With the Edge series, Motorola has returned to the major league after giving up making flagships around three years ago. Before the Motorola Edge duo was released, the Moto series mainly focused on budget and mid-range smartphones. The Motorola Edge was released on the market on May 29, 2020.

One of the main differences between the Edge and the Edge+ is the chipset. The Plus model, which is more expansive, is equipped with the flagship Snapdragon 865 chip while the regular model has the mid-range Snapdragon 765G chip.

Display

One of the highlights of the Motorola Edge is its design, which is obvious. The smartphone’s arched screen is quite the look, especially when it is combined with the high-contrast OLED display with a refresh rate of 90Hz.

The design of the phone looks beautiful and futuristic even though such waterfall-like OLEDs have been used on many flagship devices.

The display of the smartphone is edge-to-edge with a punch-hole cutout reserved for the 25MP selfie camera. The cutout doesn’t affect the overall design of the smartphone as it is small. The screen is properly protected by the Gorilla Glass 5 by Corning. Despite its shape, the screen feels sturdy.

The earpiece that also serves as the smartphone’s speaker is behind a very thin grille right above the screen.

The phone’s optical fingerprint scanner is under the OLED and is invisible. The scanner is pretty fast and accurate.

The back is as curvy as the front although it isn’t made of glass. Even though the back is made of plastic, it still feels really nice.

The four cameras are almost flush with the back panel. On the bottom are the USB-C port, the second speaker, and a 3.5mm jack. At the top are the SIM tray and a dedicated microSD slot.

The display of the smartphone is a 6.7-inch OLED with curved long sides with a Full HD resolution of 2340x1080. You can select the refresh rate, between Auto, 60Hz, and 90Hz. The Full HD screen is great for binging or gaming.

The same screen panel is used for both the Edge and the Edge Plus. However, while the panel of the Edge has HDR10 certified screen, the Edge Plus has the HDR10+ certified screen.

A more major difference that sets the two phones apart is that the Edge can only stream SD content from Netflix and Amazon Prime even when Widevine L1 is supported.

Chip

The Motorola Edge uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset, which is one of the most powerful chips for mid-range devices.

The chip has an octa-core processor. The Prime core is Cortex-A76 ticking at 2.4GHz. The Gold core is derivative from A76 clocked at 2.2GHz. The six Silver cores are cortex A55 running at 1.8GHz.

The GPU inside is Adreno 620, which is the most powerful in this class. According to the GeekBench test, the processor of the Motorola Edge is the fastest mid-range one up until now. It is faster than the chip used in the Redmi 6 and the Redmi Note 9S, which is the Snapdragon 720G CPU.

The Snapdragon 765G is a small improvement from the previous Series 7 regarding performance.

RAM – Internal Storage

The Motorola Edge offers two variants. One has 4GB RAM with 128GB internal storage, which is a bit small. The other one offers 6GB RAM with 128GB internal storage, which is acceptable.

Although users can suffer from a slight frame drop, the Motorola Edge still manages gaming quite well with its Gametime mode. The mode can block calls when the user is playing games, disable adjustment for auto-brightness as well as enhance audio.

Battery

The Motorola Edge comes with a beefy 4,500mAh. Motorola’s 18W turbo Power charging is supported, which only takes 30 minutes to fill 37% of the battery once it runs out. One full charge will take 2 hours and 32 minutes.

The Edge got a 102-hour Endurance rating with a wonderful job in different test scenarios, web browsing, calls, and video. In terms of standby performance, it is also pretty efficient.

Camera

On the back of the phone is a quad-camera set up with one 64MP primary lens, one 16MP ultra-wide lens, one 8MP tele lens with 2x zoom, and one 3D ToF lens. There is also a single LED flash. Motorola uses Samsung’s 64MP 1/1.72” ISOCELL Bright GW1 sensor.

The ultrawide camera has a 16MP OmniVision OV16A10 1/3.06” sensor. Autofocus is available. So you can take macro photos from a distance of 4 – 8cm.

There is a 2x zoom camera as well. The ToF camera can help with the portrait mode as well as assisting the autofocus.

On the front, you have a 25MP selfie camera with Samsung S5K2X5 ISOCELL Slim.

Just like other Motorola phones, the Edge comes with Motorola’s own Camera app. A swipe action allows users to switch between stills, assorted modes, and video. In the viewfinder, users can access the Manual mode with another toggle.

The main camera delivers great daylight images with a dynamic range and excellent contrast. No noise is visible. However, in low-light conditions, the photos are poor in detail and noisy with extremely low dynamic range. The colors look washed out. You can use Night Vision for usable nighttime shots with less noise.

There is a high-res 64MP mode. However, these photos don’t have great details.

The selfie camera delivers excellent photos with accurate colors and a high dynamic range.

With its main snapper, the Motorola Edge can record 1080p@60fps and 4K@30fps. The 1080p@30fps mode can be used with all three cameras. The electronic stabilization feature is available to any camera, any mode.

The main camera’s 4K footage is excellent with plenty of detail, nice contrast, and accurate colors. The dynamic range is not always great; however, it isn’t on the low side.

The 1080p@30fps clips are great in terms of detail, colors, and contrast.

Finally, the main camera’s Full HD videos at 60fps are extremely poor regarding detail. The processing tries to hide this via excessive over-sharpening.