Motorola brings out the best of everything with the Edge 20 Pro.
The Motorola Edge series have been quite popular especially both the Edge 20 and the Edge 20 Fusion. The budget flagship segment has been very much popular with smartphones like the OnePlus 9R (Review), iQOO 7 Legend, Xiaomi Mi 11X (Review), etc. that have powerful chipsets and provide some excellent specifications. Now Motorola is outset to bring their top-of-the-line model of the Edge 20 series called the Edge 20 Pro.
With the Motorola Edge 20 Pro, Motorola retains the flagship features as found on the Motorola Edge 20 (Review) like a 144Hz AMOLED display, premium features like Ready For PC, and also has a telephoto camera with 5x zoom which most of the smartphones in the budget flagship segment miss out. Also, Motorola has been known for providing a cleaner Stock Android experience that makes it stand out from the crowd.
Here also Motorola has made the design quite different and interesting like other Motorola Edge 20 smartphones. So how good is the Motorola Edge 20 Pro and we will also see that is it worth the extra money over the Motorola Edge 20? Is it worth buying among this highly competitive segment? Let's find out in the full review.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Design:
In terms of design, the Motorola Edge 20 Pro has a premium design as it has a glass sandwich design instead of the polycarbonate back present on the Motorola Edge 20. The front, as well as the back, is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, compared to the Motorola Edge 20 which has a polycarbonate back. Here you get two color options that include Midnight Blue and Iridescent Cloud.
The Midnight Blue color variant looks premium as the back has a Vegan Leather finish that does not catch fingerprints and also the matte finish provides a good grip. The Iridescent Cloud variant is white in color and both have a hue on the back when light strikes at them. The back has an IP52 rating which makes it splash resistant.
Around the sides, there is an aluminum frame and that is flat and is not curved. The back is curved around the sides but still feels balanced. The back has a rectangular camera setup that houses the triple cameras with a LED flashlight and also there is a third microphone present. So you are getting three microphones on the Motorola Edge 20 Pro which is great as we have seen them on gaming smartphones.
The camera module on the Motorola Edge 20 was protruding a lot but with the Motorola Edge 20 Pro, the cameras sit well on the module and do not protrude much. The left side has the Google Assistant key which can not be remapped and to the right side, there is a power button that doubles up as a fingerprint scanner and the volume buttons are present.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot as there is no microSD card slot for storage expansion and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack also. The weight of the Motorola Edge 20 Pro is around 189 grams and is 7.9mm thick around the sides. On the front, there is a single punch-hole display with minimum bezels around the sides.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Display:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro has a larger 6.7-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. As it is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction and viewing angles are great. Like the Motorola Edge 20, you get a 144Hz refresh rate which makes everything smoother whether it is scrolling through webpages, playing games, etc.
Other smartphones like the Realme GT, OnePlus 9R have 120Hz refresh rates but you will not notice much of a difference while comparing a 120Hz display with a 144Hz display side by side. With a 144Hz refresh rate, you are getting a 576Hz touch sampling rate which makes all animations and provides faster touch responses.
There are another two modes that include Auto and standard 60Hz. However, when you set at Auto, the display refreshes from 10Hz to 120Hz only depending on the application in usage, not 144Hz. In terms of brightness, the display shows 673nits of brightness and can go as high as 1000nits which is good but under direct sunlight, the display legibility was not so good and needs some improvement.
The display supports HDR10+ and has Widevine L1 support, so you can stream HDR content from OTT platforms and also YouTube.You can set the color temperature from warmer to cooler tone and there are two options in the display settings - Saturated and Natural where Natural covers the DCI-P3 gamut scale and Saturated covers the sRGB content.
Since this is an AMOLED display, Motorola has skipped on an optical in-display fingerprint scanner and you get a side-mounted fingerprint scanner embedded on the power button which is relatively fast and accurate. Overall, this display is great for media consumption, and also the higher refresh rate and touch sampling rate helps in gaming.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Performance:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro is powered by the powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset that powers many smartphones like the OnePlus 9R, Xiaomi Mi 11X, and also the newly launched Realme GT Neo 2. The Snapdragon 870 chipset is very stable compared to Snapdragon 888 chipset as there are no heating issues much and the battery drain is not as fast as the Snapdragon 888 chipset.
