Motorola Edge+ Review: A Fully-Fledged (But Flawed) Flagship By MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

- Sponsored by Surfshark VPN. You probably remember this. Back in November, Motorola resurrected one of the most iconic consumer products of all time with its new Moto razr, and the response was one of those rare thunderclap moments of universal jaw droppage from media and general consumers alike. If I were in charge of Motorola and saw that wave of misty-eyed adulation, I'd have redirected all my flagship efforts to folding phones, leaving the boring candy bars to the low end. Well, given how things have gone for the razr so far, I guess it's a good thing I'm not in charge of Motorola because for its first fully fledged flagship smartphone in years, the company is taking a more measured approach. Meet the company's take on what everyone else has been doing for the past three years, the Motorola edge+.

(upbeat music) Now from my disappointment about the conventional appearance of the edge+, Motorola is one of the only companies that can crank out a brick like this and make the adjectives big and heavy work for it instead of against it. The so-called endless edge display flows down the device has sides in a gentle curve countered by top and bottom end caps that are almost defiant in their lack of curves. In fact, each has a slightly scalloped trough providing a nice pinky groove on the bottom, and up top, accentuating the inclusion of a rare headphone jack, and like Sony before it, Motorola has leaned into the plank-like 21-by-9 aspect ratio, making the phone easier to use with one hand than something like this Galaxy S20 Ultra, but hold on before you rush out to start your life on the edge. Curved screens like this where all the rage for a long time because look, they're beautiful. There's no getting around it.

But recently we've seen companies like Samsung and LG turn away from them because they make using the phone harder. You just can't avoid touching the edges of the screen when they're also the edges of the phone. So every time I fire up the camera, the thing zooms or refocuses when I don't want it to, or the notification shade drops when I'm not expecting it. But to give Motorola credit, it tries to address this through software. You see this little tab here? It's not just an app launcher.

You can double tap it to disable the edges and confined the screen to just the flat portions of the glass, or, shout out to David Cogan at the Unlocker for pointing this out, do a blanket ban on all apps using the edges in the settings menu. Problem solved, right? Well, not really. For one thing, it only works in some apps. The camera not among them. For another, resizing apps like Instagram causes text reflow issues, and it also doesn't work on the home screen, which is where most of my false inputs take place.

Still, in trying to leverage these endless edges, Motorola shows it's still got creative talent left in the roster after all the Lenovo layoffs. For instance, like most chia enabled phones, the edge+ has reverse wireless charging too, but it's always tough to know where to drop your earbuds or whatever, right? Well, Motorola uses the edge display to light up a landing zone for you as a placement cue. Side note on that reverse wireless charging, the wattage is higher than you'll find with the OnePlus 8 Pro, but not as high as you'll find on the Galaxy S20 Ultra. So some accessories like Pixel Buds may not charge. And when you want to do some gaming, you can use that edge screen for shoulder buttons.

In "World of Warships," I mapped my rudder controls to those virtual keys, which makes steering these 10 cans a whole lot easier, and as you'd expect from a phone as specked out as this, game performance is flawless, as is the software's responsiveness throughout the system. The 90 hertz refresh rate on top of that is just gravy. The game also gave me the chance to test out two of the edge+'s, other hallmark features, and the first is audio. I was getting my ears blasted off my Motorola's Nextel phones before some of you were born. So this shouldn't have surprised me, but the sound was so loud and the quality so good.

I'm calling it now. Best speakers on a smartphone this year, bar none. (upbeat music) Now the second revelation from my nautical combat session was more surprising.5G, yeah. More on that and the camera and the battery life after a word from my sponsor with a fresh discount for you. I'm not traveling as much as I have in years past, but I'm still using today's sponsor just as often.

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Try Surfshark now at the link below and use promo code mrmobile. You'll get an 85% discount and three additional months for free. Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video. So 5G, I've been pretty negative on it, particularly Verizon's flavor because of thin, unreliable coverage. To quote the SNL version of Sarah Pailin, "I can see a 5G node from my house," but to connect to it, I need to walk down the street because of the inherent limitations of the technology that powers it.

