Motorola Edge 20 Review – Slimmest 5G Phone With A Premium Edge

In a try to recapture its lost market share in India, Motorola has launched a killer smartphone. The Motorola Edge 20 is a mid-range phone that packs some good specifications and a decent camera setup. Motorola is trying to compete with companies like OnePlus, RealMe and Poco from Xiaomi, which have successfully captured the mid-range market of India. And at a price tag of Rs. 30,000 this is the first decent phone launched by the company in India.

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I tried the Motorola Edge 20 for a week and here is my Review on the Motorola Edge 20. Do give it a read.

Motorola Edge 20 is a fully featured 5G smartphone and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor, 8GB RAM, and 128GB storage. The company has launched only one variant, and there is no other storage or RAM option available in India. The phone is available in two color options Frosted Pearl and Frosted Emerald.

Priced at Rs. 29,999 in India, Motorola Edge 20 is available on Flipkart and leading retail stores.

I am glad to see that Motorola didn’t follow the path of Apple and decided to keep the charging adapter in the box. The box contents of Motorola Edge 20 includes:

• Motorola Edge 20 handset
• Charging Adapter 30W
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• Documentation

Let’s talk about the on-paper specifications of the Motorola Edge 20 at first:

• Display: 17.02 cm (6.7 inch) Full HD+ AMOLED Display with 144Hz Refresh Rate
• Camera: 108MP + 8MP + 16MP | 32MP Front Camera
• Battery: 4000 mAh Battery with 30W fast-charging
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Processor
• RAM & ROM: 8 GB RAM | 128 GB ROM
• Dimensions: 163 x 76 x 7 mm
• Weight: 163 grams

Motorola Edge 20 is one of the lightest and thinnest phones in its price range. It weighs just 163 grams and 6.9 mm in thickness. The phone’s aluminum edges and the flat display will remind you somewhat of the less premium Sony Xperia 1 iii. While the phone has a frame built from an aluminum alloy, the back panel is made of plastic to cut corners in terms of price. It also comes with a water repellent coating, but there is no IP rating.

In my opinion, Motorola made a mistake in positioning the volume and power button. It is unusually high on the right edge, and the click effect for the volume rocker feels ludicrously high.

Similarly, Motorola has also provided a dedicated Google Assistant button on the left edge. But it is positioned a bit on the high side, and you frequently forget that it is even there. I think the button would have been more helpful if the company made it customizable but sadly, that isn’t something you can find in the Motorola Edge 20. Apart from that, there are much easier ways to launch Google assistant than finding the button and clicking on it.

Talking more about the build quality, while the rest of the phone is solid, the back panel is made from plastic or PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate), to be precise. It is basically plastic but doesn’t feel cheap, thanks to the shimmering mat finish that gives it the glass impression.

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If I talk about the display, Motorola Edge 20 features a 6.7-inch Full HD resolution OLED display. The phone uses a 10-bit panel that can produce over 1 billion colors supporting up to 144 Hz refresh rate and HDR 10 + certification. The display is covered up with a layer of Gorilla Glass 3 which is outdated considering other similar smartphones come with Gorilla Glass 5 in this price range.

The 144Hz screen works excellent whether you want to play games or scroll through social media apps. During the review, the display didn’t drop a single frame rate while being used. The phone also comes with Widevine L1 support that means you will be able to stream FHD+ content on any of your favorite OTT platforms. You will be able to watch movies in FHD+ on Prime Video and Netflix. The phone’s thin design and lightweight form factor make it an absolutely fantastic smartphone to play around with.

Apart from that, the display gets bright enough to be visible during daylight, and it is color accurate too. The phone’s best feature is its 144 Hz refresh rate that makes it feel really nice and smooth. But you also get an option to decrease the refresh rate to 120 Hz and save some battery, while you can also leave it on Auto mode and let the phone decide itself.

If you are looking for a phone that offers a great gaming experience at this higher refresh rate, then this is not the phone that you should pick. The higher refresh rate makes it feel nice and smooth, but when it comes to processing, the chipset is not powerful enough to provide the best gaming experience at such high refresh rates. But still, the performance is decent enough and I enjoyed playing BGMI on this high refresh rate display.

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Motorola Edge 20 is the first phone to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor in India. The processor has been built on a 6nm process, and it has an Adreno 642L GPU. It is running on stock Android 11 out of the box. The overall performance of the new chipset is excellent and offers a decent gaming experience.

I tried benchmarking the Moto Edge 20 and device scores an average GeekBench 5 multi-core score of 2768, and it falls around 150 short of the Xiaomi Mi 11 lite 5G, which is almost identical to the OnePlus Nord 2 with MediaTek Dimesity 1200 SoC. Comparing it to the likes of Poco F3 with Snapdragon 870, the Motorola Edge 20 falls short by about 600 points. The phone comes with 128 GB of internal storage, but it isn’t the fastest that you will get in this class. Our review recorded a read speed of 629 MB/s and a write speed of 180 Mb/s.