The general performance like daily tasks that include scrolling through web pages, rendering videos, watching content, etc. all feel smooth and good. The gaming performance remains excellent with the Snapdragon 870 chipset as all games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings where BGMI runs at Ultra graphics and Extreme frame rate.
The back does not heat after playing for a longer time as Motorola has provided a liquid cooling system underneath. Even in CPU throttling tests, the smartphone did not show fluctuations in graph as it could easily maintain performance. In benchmarks like Antutu v8, the scores were pretty good almost close to the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset.
Since the Snapdragon 870 chipset supports 5G, Motorola has not skipped in terms of the 5G band as you are getting 11 bands of 5G. There is only one variant of the Motorola Edge 20 Pro available i.e. 8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB UFS 3.1 storage. There is no 12GB RAM variant which seems to be a miss. Overall the gaming and performance feel top-notch like a flagship.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Software:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro runs on MyUX with Android 11 out of the box. The MyUX on Motorola is closer to Stock Android with Motorola's own customizations. There is no bloatware and ads in the user interface, making it the only manufacturer to provide a cleaner software experience next to OxygenOS on OnePlus smartphones.
Motorola provides a lot of customizations on the Moto app where you have all the gestures like karate chop for turning the flashlight on/off, twisting twice to launch the camera, tapping the power button opens up a shortcut which enables the Power Touch that has all the applications and also there is lift to unlock gesture which turns the display on when the phone is picked up.
There are also the Peek Display and Attentive Display where Peek Display lights up the display when it can detect the motion of hand on top of the display and also the Attentive Display disables the time out of the display as long as the person is looking into the display. However, like both the Edge 20 series, this one also gets Ready For a feature that works like Samsung DeX and you can use the smartphone on a PC or desktop.
This feature is very handy as it provides a Desktop-like experience where you can use it for video calls as the front camera works well and also you can use the smartphone as a mouse to control the Desktop.
Motorola claims to provide another two years of Android OS updates and three years of security updates which makes it great. Overall, this is the best software experience on a budget flagship.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Cameras:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro houses a triple camera setup which seems to be the perfect camera setup as seen on many flagship smartphones. The primary camera has the 108MP f/1.9 Samsung ISOCELL GM2 sensor, a 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, and an 8MP f/3.4 telephoto camera which has OIS. There is a 32MP f/2.3 Omnivision sensor for the front camera.
The images from the main camera come out with a good dynamic range, details look sharper, and colors look natural with no oversharpening present. However, there is some softness present and also a fair bit of noise. The images taken at 108MP resolution come out with good details but it does crop the image a bit from the sides to reduce noise.
The images taken during the night come out with good dynamic range and the level of noise is also lower. The details do look sharper and have good contrast but the highlights in shadows look washed out and could have been better. With the dedicated Night Mode, the dynamic range seems to be improved, and also the noise gets reduced to a larger margin. However, the lack of OIS is definitely felt.
The 16MP ultrawide camera has a larger 123-degree field of view and the details look sharper with a good dynamic range. The colors look natural like the one on the main camera and these images have very little noise present. Motorola has done a good job by providing a 16MP sensor instead of an 8MP sensor. There is some distortion present around the edges though.
The images come out with decent dynamic range and a lot of noise from the ultrawide camera but you do get good color saturation with no oversharpening present. However, the ultrawide camera misses out on the Night Mode which is a sort of miss as the details look slightly softer when you zoom into the images.
The 8MP telephoto camera does a good job as the images look sharper at 5x optical zoom. The colors look oversaturated but the images have good dynamic range and contrast. Above 5x zoom, the images have less noise present especially at 10x but you can go up to 50x digital zoom at which the images have a lot of noise but still the details look average. The presence of OIS helps in noise reduction.
The zoomed-in images at 5x optical zoom come out with excellent dynamic range and the subjects look sharper. The colors look oversaturated and the contrast is good. Beyond 10x, the images have a lot of noise but due to the presence of OIS, you can capture some of the details and at 50x zoom, the camera does a good job in preserving the details.
