Review: Motorola Edge Plus is a 5G premium phone worth your consideration

Review: Motorola Edge Plus is a 5G premium phone worth your consideration

The Motorola Edge Plus ($1,000 at Motorola) has pretty much everything you’d hope for in a premium 5G phone: It’s got a Snapdragon 865 chipset, a giant battery, an OLED screen with a high refresh rate and multiple rear cameras with heavy-duty specs. Motorola took features found on other top-of-the-line Android phones, put its own Moto spin on them and housed them all into one of the most wonderful Android phones I’ve tried in a long time.

Like

• Long-lasting battery so far
• Edge display
• Best cameras on any Moto phone

Don’t Like

• Verizon exclusive
• No IP rating for water resistance
• Night Vision isn’t great

But there are two things about the phone that can impede its success. One is its chunky build and lack of IP rating for water or dust resistance. The other is that it’s sold as a Verizon exclusive in the US, which could shut out interested buyers. Considering the Edge Plus is competing in a sea of other 5G, Snapdragon 865-powered phones, it needs all the advantages it can get. Anyone in the market for such a device can afford to be picky. 

Want a screen with a higher refresh rate than 90Hz? Check out the 120Hz displays on the Galaxy S20 Plus or OnePlus 8 Pro ($999 at OnePlus). Want something that costs less than the $1,000 Motorola Edge Plus? Check out the $900 OnePlus 8 Pro (again) or the LG V60. Craving a camera that can shoot video at a higher resolution than 6K? Consider the V60 once more or any of the Galaxy S20 phones that can record 8K video. All of these phones are viable options because each offers its own mix of features, and some will appeal to you more than others.

After a week with the Motorola Edge Plus, I found it to be so much more than its spec list. The phone is absolutely charming —  it takes good photos (just not the best), has a promising long battery life (though final results from testing aren’t in yet) and has a striking design. If you’re a Verizon customer it’s worth considering when it goes on sale in May. If you’re not, there are plenty of other options to choose from including a scaled-down version of the phone called the Motorola Edge, which will be sold unlocked starting this summer.

Motorola Edge Plus’ wraparound display

It would be lazy to compare the looks of the Motorola Edge Plus to recent Samsung Galaxy phones. They have a similar design language but express it differently. The Edge Plus embraces a sleek industrial design compared to the nail-polished gloss of the Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus.

As its name suggests, what defines this phone is its 6.7-inch OLED screen that wraps around the edges of the phone nearly 90 degrees. It is gorgeous and looks even better with a 90Hz high refresh rate instead of the more common 60Hz. This means text looks sharper, and animations and scrolling are smoother. Obviously there are phones with higher refresh rate displays, such as the 144Hz screen on Nubia Red Magic 5G gaming phone, but 90Hz is no slouch. Motorola also claims it saves on battery drain. I used both 90Hz and 120Hz screens and there is less of a difference between them than, say, a 60Hz and 90Hz one.

The screen wraps halfway down each side of the Motorola Edge Plus,

Sarah Tew/CNET

When I tilt it at various angles, the edge either looks brighter or darker than the main, flat part of the display. This is especially apparent when I’m on the home screen or in Settings. It can be a bit distracting. Maybe it’s the angle of the edges, or the way the backlighting works in the bend, but I’m surprised to see this on a phone at this price. But when I’m watching a video that spills over the sides, it’s barely noticeable.

The 19.5:9 ratio screen is tall and narrow, but the shape of the phone makes it comfortable to hold. The wide aspect ratio is perfect for watching many movies that are also shot at a wide aspect ratio. I watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly on the Edge Plus and it filled the screen perfectly.

The speakers sound good and deliver solid bass. Whether I was playing the Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, Andrew Bird, Sharon Jones or the Kronos Quartet, music sounded loud and full. If you don’t want to blast your music, there’s also a headphone jack.

There’s a fingerprint reader built into the front display. When I reviewed the Moto Z4 ($500 at Walmart), which also had an in-screen fingerprint sensor, it never seemed to work on the first try. The one on the Edge Plus works great though. It’s fast and I rarely have to scan my finger twice to unlock my phone like on the Z4.

