Motorola Moto Edge+ – Review 2020

Motorola makes some of our favorite budget-friendly phones, like the $249 Moto G Power and the $299 Moto G Stylus, with attractive designs, plenty of power, and super-long battery life. The $999.99 Moto Edge+, exclusive to Verizon, takes these same basic principles and applies them to the high-end flagship paradigm. It features a gorgeous design, top-of-the-line hardware, and excellent battery
life. It’s also the first phone to offer global 5G. That said, it faces the same drawbacks as Motorola’s lower-cost models in the form of camera performance and durability.

Design, Display, and Durability

The Moto Edge+ makes an excellent first
impression. At 6.34 by 2.81 by 0.38 inches (HWD), it’s tall, thin, and feels good in the hand. There’s definitely some heft to it at 7.16 ounces, but it’s nicely balanced. The phone is available in burgundy or gray, with a finish reminiscent
of handblown glass. We tested the gray model, which you can see here is actually more of a blue.

The front of the phone is dominated by a 6.7-inch OLED display with 90-degree curved edges on the left and right. Resolution comes in at 2,340 by 1,080, for a density of 385 pixels per inch. With an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and a 90Hz refresh rate, it’s smooth and sharp, though not quite as slick or as dense as the Samsung Galaxy S20’s 3,200-by-1,440-pixel, 120Hz panel. It still looks great, with excellent brightness and spot-on color accuracy. The curved edges can cause text to warp, but you can disable Motorola’s Endless Edge feature by double tapping the side of the display.

The back panel has a triple-camera
stack in the upper left corner and a Motorola logo centered slightly below. While
it looks great, the cameras protrude far enough away from the body of the
phone to make it wobble when sitting on a flat surface.

A 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge,
while a SIM card slot, a USB-C charging port, and a speaker are all on the bottom. The left side is bare, and on the right you’ll find a textured power button and a volume rocker. The
buttons are thin and can be difficult to reach with small hands, but they provide a satisfying
click when tapped.

In a big change of pace from most phones we test, the in-display fingerprint sensor here is actually quite good. After testing the phone for nearly a week, we only
experienced one authentication error. 

Durability is our biggest design concern with the Edge+. The phone
features an all-glass body with an aluminum chassis. While Motorola uses Gorilla Glass 5, it’s unlikely to weather a hard drop without damage, and the curved display makes it even more fragile.  The phone also lacks an IP rating, which means it offers no official protection against dust or water, which is really something you shouldn’t have to worry about at this price. We suggest a sturdy, waterproof case.

Audio, Call, and Network Quality

A Verizon exclusive in the US, the Edge+ is the first smartphone
to hit the market with global 5G. On the LTE side, the phone supports bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/28/29/30/34/38/39/40/41/42/46/48/66/71.
5G is supported on sub-6GHz bands n2/5/41/66/71/77/78 and n260/n261 for mmWave.
Band n78 is one of the most widely used 5G bands in the world, so the phone should
work well in dozens of countries.

In testing, the phone averaged LTE speeds of 88.5Mbps
down and 42.6Mbps up in Brooklyn. While we were unable to get 5G reception where we tested, we saw the phone hit speeds well above 1.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up earlier this year in downtown Chicago.

Call quality is superb. With maximum earpiece volume coming
in at 86dB, the phone is loud enough to hear on busy streets (and the earpiece doubles as a second speaker for multimedia). All of our test
calls were crystal clear, and noise cancellation was able to muffle even significant background noise.

The phone’s stereo sound is tuned by Waves Audio and peaks at 92dB. It’s good, though not
quite as good as the sound pumped out by the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G. The audio here is a bit boxier, likely due to the speaker arrangement. That said, the timbre is warm and well-defined, while the midrange is smooth, without any hard textures even at maximum volume. Like most smartphones, the bass is a bit thin but nicely articulated.

For connectivity, the phone also supports Bluetooth 5.1, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, and NFC.

Cameras

The Edge+ features three rear cameras with a time of
flight (TOF) sensor. The primary lens comes in at 108MP with a large 1/1.33-inch sensor. It has a wide f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization (OIS). Quad-pixel binning is supported for 27MP photos. There’s also a 16MP ultra-wide and macro lens with an f/2.2 aperture, and an 18MP telephoto lens with an f/2.4 aperture, 3x optical zoom, and OIS.

Daylight test photos with the primary lens look good. All of
our the photos have excellent color accuracy, and most show solid depth of
field. There’s a loss of fine detail in many images, but it’s only noticeable when viewing them at full size.

108MP primary lens

For the most part, the ultra-wide-angle lens performs similarly to its 108MP counterpart. Color accuracy and depth of field are spot-on, though there’s some loss of clarity, and several shots appear to
have minor edge distortion.

The telephoto lens is the weakest sensor in the trio. While
color accuracy is solid, nearly all the photos it captured look flat. Many also have mushy details, and some feature a bit of noise.

