Motorola Edge review

Cleanish Android 10 with plenty of Moto improvements

Motorola has settled on a mostly stock Android experience for its smartphones, even the ones that are not part of the Android One program. Even so, there's an extensive list of custom features nicely bundled in the Moto App.

Moto Actions are an assortment of clever ways for interacting with the phone - including a karate chop for toggling the flashlight on or off, twist motion to launch the camera app, three-finger screenshot gesture, accelerometer-based ringtone silencing.

Moto app • Moto app • Actions

Moto Display is a bit more feature rich on the Edge+ than on your average Moto. Edge Touch is an action bar on the side which you can use in a number of ways - swipe in for customizable shortcuts, swipe down for access to the notification shade and quick toggles, swipe up for the task switcher and app drawer. Double tapping the bar, on the other hand, can be set up to do one of two things - it will either switch back and forth between the two last used apps, or it will disable the display edges thus shrinking the usable app area within the flat portion so that text doesn't spill to the sides making it difficult to read. You could argue that disabling the edges on a phone that makes a big deal out of its edges is somewhat counterintuitive, but the option is there if you want to use it. You can adjust the bar's location along the height of the phone as well as pick the left or right edge, but you can't have both.

Moto Display: Edge Touch

Edge lights is a set of features that will light up the curved sides of the display for calls and notifications, as well as when charging the phone. You can set those to only be active when the screen is facing down for maximum coolness effect. This is when the bundled case with its raised top and bottom lips comes in handy.

Moto Display: Edge Lights

The other two features in this category aren't Edge exclusives. Peek Display, the not-always-on display, will show notifications and let you interact with them right there on the lock screen plus it will wake up when you pick up your phone. Attentive display will keep the screen on as long as you are looking at it.

There's a brand new Personalization feature that lets you customize the look and feel of your Moto. You can play around with the size and layout of the icons on the homescreen, change the system font, and pick an accent color for the quick toggles.

Moto Gametime is the company's set of tools for enhancing mobile gaming and now it offers a cool new feature - you can add virtual triggers on the edge, which you can use in popular action games. Another standout capability is the option to have two additional software buttons (Left and Right), which you can assign in-game actions to and position anywhere on the display.

Immersive mode lets you filter out calls and notifications, the Performance section allows you to turn off adaptive brightness, disable the edge portions of the display and turn on audio enhancements. An optional in-game floating icon called Toolkit gives you quick toggles for calls and notifications, access to your choice of two messaging apps as well as access to the full Gametime settings.

Moto Gametime

Gestures are the means of choice for navigation on the Edge. It's a relatively custom implementation with a single elongated bar on the bottom of the screen. Swiping upwards takes you to the home screen, a swipe up with a pause brings out the recent apps menu while swiping further up brings up the app drawer. You can quickly switch between recently used apps by swiping sideways on the bar. Sadly, you can't hide it and it's there, eating up screen estate at all times, except for full-screen videos and games. If you want Back, then just swipe in from the edge of the screen - that gesture's sensitivity is adjustable too, though we didn't find any issues with the default 3/4 setting.

If, on the other hand, you want to have the classic three-button navigation bar, Motorola still gives you the option to switch to it from Settings.

System navigation

All of these aside, the rest is pretty much Android 10 as Google intended it to be.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher • Quick toggles

The Motorola Edge also supports FM radio and there is a pre-installed app for that. You don't see this every day, not anymore at least.

Performance and benchmarks

The Motorola Edge is the first phone we meet powered by the Snapdragon 765G chipset by Qualcomm. It is one of the most powerful platforms for the mid-range and has integrated 5G modem, which makes it lucrative for both users and makers.

The Snapdragon 765G has an octa-core processor with 1x Prime + 1x Gold + 6x Silver configuration of Kryo 475 cores. The Prime core is derivative from Cortex-A76 clocked at 2.4GHz, the Gold core is also A76 derivative running at 2.2GHz, while the six so-called Silver cores are essentially Cortex-A55 ticking at 1.8GHz.

The GPU inside this new chipset is Adreno 620, the most powerful Qualcomm has to offer in this class and we can't wait to see it in action.

The Moto Edge is sold with either 4GB or 6GB LPDDR4X RAM, while the storage is always 128GB UFS 2.1, expandable via microSD slot.

The Snapdragon 765G contains the Qualcomm X52 modem, which supports all sorts of connections including 5G and LTE.

And now it is time to see how good the new chip is when facing some benchmarks.

The GeekBench test says that the Motorola Edge has the fastest mid-range processor to date. It is a hair faster than the Snapdragon 720G CPU inside the Redmi Note 9S and Redmi 6. Well, the S720G processor is almost identical, so we didn't expect much of a difference either.

The OnePlus 8 is €100/$100 more expensive than the Motorola Edge, but it offers the flagship Snapdragon 865 and that is why we chose it for this comparison as well. It will also give you an idea for the difference in the theoretical performance between the Edge and Edge+.

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  919
• Motorola Edge
  586
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  570
• Realme 6 Pro
  565
• Realme 6
  548
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  542
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  347
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  311

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  3399
• Motorola Edge
  1862
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  1785
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  1733
• Realme 6
  1726
• Realme 6 Pro
  1666
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  1394
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  1294

We suspect the Snapdragon 765G will be a showoff in the GPU tests with its new Adreno 620 GPU. And, indeed, this new Adreno is the fastest mid-range GPU available and we are glad to see it in action.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  127
• Motorola Edge
  50
• Realme 6
  50
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  42
• Realme 6 Pro
  41
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  41
• Realme 5 Pro
  37
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  19
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  16

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  60
• Motorola Edge
  32
• Realme 6
  27
• Realme 6 Pro
  27
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  26
• Realme 5 Pro
  22
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  12
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  8.9

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  46
• Motorola Edge
  18
• Realme 6
  16
• Realme 6 Pro
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  15
• Realme 5 Pro
  12
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  6.6
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  5.6

The Motorola Edge has a 90Hz display, meaning it is theoretically capable of displaying 90fps in compatible games. These benchmarks are not showing that, but when we ran the lighter T-Rex test from GFX Benchmark, the phone achieved 78fps meaning it exceeded the usual 60fps limit and when opportunity arises, it will get the job done.

Finally, it's time to compare some scores from the AnTuTu benchmark. Once again the Motorola Edge and its Snapdragon 765G chip came on top of every other mid-ranger even if not by a mile.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  564708
• Motorola Edge
  305989
• Realme 6
  288931
• Realme 6 Pro
  268785
• Samsung Galaxy A71
  263396
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S
  254000
• Samsung Galaxy A51
  175363
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  173607

These benchmarks show the Snapdragon 765G to be a small improvement over the previous Series 7 chips in terms of performance and yet it is the fastest mid-range chip. The native 5G support is exclusive to the new chip 765 chips, so it's another step ahead.

Sure, few, if any, games will be able to exceed 60fps and make use of the 90Hz display with a corresponding framerate of 90fps, but it will still deliver lag-free performance across the board and that's what really matters.

The Motorola Edge is a mid-ranger from the upper echelon it has the upper echelon chip to match. We couldn't ask for more.