Motorola Edge 20 Pro Review – This is the Affordable Flagship

The Edge 20 Pro from Motorola has finally arrived in India. The new Motorola flagship replaces the Edge and Edge Plus, but without the curved display and insane price tag. Motorola Edge 20 Pro is a flagship device that does not require you to spend half a lakh because it was introduced in India at a reasonable price of Rs 36,999. Motorola has chosen a powerful processor that scored well on Antutu and offers a stock Android experience that gives it an advantage over its competitors. Motorola Edge 20 Pro is a sleek smartphone with a powerful processor, a 5x zoom camera, and the ability to record 8K video.

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In India, the Motorola Edge 20 Pro is priced at Rs. 36,999 and comes in only one configuration: 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You can pick between the colours Midnight Sky and Iridescent Cloud.

You won’t get much in the box other than the device. The box includes:

• Edge 20 Pro device
• Charger
• USB Type-C Cable
• SIM Tool
• User Guides

Before we talk in detail about the Motorola Edge 20 Pro, let’s see what the on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 6.70″ OLED
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 5G
• RAM & ROM: 8GB + 128GB
• Software: Android 11
• Rear camera: 108 MP + 16 MP + 8 MP
• Selfie camera: 32 MP
• Battery: 4500mAh
• Weight: 185g
• Dimensions: 163.0 x 76.0 x 8.0 mm

The Edge 20 Pro has a similar appearance to the Edge 20 and is easily identified as a member of the Edge 20 series. The Motorola Edge 20 Pro is a beautiful smartphone. It isn’t as elegant as the Edge 20, but it has a more premium feel about it. The Edge 20 Pro has a large 6.7-inch display with thin bezels all around and a camera hole in the top centre. The device’s body is constructed of aluminium, according to Motorola, but it has a resin coating that detracts from its premium feel. The fingerprint scanner on the Edge 20 Pro is positioned on the side, which could be an intentional move to undercut competitors who use in-display fingerprint scanners.

I found the buttons on the right to be a little too high, with the volume controls requiring a stretch to access. The single dedicated button on the left is for summoning Google Assistant. The USB Type-C connector, primary microphone, speakers, and SIM tray are all located on the bottom of the frame, while the secondary microphone is located on the top.

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At the back of the Motorola Edge 20 Pro is a rectangular camera island that houses three massive sensors: two round sensors and one curved sensor. Because the camera bump protrudes somewhat, it’s best to use the device with a cover.

The Edge 20 Pro has an all-glass design with a matte finish on the backside, and it looks stunning. The company has also carved a dot-matrix design on the rear of the phone that gleams in the sunlight, however, it is limited to the edges of the frame. This approach appeals to me since it lends just the perfect amount of flare to the phone’s otherwise bland look.

Motorola Edge 20 Pro comes with a 6.7-inch OLED display with FHD+ resolution and FHD+ resolution. In addition, the display can refresh at 144Hz, ensuring seamless in-app animations and UI transitions on the smartphone. The Edge 20 Pro, unlike its predecessor, does not come with a curved display, which I welcome. The reason for this is that a flat display prevents accidental touches and, in my experience, provides excellent palm rejection. The display also boasts a peak brightness of 700 nits, so you shouldn’t have any problems using it in strong sunlight.

Returning to the topic at hand, the Edge 20 Pro’s display is a thing of beauty, with vibrant colours, wide viewing angles, and deep blacks. The smartphone also has WideVine L1 certification, and the company claims that the display is compatible with HDR 10+ media.

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For a long time, 60Hz was the standard, but in recent years, several smartphones have had 90Hz or 120Hz screens; now, 144Hz is the flagship level, and just a few smartphones meet or exceed this number.

As a result, motion on the Edge 20 Pro’s display appears to be very fluid, something some smartphone lovers will appreciate, though not everyone will notice or care.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 870 CPU powers the Edge 20 Pro. The SoC is paired with 8GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage built-in. Based on the specifications, it’s safe to assume that the smartphone can keep up with the competition in terms of performance.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SoC is powerful enough to do practically any task without lagging. Multitasking isn’t an issue with 8GB of RAM, and I was able to run many apps at the same time while switching between them. The large AMOLED display with its high refresh rate is ideal for watching videos. By default, Motorola has set the refresh rate to Auto, which allows the smartphone to adjust to what you’re doing.