Ultra-wide lens

Low-light performance is disappointing. Test photos with the primary and ultra-wide lenses in night
mode feature some noise and a loss of fine detail. Lens flare is present
in all of the shots, and several photos show complex distortion, as evidenced
by wavy lines.

Performance with the telephoto lens is worse, with additional noise and an extreme loss of fine detail. Lens flare continues to be a problem, though we didn’t notice the same distortion as on the other lenses.

Low-light photo with the Moto Edge+

For selfies, a 25MP sensor with an
f/2.0 aperture sits on the front of the phone. Like the 108MP rear lens, it supports quad-pixel binning.

In good light, the front-facing camera performs well. Our test shots show excellent color accuracy and solid depth of field. There’s some loss of fine detail, but it’s not significant
enough to be bothersome.

Low light photo with the 25MP selfie cam

In low light, however, nearly all of our test shots look mushy, with overly aggressive
noise cancellation creating blur around the edges of faces. Several test photos also had an unexplained orb, though we’re
chalking it up to atmospheric conditions.

So while the Edge+ can get a solid shot in good light, it’s
simply no match for the Galaxy S20 line, the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G, or even the $800 Google Pixel 4. The Edge+ has a significantly higher megapixel count than the Pixel 4, but as we saw with the $1,400 Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, which also has a 108MP sensor, more megapixels don’t necessarily translate to a better image.

Specs and Performance

The Edge+ is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset, along
with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. There’s 256GB of UFS3.1 storage onboard, of which
241GB is available out of the box.

As you’d expect from its top-of-the-line specs, the Edge+ can handle dozens of apps open simultaneously with ease, and just about any photo or video editing tasks you throw at it.

Gaming is a win here as well, thanks in part to the display’s 90Hz refresh rate and the Moto Gametime feature (more on this in the next section). We spent nearly two
hours testing the phone with a handful of games including Asphalt 9 and PUBG: Mobile. Everything loaded quickly, and we never experienced any dropped frames.  

On PCMark Work
2.0, a series of tests that emulate typical smartphone tasks, the Edge+ scored
11,721. That’s slightly behind the Samsung Galaxy S20
Ultra (12,842), but you’re not going to notice a difference in regular use. And the Edge+ actually pulled ahead of the S20 Ultra on GeekBench 5, an app that measures raw processor performance. It earned an impressive 914 and 3,372 for single and multicore, compared with 910.5 and 2,270 on the Ultra.

See How We Test Phones

Motorola promises multi-day
battery life, even when using mmWave 5G. We weren’t able to test the phone on 5G, but were nevertheless impressed by its massive 5,000mAh cell. In our battery test, which streams HD
video over Wi-Fi at full brightness, the Edge+ lasted 14 hours and 29
minutes, besting the Galaxy S20 Ultra by over 2 hours. With more conservative use, you shouldn’t have a problem lasting well over a day between charges.

When you find the Edge+ running low, it supports 18W TurboPower
charging, as well as wireless charging. It also features 5W wireless power sharing, allowing you to use the phone’s battery to charge other devices.

Software

The Edge+ ships with Android 10 along with Motorola’s new My UX software layer. It keeps Motorola’s tradition of providing
a nearly stock version of Android while adding a handful of features to
improve usability.

Moto Actions allow you to set up simple gestures to complete common tasks, like taking a screenshot with a three-finger tap, turning the camera on with a few flicks of your wrist, or silencing the phone by picking it up.

Moto Display has been updated to take advantage of the curved screen edges.
In addition to its usual features, you can now create custom edge notification
lights and even custom gestures by tapping and dragging on the edge of the display.
It reminds us of the Sony Xperia 5’s Side Sense feature, but it works much better.

Moto Gametime has also been updated to take advantage of the display’s additional real estate. It lets you map buttons to the top edge of the screen, so you can play
more naturally without tapping the display.  

The Edge+ comes on Verizon, which means you’ll
find some bloatware on it. In addition to the usual collection of
Verizon-branded apps, there are a few games, Disney+, Amazon Shopping, and a
trio of Yahoo apps.

Since Android 11 has yet to be announced, Motorola hasn’t
officially stated whether the Edge+ will receive an update. That said, Motorola has a good track record when it comes to updating its handsets, and we’d be surprised if it doesn’t bring the next version of Android to the Edge+ at some point after it comes out.

Conclusions

The Motorola Moto Edge+ is a sleek flagship with top-notch hardware. If you’re looking for a phone with class-leading battery life and global 5G, look no further. If you’re looking for a more durable device with better camera quality, you can wait for Verizon’s 5G model of the Galaxy S20, due out soon, or spend $200 more on the Galaxy S20+, which also gets you a sharper display. The OnePlus 8 doesn’t offer any significant advantages over the Moto Edge+, meanwhile, but it costs $200 less.

Motorola Moto Edge+ Specs

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