And that's old news if you've seen my 5G videos. But testing this phone actually gave me my first opportunity to leverage 5G for a practical benefit. See, "World of Warships" is a big game, about 1.4 gigs, which took just over three and a half minutes to download over Verizon's 4G network. When I tried the same thing on the 5G node down the street, it came down in a minute and 20 seconds. If you're saying, "Boy, that's an edge case.

"Doesn't really convince me that 5G "is something I actually need. " Well, no argument here. So let's change the subject, twist our wrist and fire up the cameras. Or yeah, try to risk twist. Seven years reviewing Motorola phones and this is the first one that's ever given to me trouble with that gesture.

Motorola says it's an early software bug. They're working on it. Anyway, you already saw some of the edge+'s handiwork with the video camera. It goes up to 6K resolution, and that plus a blend of optical and electronic stabilization come in real handy when the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds happen to fly right over your neighborhood. (jets thundering) Oh, that's cool.

Unfortunately Motorola continues to export that video in the rec 2020 color space, which means a lot more work for video editors and just plain old consumers on the whole if they want to make the video look like it should on most screens. See my OnePlus 7T review for more on that. When it comes to still shots, the phone does a lot to combat Motorola's long-held reputation as optical underachiever. It can't match the color accuracy or dynamic range of Google's Pixel 4. Then again, almost no phone camera does.

The Pixel also wins at selfies thanks to the same dynamic range advantage coupled with a wider angle lens, but on the main array, the edge+ gets close in bright light, and the resulting photos are much higher resolution. Each is a 27 megapixel image. The result of 4-to-1 pixel binning from that giant primary sensor. That camera gets helped from a 16 megapixel wide angle shooter that pulls double duty as a macro, and for long shots, you've got an eight megapixel telephoto who's 3X zoom keeps things crisper than the Pixel 4's wobbly cam wizardry. I was also surprised to see the Moto outperformed the Pixel 4 in at least one night mode shot, and unless you need Samsung's crazy zoom capabilities, it hangs in there with the Galaxy S20 Ultra as well.

On the whole, I'm impressed. (jets thundering) Finally, we come to how long this phone is gonna last you, and the answer is two years and two days. The former is how long Motorola will commit to bi-monthly security updates over the life of the device with a guaranteed update to Android 11 as well, and no promises beyond that. The latter is how long the phone will last on a charge. I utterly pummeled the thing over the week I had it using it for voice calls, very clear by the way, Mobile hotspot, video meetings, bunch of 5G speed tests, and this battery log is typical.

Off the charger for 24 hours. Screen on for about eight of those hours, and still a little cushion to spare. Come down to more normal usage, and yeah, this is a two day phone, and it's such good performance that I can forgive its fairly slow charging speed, averaging less than 1% per minute on the included brick. Turbo power? More like turn no power. I don't know, let's move on.

Folks, you tabulate all those wins and it's a lot for a company that's been sitting on the sidelines for awhile, which just makes it all the more painful when I pick this thing up and the stupid screen sabotages me. Ditto that dumb wobble caused by the massive camera bump. Moto display is so good, and yet this desktop dance around is so bad. Including a case in the box like OnePlus does could've easily solved this. (phone clanking) Additionally, wireless charging works okay on some cheap heads and only inconsistently on others.

The screen gets a strange wet newspaper look when you take the brightness down enough, and while there is gasket based water resistance, there's no proper IP certification. Hey, call it nitpicking, but when you're competing in the high end, the details matter, and at 999 starting, well, you may be cheaper than Samsung, but you're a Benjamin above the OnePlus 8 Pro, a phone whose software is just as silky smooth, a phone you can use on any carrier instead of the edge+ exclusive Verizon in the States. #sigh. Very encouraging on the whole, but as with most near slam dunks, it's always the little things that get ya. See my OnePlus 8 Pro review for the closest competition to this phone, and be sure to check out Android Central's coverage as well.

Daniel Bader hits a few points I had to leave on the cutting room floor here. This video produced using a review sample from Motorola, but the company did not provide compensation for this coverage. I do not do paid reviews, and I don't give any manufacturer copy approval or the right to preview my content. That means they're seeing it for the first time right alongside you. Please subscribe if you'd like to see more videos like this on YouTube.

Until next time, stay safe at home for now. Keep those videos rolling, and in spirit anyway, stay mobile, my friends.

Source : MrMobile [Michael Fisher]