The Motorola Edge series smartphones released last year attracted a lot of attention. For example, the Edge 40 Neo received the Indian Gadgets Awards for the best phone of the year under $300. Phones in this series introduced a set of premium-class features and capabilities to the market that were previously unheard of in this segment.
Continuing this trend, in April, the company introduced a new smartphone in the lineup – the Motorola Edge 50 Pro. Some of the key features of the smartphone include fast wired charging at 125W, wireless charging at 50W, IP68 protection, a display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and a 3x telephoto lens. Does the Motorola Edge 50 Pro have everything it needs to outshine competitors in the real world? Let’s find out together.
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Firstly, Motorola has avoided using plastic in the packaging, and everything is printed with soy ink, meaning the Edge 50 Pro box can be recycled.
Secondly, Motorola sprays perfume in each box to give it a pleasant scent. And it does smell really nice and subtle, and it lasts quite a while.
Inside the box, you’ll find the phone itself, a protective case, documentation, a SIM card ejection tool, a USB Type-C to Type-C cable, and a large 125W charging adapter (but only in versions with 12GB of RAM).
I didn’t feel the desire or need to use the case in this review, but if you decide to, you can be sure it securely covers the device, looks good, and doesn’t interfere with its operation.
I’m a fan of waterfall displays and muted tones in phone designs, so the Motorola Edge 50 Pro hits the mark for me. The phone looks closer to a premium flagship than a mid-range smartphone and stands out with its vegan leather back panel, which feels quite nice.
Motorola’s choice of colors and materials should please potential buyers. The phone is available in three options – Black Beauty, Luxe Lavender, and Moon Light Pearl. The first two are made of vegan leather, while Motorola claims that the pearl finish is handcrafted in Italy by the company Mazzucchelli. I haven’t held it in my hands, so I can’t say how good (or not) it looks. However, the black variant that I received for review looks surprisingly beautiful.
It’s also pleasing that fingerprints don’t stay on the leather panel. Additionally, the aluminum frame matches the tone of the back panel to emphasize the device’s positioning as a premium phone for a premium lifestyle. However, not everything is perfect, and the large camera module of the Edge 50 Pro ensures that the phone won’t lay flat on a surface. It’s worth mentioning how grippy the Edge 50 Pro is thanks to the leather back, so if you’re not a fan of cases, this phone is for you.
If you’re not as much of a fan of curved edges as I am, you won’t appreciate the excessive curvature of the screen on the Edge 50 Pro. The large 6.7-inch screen makes it difficult to reach the edges easily, and the POLED panel boasts decent specs with a resolution of 1.5K, a refresh rate of 144Hz, and a peak brightness of 2000 nits. I’ll also note that the Edge 50 Pro features an optical fingerprint sensor under the display, and I didn’t encounter any issues with its performance in terms of speed or reliability, although sometimes reaching it was a bit inconvenient due to its slightly downward position.
Yes, while Motorola may not be pushing technological boundaries, you do get a very good display. The overall brightness seems sufficient in any conditions, and the contrast level was deep enough to provide a pleasant viewing experience. The manufacturer claims that for the first time, the Edge 50 display has passed Pantone certification for color accuracy, and skin tones, in particular, look truly realistic.
My only remark about the screen is that it feels familiar to me as a former owner of the OPPO Find X5 Pro. Perhaps the curved display does create a good image and an interesting experience, but I encountered a lot of issues with erroneous data input during the few weeks of using it. There were many instances where touches on the screen simply weren’t registered, which happened because parts of my hand were already touching the edge of the display. But this might be a matter of getting used to it.
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Motorola has also equipped the smartphone with a pair of stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, which indeed provide loud and immersive sound. I was particularly impressed by the clarity of vocals in movies, although it’s worth noting that there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack here, if that’s important for you in 2024. The volume boost allows for a well-balanced sound, considering the relatively slim size of the phone, with a hint of bass presence. It’s loud enough for watching YouTube or listening to podcasts, although it might get a bit sharp at high frequencies when playing music at the upper range of the volume.
Like its predecessor, the Edge 50 Pro boasts an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, meaning you shouldn’t worry too much if you accidentally drop it in water or use it in the rain. Just keep in mind that there are certain limitations for water exposure: fresh water up to a depth of 1.5 meters for 30 minutes.
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The Edge 50 Pro runs on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, and the interface is smooth as expected. The chipset boasts AI features used in the smartphone to enhance photo quality, stabilize videos, and create themes and wallpapers. When it comes to real-world performance, the phone delivers excellent results, showing no lags, stutters, or app crashes.
When it comes to software, the Edge 50 Pro comes with the Hello UI interface based on Android 14, which differs from the familiar My UX. It’s much lighter and has almost no additional apps apart from Google programs. There are no unnecessary programs here; the interface is mostly standard with Motorola design elements, and you get some additional features like Moto Unplugged, Ready For, gestures, Smart Connect, custom fonts, colors, icons, and Family Space.
