Is this a perfect and ideal premium mid-ranger in the market?
Motorola Edge series had a great start last year with the Edge 20 series and this year we have the Edge 30 series that consists of the Motorola Edge 30 Pro (Review) which is a high-end flagship from Motorola as it packs a premium build and design, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, great set of triple cameras, a 4800mAh battery with support for 68W fast charging and also wireless charging.
Now there is the Motorola Edge 30 which is placed just below the flagship Motorola Edge 30 Pro and brings some very good specifications like a good-looking design, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 778G+ chipset, a triple camera setup, and a 4020mAh battery with support for 33W fast charging. Motorola also claims that this is the lightest and slimmest 5G smartphone in the world.
The Motorola Edge 30 seems to be a good upgrade over the last year's Motorola Edge 20 (Review) in almost all aspects. However, there are some areas where Motorola needs some improvements. Since the premium mid-range segment has a lot of offerings from brands like Xiaomi, iQOO, Realme, Samsung, etc., can the Motorola Edge 30 establish itself as a successful premium mid-ranger in the market?
Is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.
Motorola Edge 30 Design:
The Motorola Edge 30 comes with a standard build and design where at the back you get a PMMA-acrylic glass finish (a combination of both glass and plastic) instead of proper glass which seems to be quite interesting. However, this back here has a smooth matte finish instead of a glossy finish or any reflective design so you get a good grip while holding the smartphone in hand.
The smartphone also has a flat edge design like that of some iPhones and most other smartphones on the market but the corners and edges are slightly curved which fits in the hands easily. Like the Motorola Edge 30 Pro, here also there is a rectangular camera module that houses the triple cameras with a LED flashlight and this camera module feels very slightly protruded.
The Motorola Edge 30 weighs around 155grams which makes it the lightest 5G smartphone and also is 6.8mm thick so it is very easy to carry. To the back, there is a Moto logo like all Motorola smartphones and to the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame that houses a power button and the volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side is cleaner.
The top of the smartphone has a secondary noise-canceling microphone only whereas the bottom has a USB Type-C port, a speaker grill, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot. There is neither a 3.5mm headphone jack nor a microSD card slot for storage expansion. The back of the smartphone has an IP52 rating which makes it splash resistant.
On the front, there is a punch-hole display with very minimum bezels all around. Overall, the PMMA- acrylic build does make the smartphone lighter and easier to hold but the glass back at this price segment could have been better.
Motorola Edge 30 Display:
The Motorola Edge 30 has a 10-bit panel like that of the Motorola Edge 30 Pro. The screen size is of 6.5-inches with Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) pOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. As this is a pOLED display, the colors look punchier, and viewing angles are excellent. Compared to an AMOLED display there is no difference and also pOLED displays are lightweight and have fewer bezels.
Like the Motorola Edge 30 Pro, you also get a 144Hz refresh rate which is by far the highest compared to other smartphones that have a higher 90/120 Hz refresh rate. There is an Auto option where you get an adaptive refresh rate where it scales between 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz depending on the application in usage but most of the time the refresh rate scales to 120Hz and 144Hz less likely.
You can also set it to the standard 60Hz for better battery life. The display on the Motorola Edge 30 is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. In terms of display brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 950nits, and the visibility of the display is good under sunlight. You can set the color temperature to a warmer or cooler tone and there is two different modes - Saturated and Natural mode.
The Saturated mode results in punchier colors and covers the DCI-P3 gamut scale whereas the Natural mode covers the sRGB scale and has more realistic colors depending on the content in the display. Unlike the Motorola Edge 20, which has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, this one has an optical in-display one that works accurately and is fast.
The display on the Motorola Edge 30 has support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HD content on OTT platforms but currently, Netflix does not support HD content which will Motorola soon fix in a future software update. There is support for HDR on Youtube. Overall, the display on the Motorola Edge 30 is very good for media consumption.
Motorola Edge 30 Performance:
The Motorola Edge 30 is the first smartphone in the world that is powered by the Snapdragon 778G+ chipset which is a small upgrade over the Snapdragon 778G chipset found on the Motorola Edge 20. The Snapdragon 778G+ has a 1x2.5GHz Cortex-A78 core with 3x2.4GHz Cortex-A78 cores and other 4x1.8GHz Cortex-A55 core coupled with an Adreno 642L GPU and this chipset is based on an efficient 6nm process.
In terms of daily performance, the Snapdragon 778G+ does feel any different compared to the Snapdragon 778G chipset as both feel faster in all the tasks like web browsing, capturing images and videos using the camera, rendering videos, streaming social media, etc. but in terms of benchmarks, the scores on the Snapdragon 778G+ are slightly better than the Snapdragon 778G chipset.
In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any stutters or frame drops. In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates and also at Ultra frame rates with HDR graphics. After long hours of gaming, the back did not feel much warmer though there is no dedicated cooling system inside.
In CPU throttling tests, the Motorola Edge 30 could achieve a sustained performance of around 75-80 percent which is good as this is also similar to the Snapdragon 778G chipset. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and 13 bands of 5G which is the highest in the premium mid-range segment.