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If you want to play games, the Edge 20 Pro is the device for you. I was playing Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), which has HD visuals and a high frame rate by default. I was able to play the game without any problems. The smartphone showed no signs of slowing down and kept a stable frame rate without any heating issues.

The Edge 20 Pro, like all Motorola phones, runs a stock version of Google’s Android operating system, with Android 11 installed out of the box. It’ll most probably be compatible with Android 12, and maybe future builds of the OS as they become available.

That means the software will seem just as it would on a Pixel phone, minus the overlays and design tweaks that other companies apply. Icons are circular, downloaded apps are placed in an app drawer, and the notifications list is split into media, conversations, ‘standard’ app notifications, and ‘silent’ pings (i.e., reminders from certain apps).

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However, the company has included a few customisation tools with the interface, like Moto Styles, which allows users to adjust the shape of icons and change the accent colours for key UI elements. Peek display, Moto’s brilliant take on AoDs, is also available.

Motorola does offer some of its own tricks, such as its quite handy time-saving actions. These enable you to swiftly activate functions by making specific gestures.

Motorola Edge 20 Pro is the company’s most aggressive camera phone to date. The smartphone features a 108MP main sensor, as well as an 8MP, 5x periscope telephoto lens, a 16MP ultra wide-angle camera, and a 32MP selfie camera. The main camera is equipped with a Samsung HM2 sensor, while the rest of the shutters are equipped with OmniVision sensors. It also has a digital zoom capability of up to 50X. The Edge 20 Pro’s camera app is simple to use, and it remembers the previous mode you used, making it easier to take multiple images in similar scenarios.

When it comes to picture quality, the main sensor on the Edge 20 Pro does a good job of reversing colours in a scene. While the photos aren’t colour-accurate, the handset’s post-processing isn’t excessive, and as a result, you’ll be met with nice, vibrant hues anytime you press the shutter button. However, I wasn’t convinced of the sensor details on the phone, and at a closer crop, the things in the frame were oversharpened. Furthermore, the phone’s dynamic range isn’t great, and the sensor will struggle to pull out details in the shadows at times.

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It had no issue locking focus quickly and precisely metering scenes. The photos taken in the daylight were great and had good detail. Objects at a distance could be identified, though the phone should have handled shadow details better. Although the ultra-wide-angle camera captures a much wider field of view, image quality suffers noticeably. Objects in the distance are also less crisp and detailed.

Video can be recorded in 1080p, 4K, or 8K resolutions at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second, while framerates in 8K are limited to 24 frames per second. We discovered that the device was remarkably capable of recording high-resolution video for long periods of time without overheating or capturing stuttery footage.

When it comes to battery life, Motorola Edge 20 Pro has a somewhat larger battery than the Edge 20. With the display set to refresh at 144Hz, Moto Edge 20 Pro comes with a 4,500mAh battery that will need to be recharged before going to bed. With moderate use, you may get a full day out of the phone if you don’t play any games or take too many photos with it. The smartphone comes with a 30W charger that can charge the phone from 0% to 100% in about one hour and twenty minutes. The charging speed is 30W, which is faster than Samsung’s and Apple’s flagship phones, but falls short of the 65W, 90W, or 120W charging speeds offered by other smartphones at this price (and cheaper).

However, unlike the Edge Plus from last year, there is no wireless or reverse wireless charging, which is likely due to Motorola’s desire to keep the price of this device low.

This Motorola phone is one of the few that comes without a 3.5mm headphone jack. However, in the audio department, where we only received a bottom-firing speaker unit, I was left wanting more. While the loudspeaker is adequate for the job, it lacks the sonic quality that only headphones provide.

The Edge 20 Pro, thankfully, leaves no stone left when it comes to connectivity. Not only is the smartphone 5G-ready, but my 4G SIM provided excellent upload and download speeds. Furthermore, the smartphone comes with extra features such as NFC and Wi-Fi 6, which is fantastic. The fingerprint sensor is built inside the power button by Motorola.

Pros

• Good battery life
• High refresh rate screen
• Gorgeous OLED display 
• Clean Android Experience
• Powerful Snapdragon 870 SoC
• Stunning design 
• 11 5G Bands

Cons

• No OIS Support
• No 3.5mm Audio Jack
• No Stereo Speakers
• Awkwardly-positioned physical buttons