The portraits come out good from the main camera with good dynamic range and proper edge detection. The background blur is implemented well and also when you zoom into the portraits, there is very little noise present. The ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera, which results in good details and dynamic range with very little noise. This camera can go very close to the subject and is better than other 5MP or 2MP macro cameras.
The front camera is a 32MP sensor that takes 8MP selfies by default with good dynamic range and the skin tones look natural also. With HDR turned on, the images have more saturated colors and contrast but if you look at the selfies closely, there is some amount of noise present and also in portraits, some is oversharpening in the background. Though the edge detection is good.
There is support for 8K recording at 24fps which is good but the level of details is not so good as there is some noise present but still, the colors look natural and true to the source. The main camera can record 4K videos at 60fps and the videos have good dynamic range and colors also look natural with good contrast.
As there is no OIS so, at night, the videos do have some noise and the dynamic range needs some improvement. The 1080p videos at 30/60fps come out good as EIS works well resulting in less noise and sharper details and good dynamic range in videos. The ultrawide camera is restricted to 1080p at 30fps only and the videos have good dynamic range, natural colors but quite an amount of noise also.
The 8MP telephoto camera has OIS which provides it an advantage during the night as well as the day. The videos from this camera have much better details with very little noise, good dynamic range but colors look oversaturated. Up to 5x optical zoom, the videos have good details but beyond 10x, there is a larger amount of noise but still compared to other telephoto cameras, this is much better.
The front camera of the Motorola Edge 20 Pro can record 4K videos at 30fps with a good amount of detail and dynamic range. The field of view is also larger and there is no oversharpening in the background with the colors almost closer to natural especially the skin tones. The portrait videos have good edge detection with no oversharpening. Overall, the cameras are great for the price.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Battery Life:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro sports a 4500mAh battery which combined with the 144Hz display can easily last for a single day with heavy usage that includes laying games like BGMI for 3-4 hours, consuming videos for 8-9 hours on OTT platforms, and also video rendering and casual web browsing. With the display set to standard 60Hz, the smartphone can last for two days with normal usage.
With the display set to 120Hz, you can easily get two days of power as the display consumes less power than the 144Hz setting and also provides a much better and balanced battery life. The standard screen-on time was around 7-8 hours which is really good considering the massive 144Hz refresh rate as the Stock Android is very well optimized thus providing good battery life.
There is only a 30W fast charger bundled inside the box of the Motorola Edge 20 Pro which takes it from 0 to 100 percent within 1 hour 20 minutes which is good but still other smartphones like OnePlus 9R, Realme GT (Review), etc. have much faster 65W charging that takes them from 0 to 100 percent within 40 minutes. However, the move from a 20W fast charger to 30W is a good move made by Motorola.
Motorola Edge 20 Pro Audio Quality:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro comes with a single speaker setup at the bottom which is quite louder and clear. However, it still misses the depth and base of dual stereo speakers. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack also but there is support for Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound quality.
Verdict:
The Motorola Edge 20 Pro impresses in many ways by being a complete all-rounder as it has a good build and design, a larger 144Hz display for media consumption, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset that provides great performance and also you get the benefit of Stock Android which makes the UI experience smoother as it provides very exciting features and is very well optimized for battery life also.
However, you do have only one variant available i.e. the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant and Motorola could have provided a 12GB RAM variant also. The biggest highlight of the smartphone are the 144Hz AMOLED display as it is the only smartphone to have 144Hz, then when compared to the OnePlus 9R that has a single band of 5G, this one has 11 bands of 5G though sporting the same chipset.
The cameras feel like a complete package with a proper triple camera setup which includes a telephoto camera with OIS that is great for zoomed images. However, there is no OIS on the main rear camera. Motorola's own set of gestures, features like Ready-For, and a guarantee of software and security patches provide a great experience.
There are some downsides like the charging speeds are very slow at 30W as the similarly priced OnePlus 9R has a faster 65W charging speed. Then there is a single speaker at the bottom that sounds good but not as good as a stereo speaker. However, if you can miss out on these minor areas, then you are getting a perfect Motorola smartphone that lives up to the reputation of an all-rounder budget flagship.
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