Design & Build Quality
The newest addition to their lineup comes in the form of the Motorola Edge 20, the company’s slimmest 5G smartphone ever. At just 7mm, it even beats out the iPhone in terms of thinness while still featuring a massive 6.7-inch display. This feat is even more impressive when you consider that both the display and the back are absolutely flat, with uniform thickness across the body. So, the 7mm claim doesn’t need an ‘at the thinnest point’ qualification to make it true.
On top of being so thin, the smartphone is also incredibly light, at just 163 g. This is made possible by the use of a polycarbonate body, which is still quite durable. The body still features an aluminium frame, which includes a fingerprint sensor included with the power button. Other than that, you get the usual volume buttons on the right and a dedicated Google Assistant button on the left. You do miss out on a 3.5mm jack, but that is a compromise we can easily make, considering the abundance of wireless headphones on the market today.
The overall design is pretty sleek and understated, with a slightly glossy finish at the back. The camera hump sticks out a bit due to the extreme slimness of the rest of the body, but it will easily become flush with the addition of a smartphone case. The case is also recommended as the finish of the back is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, although you don’t really notice it much in the vibrant colours. You can pick between Frosted Grey, Frosted White, and Frosted Emerald to see which suits you best.
Display & Performance
As we said, you won’t really notice the back once you see the display that is on this mobile. It is a vibrant 6.7 inches 10-bit AMOLED display with HDR10+. It is rare to see a true 10-bit panel in this price range, and we are happy to see it trickle down to a mid-range smartphone. On top of the amazing colour reproduction, the display is also superfast, at a 144Hz refresh rate. What makes it feel even more responsive is the industry-leading 576Hz touch sampling rate, which makes all the difference in gaming.
Since the display is pretty flat, it is well integrated into the body, with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. Even though it doesn’t curve, the edges of the body itself have been smoothened out, so you don’t feel uncomfortable holding it for long periods of time. This shows a focus on sustained usage as well as customer comfort.
This setup is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G chipset. It is a 6nm processor and offers incredible performance and battery life that is on par with previous generation 8 series chips. You can pair it with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage.
All of this runs a complete stock Android 11 experience, which makes it feel even more responsive, thanks to a complete lack of any bloatware. The company has promised to keep up the updates until Android 13, which also makes it pretty futureproof. This philosophy of giving customers a completely unadulterated yet robust software experience is what made Motorola popular in the first place, and we are happy to see the company sticking to it.
You can leverage this setup for up to 7-8 hours of screen-on time, thanks to a 4000mAh battery, which supports 30W fast charging. There is no wireless charging, but you do get NFC, so the feature set evens out pretty well.
Camera
The camera also sees a massive upgrade, with a 108MP main sensor that supports 30x digital Super Zoom. It is supported by an 8MP telephone lens that has 3x optical zoom, as well as OIS stabilization. This combination of optical and digital is pretty usable, though we would still recommend using a tripod if you want to shoot at maximum range.
The third sensor is a 16MP ultrawide with a 119˚ spread. This makes for great group pictures and landscape shots with its wide field of view, which is equivalent to a 13mm lens. We can expect the image quality and colour science to improve even more over time, thanks to OTA updates.
On the front, you get a 32 MP selfie camera. It creates crisp and vibrant selfies, thanks to the integrated quad pixel technology. On the whole, the whole camera setup is pretty refined, with the best result available in proper lighting conditions. It does come with a night mode, but your mileage may vary when it comes to results.
Ready For Platform
Up until now, we focused on features and components that could be found in other smartphones as well. But one vital aspect of this smartphone’s user experience that remains a Motorola exclusive is the ‘Ready For’ platform. This is a new type of software-based integration that the company has introduced, which lets you wirelessly connect to any number of displays and devices.
Not only can you mirror the content of your smartphone onto a bigger screen, but you can also completely turn off the smartphone display and use it as a proper touchpad. This works not only on gaming monitors and smart TVs but with Windows laptops as well. In addition to all the mobile apps that you can now run on these devices, the Ready For system also lets you use the smartphone's cameras as mobile webcams. This is amazing, considering what an upgrade it would be to go from the blurry, pixelated laptop webcam to a 108MP smartphone sensor.
These connections remain properly secured, thanks to the integration of ThinkShield for mobile. It safeguards your data from malware, phishing, and other threats. Thus, making it completely safe to connect to any number of devices across all sorts of wireless networks, especially now that you get the power of 5G.
Price and Availability
All of this and more makes this a pretty uncompromising device, which is great value for money, at a starting price of AED 1499.
