Motorola Edge 50 Ultra review

Android 14, augmented by Hello UI

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra runs Android 14 with Motorola's in-house customizations on top, now called Hello UI ("Hello, Moto!"). The company promises 3 OS updates and 4 years of security patches (which will be delivered on a quarterly basis, we've been told).

We've repeatedly said that Motorola's software looks a lot like AOSP with some added in-house features and finishing touches, and that remains true to a large extent.

Something as simple as a font can add a lot of personality though, and Motorola has been doing that expertly. An AI-generated wallpaper option is also on the table if you're after personalization, because AI everything - Motorola calls it Style sync and the idea is to have a wallpaper tailor-made to your outfit for the day.

The customizations live in the usual Moto app 'hub', which has been restyled for this iteration. Things are now more neatly organized, with the categories that have a lot of entries, like Gestures, fitting things on a single page, no scrolling required.

Moto app

Speaking of, the info page for each gesture now has an even better visual explanation as to how the gesture should work. Motorola went as far as to match the animation to the phone's actual colorway - or is it just Luxe Lavender on all units as the hero color?

More Moto app

Some long-standing Motorola features can be found on the Edge 50 Ultra as well. The Ready For app (for connecting to a PC or a tablet) and Moto Connect app (for connecting to standalone displays, be it wired or wirelessly) have been merged into a new app called Smart Connect. Streaming, mobile desktop, phone to PC, smart sharing, smart clipboard, cross control and more - all features are here under one roof.

Smarat Connect

Moto Unplugged and Family Space are two features meant to restrict access to apps and features for one of two reasons - relaxing or staying focused yourself, on the one hand, or limiting a child's phone usage, on the other.

Moto Unplugged • Moto Unplugged • Family Space

Performance and benchmarks

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, a SoC that may sound like a binned Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Soc, but it's actually a fundamentally different chip. The 4nm manufacturing process is the same, though.

The new chip employs a 1+4+3 CPU configuration. The main Cortex-X4 core is still at the helm, ticking at a lower 3.0 GHz frequency (compared to the original SD8 Gen3), while the cluster of 4 Cortex-A720 cores runs at 2.8 GHz. The high-efficiency 3x Cortex-A520 cores are clocked at 2.0 GHz. The GPU on board is the Adreno 735, and the model's name implies it sits lower than the Adreno 740 found in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC.

Qualcomm also lowered the cost by using an older modem, but it's still offering a high-end ISP as well as next-generation connectivity such as Wi-Fi 7. There is support for Ultra Wideband here, unlike on the other Edge 50 phones, though that's still of limited use nowadays.

The available memory options are three - 12GB/512GB (region limited), 16GB/512GB (region limited) and 16GB/1TB (widespread, ours), and, in all cases, you will be getting speedy UFS 4.0 storage.

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra offers flagship-grade performance across the board. Sure, it is not exactly Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 level, but it is on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and not far behind Gen 3.

Finally, let's talk about thermals and throttling. Our stress tests returned 63% for CPU stability and 67% for GPU - meaning the phone loses its maximum punch mere minutes after peak performance was requested. This is not unusual for top-end chips in phones, unfortunately.

CPU test • GPU test

The phone's chassis gets hot after 10-15 mins of benchmarking, almost unbearably hot, which is not good. The thin frame is used for heat dissipation and while it does an okay job, not everyone would be able to tolerate its heat.