It has been a while since Motorola released a new flagship. Was it the 2017’s Moto Z2 Force? Or the Moto Z3 with the Snapdragon 835? Or the Moto Z4 using a midrange Qualcomm chip. The launch of the Motorola Edge+ on April 22, 2020, marks the return of the company to the top shelf.

With a €1200 price tag, it is a bold return too. The smartphone brings a lot to the table. And on top of the list is an Endless Edge display. It is called a waterfall display by some. But the essence of this display is that it spills over the handset’s sides in a way that not even Samsungs do. The screen is an OLED panel with a high refresh rate and HDR10+ support.

The phone has a bunch of features that you can’t find anywhere. The Edge+ is powered by a high-end Snapdragon 865 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB storage. And with the main camera of 108MP, you can’t ask for more.

Display

The Motorola Edge+ comes with a 6.7-inch OLED display spilling over to the sides of the phone, making it look narrower. The display has a ratio of 19.5:9 and a resolution of 2340x1080px.

For brightness measurements, the Motorola Edge+ got 422nits when manually adjusting the slider and 607nits when a bright light is shined at it and the adaptive brightness is in charge.

Top-tier smartphones, in auto mode, can reach high 800s. The Edge+ is falling behind in this regard. The Motorola Edge+ supports HDR10+. The easiest way to access HDR10+ content is via Amazon Prime Video. Next to compatible titles, there will be an HDR icon. For HDR content, the display color reproduction will be shifted.

Chip

The Motorola Edge+ is powered by the Snapdragon 865, a top-tier chip. This is an octa-core processor with 6 cores running at 1.8 GHz, 3 cores working at 2.42 GHz, and 1 core clocking at 2.84GHz. In the AnTuTu benchmark test, the Edge+ is placed below the Android overachievers. However, it is still ahead of the Huawei P40 Pro or the Galaxy S20 Ultra with the Exynos 990.

RAM – Internal storage

The phone is available in only one version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB internal storage.

Battery

Motorola equipped the Edge+ with a 5,000mAh battery. The Galaxy S10 Ultra has the same capacity. Meanwhile, the OnePlus 8 Pro and the Mi 10 Pro have the same battery capacity of 4,500mAh. The P40 and Find X2 Pro has the smallest battery of 4,200mAh.

The Motorola Edge+ shows some impressive numbers. With offline video playback, it can last more than 20 hours. Web browsing using WiFi takes fourteen and a half hours before the battery runs out. With voice calls, the smartphone can last around 38+ hours. Standby performance isn’t as great. However, the Motorola Edge+ has a class-leading endurance rating with 100 hours.

That is when the display is set at 90Hz. There is no appreciable difference when the display is at 60Hz.

However, the phone’s charging speed is somewhat disappointing. But with an 18W charger, it is expected. The phone takes half an hour to go from 0 to 30% and a full charge requires 2 hours and 37 minutes to be exact. Sure, it has a big battery. But there are faster charging solutions. Compare to the Motorola Edge+, the Galaxy S20 Ultra needs less than an hour for a full charge with a 25W charger. The P40 Pro and the Mi 10 Pro need 50 minutes while the Find X2 Pro takes only 36 minutes.

Camera

The Motorola Edge+ comes with a triple camera set up, a fairly standard arrangement with a somewhat wide primary lens, an ultra-wide lens, and a short telephoto lens.

The main cam used the 108MP ISOCELL Bright HMX imager from Samsung. It is also the same one used in the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro while the Galaxy S20 Ultra uses the Nonacell sensor.

The primary cam of the Motorola has an aperture of f/1.8 aperture with OIS featured. The ultra-wide lens uses an MP sensor with an aperture of f/2.2 with autofocus.

The telephoto lens uses an 8MP OmniVision Type 1/4.4 sensor with an aperture of f/2.4. The lens has 3x optical zoom power.

In Auto mode, all three cams produce 27 images, which means photos from the ultra-wide lens and telephoto lens are upscaled. In Manual mode, you can access the cameras’ native resolutions. However, there is no AutoHDR.

In daylight, the main cam of the smartphone produces excellent image quality. In the 27MP shots, you get plenty of detail. Noise is non-existent, practically. The color rendition and the dynamic range are great as well.

108Mp photos have more noise. No increase in detail is visible while color saturation does suffer a bit.

The ultra-wide camera that the Motorola Edge+ is using is a really capable performer. So it is of no surprise that the images have excellent dynamic range and contrast with lively colors. However, the problem is, the phone upscales the ultra-wide photos to 27MP. When you tap the 1:1 button, it kind of spoils the result. The detail is still there. But when you examine them up close, there is a certain softness.

From the ultra-wide cam, you can get the 16MP photos, but with the Manual mode. But then, it also comes with some downsides. There is no HDR, thus the dynamic range suffers. Another thing is that distortion correction isn’t available.

The telephoto camera delivers 27MP photos in Auto mode even though its sensor is an 8MP one. And the images look plain bad. The 8MP Manual mode images look sharp and detailed as far as the 8MP resolution allows.

Portraits taken with the main camera are still in 27MP with good blur quality and excellent subject detection. The Portrait Mode also works on subjects that are non-human with the same high success rate.

The Moto Edge+ has a 25MP selfie camera with a Quad Pixel sensor and produces 6.2MP photos. The selfies have spot-on colors and excellent dynamic range.

In low light, the images look underexposed and the dynamic range is below average.