearly and quickly, recognizes even a partial touch. But you need to hold your finger on the platform for a couple of seconds - reading is still not instantaneous. NFC works very fast.

At one time, Motorola was famous for its special CrystalTalk technology, which was distinguished by high-quality voice transmission. She was one of the first companies to use a multi-microphone array to make speech sound as clear as possible. And in Edge +, by tradition, the microphones are located in unexpected places: not only at the bottom, but also two on the back - above the camera and closer to the bottom. This design copes really well with ambient noise, and the interlocutors note the very high quality of speech transmission.

Operating system

The model runs on almost pure Android 10 with a handful of proprietary widgets and features. Some of the most convenient among them are the accelerometer gestures: launching the camera by turning the wrist and the flashlight with a cutting motion. If in Lenovo K12 Pro these gestures did not always work and not immediately, then Motorola Edge + has no problems with them: both the flashlight and the camera start instantly.

There are also widgets for the lock screen that launch depending on the applications used. For example, when playing music on a locked smartphone, the player control buttons appear, and the album cover occupies the entire screen. Works with streaming service apps (Spotify, Deezer) and standalone players.

A clean system is a pleasure to use. No sudden toast notifications, no weird interface elements - everything is clear, neat, predictable. Motorola's proprietary features are implemented into the system very gracefully and in no way spoil the impression of use, but, on the contrary, simplify interaction with a smartphone. Someone lacks the ability to customize the interface, but a clean OS is so good that you can install any launcher and frolic in it.

Sound and vibration

The Motorola Edge + uses stereo speakers tuned by Waves. And these are some of the highest quality smartphone speakers we've come across lately.

Due to the fact that the body is heavy and with a minimum of voids, the smartphone does not rattle at all at high volume, plays clearly and powerfully, does not whistle or wheeze. From this point of view, it can be considered as an alternative to a small Bluetooth-speaker, and for watching videos on YouTube and listening to podcasts, it is perfectly suited at all: voices are transmitted vividly, voluminously.

For lovers of personal audio, a 3.5 mm jack is provided, and it is quite capable of handling even powerful full-size headphones, and not just compact in-ear headphones. There is enough volume, the detail is at the level, only the volume, maybe not enough. For Bluetooth codecs, Motorola Edge + supports all modern standards, including Qualcomm aptX, aptX HD, aptX LL and Adaptive.

The vibration is powerful enough: you won't be able to miss a call. The table does not shake during a call, but the vibration motor works perceptibly.

Cameras

Motorola is proud of the Edge + camera unit. It consists of three sensors: the main 108 megapixel, 16 megapixel wide-angle and 8 megapixel telephoto module with three times optical zoom. Added to these are a depth sensor and a two-tone flash.

The main module feels great with good light - the color rendition is natural, pleasant, sharpness is at a level, the pictures come out clear and vivid. When the lighting level is lowered, two effects can be observed. The first is a kind of "watercolor" artificiality that adds beautiful artistry to the pictures. The second one is the same Motorola brand "tlenofilter", which makes the colors gray and lifeless. That is, sometimes the white balance flies unpredictably. The smartphone tries to automatically understand what exactly is being shot on it, and to correct the situation, but it does not always work out.

Filming with the main camera at dusk. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Filming with the main camera at dusk. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Filming with the main camera at dusk. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Filming with the main camera at dusk. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main camera in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main camera in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main camera in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting with the main camera in daylight. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Filming with the main camera at dusk. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

In addition to the classic shooting mode in Motorola Edge +, you can choose special ones: full-size, macro, portrait with blur or night, as well as set a spot color and apply built-in filters.

The night mode eats up some sharpness and adds additional yellowness to all photos, as if emulating some kind of light source. Processing such an image takes ten seconds.

Shooting with the main camera at night in the pixel binning mode. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting at night with the main camera in full-size mode (108 megapixels). Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting in night mode. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Filming with the main camera. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting in macro mode. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

Shooting in macro mode. Photo: Alina Rand / Lifehacker

The wide-angle lens has good correction at the edges, but compared to the main lens, it is not at all sharp. After the sensor on the OnePlus 9 Pro, it seems too simple.

The front camera automatically adds a nice and neat blur to selfies, but it can be turned off.

The smartphone is ready to shoot video up to 6K in 30 frames and has good stabilization. There are also proprietary chips - you can make the entire image black and white, except for one element, play with filters and shooting speed.

As a result, the Motorola Edge + camera is very solid in terms of numbers, but the level of the flagship, even last year's, does not reach: the night shooting is lame, and in general it behaves well only in high-quality lighting conditions. But in the summer sun, almost all devices can shoot well.

Autonomy

The 5,000 mAh battery is enough for a smartphone for a day and a half even when the refresh rate is set to 90 Hz. If desired, he can hold out for up to two days.

These are pleasant indicators that instill confidence in the smartphone and that it will not suddenly turn off. Moreover, it supports multiple fast charging systems, albeit not the fastest, up to 18W. As a result, it charges from zero to 100% in a little less than two hours. There is also support for 15W wireless charging, and using the reversible smartphone can charge other devices with 5W power.

Outcomes

The main charm of Motorola Edge + lies in its shape: it is surprisingly comfortable in the hand, which you would not expect from it at first glance. Due to the fact that the body is narrow, it is much easier to type on a smartphone and it is much more pleasant to hold than rounded and wide devices. The elongated shape was compensated for by additional functions on the edges of the screen, so there is practically no need to reach to the top edge.

It is also worth praising for its pure Android, which, together with an almost flagship hardware platform and a 90Hz screen, provides excellent performance. All customization is very unobtrusive and neatly woven into the standard interface.

But Motorola Edge + has two big problems. First: in Russia, the smartphone is sold at the price at which it came out a year and a half ago in the United States, and as a result it costs 81,990 rubles. The second: neither in performance, nor in camera, nor in charging speed, it does not reach this flagship cost at all. Now in the States you can get it for about $ 600-650, and this price seems to be the most reasonable for this set of functions.

If we add to this information about regularly failing edges of the screen - the main feature of the model - then the Russian cost begins to seem too high. The smartphone itself is quite unusual, but it can only attract enthusiasts and fans of the brand, and there are not so many of them. Although during testing, we will not hide the fact that the Motorola Edge + was pleasant to use.