Motorola Edge, Motorola Edge Plus launched: Check price, specs, and availability

Motorola just announced its first flagship smartphone since the first-gen Moto Z, which launched back in 2016. The company unveiled two Moto Edge devices for premium and mid-range smartphone markets. The new “Edge” branding is derived from Motorola’s “Endless Edge” design, its adaption of the waterfall screen.

The Moto Edge and Edge+ share a similar design, 5G connectivity and a capable triple-camera setup. Not counting the MotoMod experiment, the Moto Edge phones are the company’s first 5G phones.

The device is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 system-on-chip (SoC), which has become a prerequisite for a 2020 flagship smartphone. The chipset is paired with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. The phone packs a 5,000 mAh battery, which the company claims can deliver up to two days of usage. The Moto Edge+ supports 18W wired fast charging over USB-C and 15W wireless charging as well as 5W reverse wireless charging with Qi-compatible gadgets.

The handset also sports a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, which isn’t quite as good as the QHD+ panels on the Galaxy S20 series, OnePlus 8 Pro, and Oppo Find X2 Pro, but still looks and feels premium because of that screen curvature. The screen features a punch-hole notch for the selfie camera as well as an in-display fingerprint reader. It also boasts a 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support.

The Motorola Edge+ gets a 3.5mm headphone jack but loses out on the IP rating and microSD card slot. The US version of the phone supports mmWave 5G, while global units will get sub-5GHz 5G. The device will arrive in two colours – Smokey Sangria and Thunder Grey. The phone runs on Android 10 with the company promising at least one major Android update (Android 11).

Motorola’s first 5G flagship smartphone is all decked up with a flagship camera setup. The phone opts for a quad-camera setup with a 108-megapixel sensor at the helm, which sits behind an f/1.8 lens and supports PDAF and OIS. The sensor produces 27-megapixel photos by default with 4-in-1 pixel binning.

The main camera is paired with an 8-megapixel telephoto shooter with 3x Optical Zoom and OIS and 16-megapixel ultrawide shooter that doubles as a macro camera and a ToF camera for depth sensing. The Motorola Edge+ can also record video in up to 6K resolution at 30 fps. Additionally, The hole-punch notch on the front houses a 25-megapixel selfie camera.

Motorola also revealed a premium mid-range smartphone alongside the Moto Edge+. The standard Motorola Edge rocks a Snapdragon 765G chipset with an integrated 5G modem. The chipset will be paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It is worth noting that the North American version will be restrained to 4GB of RAM.

While the specs of the vanilla Moto Edge are dialled down, it still retains the same design and screen. The 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display retains the screen curvature, 90Hz refresh rate but lacks HDR10+ support. The device is equipped with a smaller 4,500 mAh and 18W wired charging support. The standard Moto Edge does not support wireless charging.

The Motorola Edge gets a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD card slot to expand storage capacity. The standard Moto Edge is configured only for sub-6GHz networks. The vanilla version of the Edge is available in Midnight Magenta and Solar Black colours. Like the Moto Edge+, it too will run on Android 10 with the company promising at least one update to Android 11.

The Moto Edge also has four camera sensors on the back with different specifications. The smartphone uses a 64-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.8 aperture. The other three cameras include an 8-megapixel, f/2.4 telephoto shooter, a 16-megapixel, f/2.2 ultrawide cam and a ToF 3D depth sensor.

Additionally, both the main and telephoto cameras do not support OIS, while the latter only offers 2x Optical Zoom. Video capture on the Moto Edge is limited to 4K resolution. The hole-punch notch on the screen gets the same front camera as its “Plus” counterpart.

The Motorola Edge+ is only available in one configuration and will be priced at USD 1,000 (Approx. Rs 76,000), while the global variant will cost EUR 1,199 (Approx. Rs 98,715). The phone will go on sale on May 14 in the US, while the global variant will also launch in May. The Motorola Edge+ will launch in India in the coming months, but there are no details on pricing yet; we expect it to be at least 20K less than the European price.

The standard Motorola Edge will be available for EUR 699 (Approx. Rs 57,800) in European markets. The phone will go on sale in May and will begin rolling out to North American markets in the following months.