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In general day-to-day usage, I found the phone to be fast and smooth with that rapid 144 Hz display. In my testing, I did not pick up any real issues when opening and changing between different apps in our review. But when you look at devices like the OnePlus Nord 2 and Poco F3 GT, they both offer faster performance and have stereo speakers, which the Moto lacks. So if you are looking for mid-range gaming performance, Moto is not a good catch.

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In terms of software, the phone provides a close-to-stock Android experience. It has some handy features such as Attentive Display and Moto Actions which many Motorola fans (including me) use more than often in their smartphones. Motorola has also promised two years of Android updates in 3 years of security updates. But if the past is any evidence, the company fails to deliver on its promise of software updates.

The phone has 5G and supports eleven 5G bands, including 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 28, 38, 41, 66, 77, 78. This means when the 5G launch is in India, which will be very soon, the phone will be able to use the 5G network easily. I didn’t try the 5G connectivity as it is not available in India but it should be ready to go once the 5G rolls out in Inida.

If you want to compare the smartphone with the likes of the OnePlus Nord 2, which comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor, the performance is similar to that phone. In terms of battery Motorola Edge 20 comes equipped with a 4000mah battery that supports 30W fast charging.

The company has gone all out with a 108MP primary rear camera when it comes to camera performance. It has an f/1.9 aperture and comes with 9-in-1 pixel binning technology. But at this price point, it has no optical image stabilization, which is a feature you can find in the OnePlus Nord 2.

The 32-megapixel front-facing camera comes with features such as dual capture, night mode, and portrait mode. The phone also has an ultra-wide-angle camera with higher resolution and can also take macro photos along with the primary camera. The third camera sensor is an 8MP telephoto camera that provides 3x optical zoom and 30x superzoom, superior to any phone in this price range.

This year we have seen a lot of smartphones with mid-range prices having the 108-megapixel image sensor. They all generally provide decent results when it comes to camera quality. Motorola Edge 20 in strong lighting conditions does offer some fabulous shots.

I took the device for a casual photography spin and the camera does provide good photos during daylight conditions. On a sunny day, you can take a walk into the park and come up with some excellent close-up shots of flowers and plants packed with full colors and details.

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The phone’s auto HDR facility also does a wonderful job of balancing out some awkward exposure scenarios, such as bright skies over a clump of shady trees. But like other mid-range smartphones with 108MP sensors, as the light levels drop, the image quality also drops quite alarmingly. I am not sure why the camera underperforms in low-light, whether it is the lack of sensor capability or the image processing ability, but even in reasonably lit indoor shots, images came out to be noisy and indistinct. The camera app also has a night mode, but in decent bright conditions, the pictures had a lot of problematic grain in them.

If we talk about the 16MP ultra-wide sensor, it isn’t something the company can be proud of. But it does provide consistently good results that you can’t complain about at this price range. The overall tone of images is noticeably warmer than that of the primary sensor, and the detail in images is worse. The phone also features a third sensor which is an 8-megapixel telephoto sensor. It does overall good, but on the negative side, it is not very sharp. It has an industry-wide deeper than usual 3x zoom lens, which opens up the possibility of genuinely fresh images.

The 32MP selfie camera sounds a lot on paper but isn’t too good in practice. During the review, I observed bags of green and purple fringing while the selfie portrait mode smudged out a lot of details in the edge providing a more than needed ghostly appearance.

Motorola Edge 20 packs a 4000mAh battery which and according to the display size, seems a bit small on paper. Both its competitors Poco F3 GT and OnePlus Nord 2, come with a 4500mAh battery with fast charging support. With this said, the phone has a pretty long-lasting battery life. I easily got 4 hours of screen on time with around 25% left at the end of the day. These numbers were when the screen refresh rate was locked at 144 Hz; if you leave it in Auto mode, your phone can last even longer.

After an hour of binge-watching on Amazon Prime video with the screen set at 144 Hz and full brightness, the phone lost about 10% of charging. This is similar when compared to devices in this price range. When it comes to recharging, there is a 30W turbocharger bundled in. It is fast but compared to OnePlus Nord 2 with 65W fast charging; this is less impressive. You can charge the phone from 0 to 50% in around 25 minutes, and it takes an hour to reach from 0 to 100%. When compared to the OnePlus Nord 2, it can hit these marks in around half the time.

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The lack of stereo speakers is one of the major downfalls of the Motorola Edge 20. In day-to-day activities like video and voice calls, the audio quality from speakers is adequate. Where it lacks is in gaming; here, I certainly want the phone to have stereo speakers that can provide you the ultimate gaming experience. 

The phone has 5G and supports eleven 5G bands, including 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 28, 38, 41, 66, 77, 78. This means when the 5G launch is in India, which will be very soon, the phone will easily use the 5G network, so you should get pretty good 5G connectivity for the price tag. 

Even in terms of security, you have a face ID here, but unlike Apple, Motorola Edge 20 uses a front camera to scan your face. It probably isn’t the best way to unlock your phone; instead, we suggest you go with the side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint scanner is placed in an excellent optimal position on the power button, where you can reach it easily. With a physical scanner, you don’t have to worry about the speed, as it unlocks very quickly without any delay.

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