The Motorola Edge Plus looks smooth and sleek with its waterfall display

See all photos

Good photos, solid macro camera and 6K videos

This is the best camera system I’ve used on a Motorola, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best camera system on any phone. Motorola deserves praise for what it’s accomplished with its camera hardware and processing. But it’s still a step behind Apple and Google. 

There are three cameras on the back and one on the front. The main camera has a 108-megapixel sensor that combines four pixels into one, through a process called “pixel binning.” This results in brighter 27-megapixel photos with less image noise when you shoot in medium and low light situations.

The Edge Plus captures photos with punchy colors.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The phone is capable of good HDR photos but is still a step behind computation photography from Apple and Google.

Patrick Holland/CNET

Look at the detail the Edge Plus was able to capture in Cheddar the cat’s fur.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The Edge Plus did a decent job exposing for the sign with minimal blow out of highlights from the sun.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The pixel binning works well on this phone. You can choose not to pixel bin and instead take a 108-megapixel photo, but I recommend only doing this in bright, even light. Also, the file size is huge: Expect a 25MB file instead of the 8MB one created by pixel binning. So if you’re trying to be frugal with the Edge Plus’ 256GB of storage, pixel binning is be the way to go.

Both the main camera and the 8-megapixel telephoto camera have optical image stabilization. This helped with “zoomed in” photos by reducing camera shake. Take a look below at this 3x zoom photo I took of a tree in my back yard at sunset.

This was taken at sunset with the 3x telephoto camera on the Motorola Edge Plus.

Patrick Holland/CNET

This was captured with the 3x telephoto camera.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The third rear camera has a 16-megapixel sensor with an ultrawide-angle macro lens. The macro lens allowed me to focus my photos and videos just millimeters away from my subject. In the photo below you can see the texture of the paper.

The macro mode is capable of capturing an incredible amount of details.

Patrick Holland/CNET

Not only was macro mode able to focus close, but look at the details it captured in the metal.

Patrick Holland/CNET

Portrait mode on both the front and rear cameras works well too. There’s a time-of-flight sensor on the back of the phone that gathers depth information and makes rear portrait mode photos especially gorgeous. I was impressed by how natural and accurate the portraits I took were.

The cutout between the foreground and the background is one of the most natural-looking I’ve seen from a portrait mode on any phone.

Patrick Holland/CNET

But this camera system isn’t perfect. One of its weakest features is Motorola’s Night Vision feature. Like night mode on other phones, the Edge Plus takes a series of images and combines them together for a brighter and sharper photo. The results were better than when I took a photo without Night Vision enabled, but it’s nowhere near the level of Night Mode on the iPhone 11 Pro or Night Sight on the Pixel 4.

Video capture on the Edge Plus is good too and you can record with up to a 6K resolution, but it can be better. The image quality is fine, but white balance seems off to me and colors are oversaturated. You might like that, but it’s a tad too much sometimes for me. Take a look at the video below, which includes a bunch of clips I shot in 6K. 

The Edge Plus also supports Portrait Mode video which is better than it should be. I’m honestly impressed by some of the results I got, but it’s still far from perfect. If you get this phone, it’s worth a try. And I think if I played around with it more, I could learn the kinds of environments where it works best. It only works on the rear camera, but you could use it to make cool-looking vlogs if you don’t mind filming blind.

Edge screen features and Moto Gametime

The Edge Plus runs a near stock version of Android 10 with a light dusting of features and shortcuts by Motorola. You have the usual Moto gesture controls, such as the double karate chop to turn on a flashlight and flicking your wrist to open the camera. But there are a number of new additions that take advantage of the edges of the display. One of my favorites allows you to slide your finger down the edge to pull down the notifications shade and control panel. 

There’s also a virtual pill-shaped button on the right edge that you can use to go back to the previous app or turn off the edge parts of the screen. I kept it as a last app button and found I used it quite a lot. When the phone is faced down, I liked being able to see the edges light up for notifications or to show the battery charging.

One the bottom right side of the photo you can see a button drawn with a neon blue line that can be customized and used as a shoulder button during gameplay on the Motorola Edge Plus.

Patrick Holland/CNET

Perhaps one of the coolest things you can do with that edge is have two digital shoulder buttons when using Moto Gametime. It feels like using a game controller. I customized the buttons for PUBG, for example, so the right shoulder button attacks and the left shoulder button kneels. This straight-up turns the Motorola Edge Plus into a gaming phone, albeit without the aggressive styling and light-up logo.