There’s also an AI-powered styling feature called Style Sync, which uses AI to create custom wallpapers from photos taken with the camera or from the gallery. It’s also worth mentioning that this is the first phone from the company to support Motorola Smart Connect – a new set of continuous Moto features that work across Motorola and Lenovo smartphones, tablets, and PCs with external display support and data synchronization.
In addition, the phone supports various gestures that have already become Motorola’s hallmark, as well as security and privacy features ThinkShield from Lenovo in the Moto Secure app. The company has also introduced Smart Connect Hero features aimed at enhancing performance. Here are a few of them:
These features complement the existing Moto Connect function, providing a similar DeX experience by mirroring the smartphone screen on an external display, along with Moto Secure, Family Space, and others. These are all useful features that help expand the overall functionality of the phone.
When it comes to software support, Motorola has promised to provide three major Android updates as well as security support for four years for the Edge 50 Pro.
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The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is equipped with a 4500 mAh battery, which resulted in a relatively low score in the PCMark battery test – 12 hours and 30 minutes. However, the phone seems well optimized to last at least a day with regular use. Playing a 30-minute 4K video on YouTube at 50% brightness and volume only reduced the smartphone’s battery life by 4%.
If you’re a heavy user who plays a lot of games or uses navigation extensively, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro may need to be charged at least once during the day. But don’t worry, the charging speed of the smartphone is incredibly good. Thanks to the 125W charger, the phone charges from 0 to 100% in just half an hour. As I mentioned before, the base variant of the phone with 8GB of RAM comes with a slower 68W power adapter, despite the capability of 125W charging. The 125W power adapter is only available with the top variant featuring 12GB of RAM.
It’s also nice that the phone supports 50W wireless charging, making it the first in its segment, but the charging pad needs to be purchased separately.
And finally, onto the most interesting part. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro delivers the best photo quality I’ve ever seen in phones of this class. Just to remind you, Motorola has added a combination of a 50 MP main camera with optical stabilization and an f/1.4 aperture, a 13 MP ultra-wide camera, which also serves as a macro camera, a 10 MP 3x telephoto lens, and a 50 MP selfie camera. So the images are sharp, with vibrant colors that, in most cases, don’t seem overly saturated.
And here it’s worth mentioning that this is the first Motorola smartphone to receive support for the AI Photo Enhancement Engine technology with optimizations for motion capture and color segmentation. Therefore, it’s evident that the new artificial intelligence plays a significant role in the camera system capabilities of the Edge 50 Pro, working in the background to enhance photos and optimize shots. To jump ahead – if the end result matters more to you than absolute realism, you’ll also appreciate the almost film-like quality of the shots.
In short, there’s a powerful set of cameras here that produce images with impressive detail and sharpness in well-lit environments. The dynamic range also looks quite solid. However, when it comes to color rendition, in the default settings, it appears somewhat exaggerated with high contrast levels, even after disabling artificial intelligence, selecting the natural image style, and using the “Natural Colors” mode for the display.
Now let’s take a look at some examples. Let’s start with macro shots with lots of detail and good sharpness around the edges of the frame.
The ultra-wide camera takes beautiful photos in daylight but isn’t as good in low-light conditions. Selfies in adequate lighting are good, with plenty of detail, and skin tones are also very true to life.
The main camera performs well in preserving details and maintaining subdued noise in less-than-ideal lighting. Additionally, it can capture portraits at different focal lengths: 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm, with nearly accurate skin tone reproduction and a natural bokeh effect. The front camera sometimes overexposes selfies, resulting in slightly washed-out colors, although it maintains a good balance of facial details. Below are examples of photos taken with the main camera in Portrait mode at different focal lengths.
The dynamic range and color balance are simply remarkable for all cameras on the Edge 50 Pro. I was impressed by the quality of the ultra-wide camera, as it’s often the one lacking in phone cameras.
The three-fold telephoto lens is also very good, offering plenty of detail, and even with digital zoom, objects remain clear enough to make out small numbers and letters, as you can see on the church spire and orange advertisement in the distance.
The photo quality from the main camera in low light conditions is also impressive, providing a well-balanced image in terms of color reproduction and lighting. Additionally, the camera handles light reflection quite well. Examples will follow shortly.
As for video quality, the main camera can record in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. The videos are of high quality, even at three times zoom, with a good dynamic range and minimal noise. In low-light conditions, video quality drops slightly, but in adequate lighting, the phone captures remarkably well.
The stabilization is also quite good. According to Motorola, this is thanks to artificial intelligence. Both the main camera and the ultra-wide module effectively reduce shake when walking. The ultra-wide camera showed a slight tendency to hunt for focus during walking. Simply pointing the phone in one direction provides stable frames – not entirely free from shake, but quite good.
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The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a great phone at a reasonable price, offering much more than some of its competitors. I believe it’s perhaps one of the best smartphones in its price range. You get an excellent display, a vibrant design, wireless charging, IP68-rated protection, and a very good camera.
The Edge 50 Pro is also one of the most aesthetically pleasing phones in its class on the market, and its software and charging capabilities are among the best.
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