Top of the line Android performance

The Motorola Edge Plus supports both millimeter wave and Sub-6 5G, which help future-proof the phone for a few years as the 5G network is built out more. Verizon’s 5G service wasn’t available where I was testing the phone, but I look forward to trying it out sometime in the future.

In terms of processor performance, the Motorola Edge Plus hangs with the fastest Android phones out right now. It scored nearly identical to its Snapdragon 865 siblings the Galaxy S20 Plus and OnePlus 8 Pro.

3DMark Slingshot Unlimited

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

Geekbench v.5.0 single-core

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

Geekbench v.5.0 multicore

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

The Edge Plus’ 5,000-mAh battery is the same capacity as the LG V60 and the Galaxy S20 Ultra. I’m still running battery-drain tests with the phone, and will update this review in the future with the results. In daily use, it easily made it through two days for me. But if you need a recharge, the phone has 15W turbo charging as well as wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. 

Motorola Edge Plus specs compared to Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, OnePlus 8 Pro, LG V60, Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra

	Motorola Edge Plus	Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus	OnePlus 8 Pro	LG V60 ThinQ 5G	Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
Display size, resolution	6.7-inch FHD OLED	6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X	6.78-inch AMOLED; 1,440×3,168 pixels	6.8-inch OLED; 2,460×1,080 pixels	6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X
Pixel density	NA	525ppi	513ppi	395ppi	511ppi
Dimensions (Inches)	6.34×2.81×0.38 in	2.9×6.37×0.30 in	6.51×2.93×0.35 in	6.67×3.06×0.35 in	2.99×6.57×0.35 in
Dimensions (Millimeters)	161.1×71.4×9.6 mm	73.7×161.9×7.8mm	165×74.4×8.5 mm	169.3×77.6×8.79 mm	76.0×166.9×8.8 mm
Weight (Ounces, Grams)	7.16 oz; 203g	6.56 oz; 186g	7.02 oz; 199g	7.72 oz; 218g	7.76 oz; 220g
Mobile software	Android 10	Android 10	Android 10	Android 10	Android 10
Camera	108-megapixel (standard), 8-megapixel (telephotos), 16-megapixel (macro/ultrawide-angle)	12-megapixel (wide-angle), 64-megapixel (telephoto), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide), time-of-flight camera	48-megapixel (standard), 48-megapixel (ultra-wide), 8-megapixel (telephoto), 5-megapixel (‘color filter’)	64-megapixel (standard), 13-megapixel (wide-angle), time-of-flight camera	108-megapixel (wide-angle), 48-megapixel (telephoto), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide), time-of-flight camera
Front-facing camera	25-megapixel	10-megapixel	16-megapixel	10-megapixel (standard)	40-megapixel
Video capture	6K	8K	4K	8K	8K
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865	64-bit octa-core processor (Max 2.7GHz + 2.5 GHz + 2.0 GHz)	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865	64-bit octa-core processor (Max 2.7GHz + 2.5 GHz + 2.0 GHz)
Storage	256GB	128GB, 512GB	128GB, 256GB	128GB	128GB, 512GB
RAM	12GB	12GB	8GB, 12GB	8GB	12GB, 16GB
Expandable storage	No	Up to 1TB	No	2TB	Up to 1TB
Battery	5,000 mAh	4,500 mAh	4,510 mAh	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh
Fingerprint sensor	In-screen	In-screen	In-screen	In-screen	In-screen
Connector	USB-C	USB-C	USB-C	USB-C	USB-C
Headphone jack	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Special features	5G enabled	5G enabled; 120Hz refresh rate; water resistant (IP68)	5G enabled; Warp Charge; reverse wireless charging; water resistant (IP68); 120Hz refresh rate	5G connectivity; water resistant (IP68); wireless charging, Fast Charging 4.0	5G enabled; 120Hz refresh rate; 100X zoom; water resistant (IP68)
Price off-contract (USD)	$1,000 – Verizon exclusive	$1,199, $1,349	$899 (8GB RAM/128GB), $999 (12GB RAM/256GB)	$800 (without Dual Screen case); $900-$950 (with)	$1,399 (128GB), $1,599 (512GB)

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