The Motorola Edge 30 is available in two variants - 6/8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB uMCP storage speeds. uMCP storage speeds are almost close to UFS 2.2 speeds and are slightly lower than that of UFS 3.1 speeds. However, Motorola could have provided a 256GB storage variant also as it lacks a microSD card slot for storage expansion.
Motorola Edge 30 Software:
The Motorola Edge 30 runs on MyUX with Android 12 out of the box. As always the thing that makes the software unique in every Motorola smartphone is the Stock Android experience as present on Google Pixel smartphones. There is no bloatware or any third-party applications present except Facebook and Josh which Motorola could have removed from its user interface.
Motorola lately has introduced some third-party applications that can be uninstalled. Other than this, you get the Moto app where you have different gestures that include karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight, twisting back and forth to turn on the camera, scrolling three fingers on the display takes a screenshot and double-pressing the power button enables Power Touch where you can use your favorite applications.
You can change the different icon shapes and sizes also. Other than this, there is also the Peek Display where the lock screen lights up whenever you hover your hand or pick it up by hand. You can also get a preview of the notification whenever you tap on any icon on the lock screen. Then there is the Attentive Display where the display does not turn off as long as you are looking at the display.
There is a Ready For feature using which you can use the smartphone user interface on a desktop or laptop, take video calls, and can send files to/from the smartphone to the computer or laptop and vice versa. The smartphone can also be used as a mouse to control things on the desktop. There is also the ThinkShield security that provides a layer of security between both hardware and software.
And since this is Android 12, depending on which wallpaper is applied on the home screen, a similar color gets applied to quick toggles, dialler, and messaging apps. There is also the Security Dashboard where you can see which applications are using the camera and microphone and also you set which applications are using the location thus providing full control.
In terms of software updates, the Motorola Edge 30 is assured of another two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches. Overall the software experience remains excellent and only if Motorola works on slightly faster software updates and removes those one or two necessary applications could make it be better.
Motorola Edge 30 Camera:
The Motorola Edge 30 sports a triple camera setup that seems to be an upgrade as well as a downgrade compared to the Motorola Edge 20 launched last year. The Motorola Edge 30 has a 50MP f/1.8 Samsung JN1 sensor for the main camera with OIS, a 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. It lacks a telephoto camera which is present on the Motorola Edge 20 but it gets a larger 50MP ultrawide camera compared to a 16MP and the main camera gets OIS compared to the Motorola Edge 20.
The images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper and the dynamic range is also very good with very less noise. The colors look natural without any oversharpening in the background. However, this camera also works best with the 50MP mode and provides much better details in both HDR turned on/off compared to the 108MP camera on the Motorola Edge 20.
At night, the images from the Motorola Edge 30 come out with very good details and the dynamic range was also good but there is a considerable amount of oversharpening and some amount of noise is present. With the Night Vision turned on, the images have much better details and dynamic range, and the blown-away highlights in shadows are restored. However, the colors look natural.
The 50MP ultrawide camera has a larger 119-degree field of view and this ultrawide camera takes images with a good amount of details that look sharp but the dynamic range could have been better. The colors look natural and there is very less distortion around the edges and noise is also less in the background. When you zoom into the images, the contrast looks slightly on the higher side.
This ultrawide camera definitely outperforms the standard 8MP ultrawide camera on other smartphones as details look sharper and the dynamic range is also very good. There is very less noise present in the background and with the Night Vision mode turned on, details come out good though there is some distortion present around the edges.
Another advantage that the Motorola Edge 30 has is that its ultrawide camera can also double up as a macro camera and the macro images come out with a good amount of details that look sharp and the dynamic range is also very good. The colors do not look washed out as some of the fixed focus 5MP or 2MP cameras.
In terms of portraits, you get a good dynamic range and edge detection with proper background blur but when you zoom in, the details look slightly softer. Since there is no telephoto camera like that of the Motorola Edge 20, the main camera can do a 2x digital zoom and the images at 2x come out with good details and dynamic range but there is a lot of noise and they look slightly softer.
In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera though having a larger field of view takes images with slightly softer details and the dynamic range is average. The skin tones come out with natural colors without any oversharpening or skin smoothening as such. The noise is slightly on the higher side and during the night, the selfies look decent but Motorola needs to work on the image processing for the front camera.
The portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and have proper background blur but there is some amount of oversharpening in the background. In terms of videos, the main camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and since there is OIS present, the videos have good stabilization with very less noise in the background and details also look sharper with good dynamic range.
At 1080p at 60fps on the main camera, the videos come out with excellent dynamic range but there is some issue as the camera cannot lock focus on a particular subject properly. There is also the Ultra Stable Mode which works for both the main camera as well as the ultrawide camera and the videos from the ultrawide camera have good details with decent dynamic range.
The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 60fps but Motorola could have provided an option for 4K video recording on the ultrawide camera. The ultrawide camera can also shoot macro videos which come out with sharp details and good dynamic range. On the front, you can record 4K videos at 30fps which is a very good addition by Motorola as most other brands provide only 1080p video at 30fps support on their smartphones in this segment or higher.
The front camera videos have a good dynamic range but details look slightly softer and since there is no EIS present, the noise is slightly on the higher side. The portrait videos both from the main and the front camera have good edge detection with a decent level of background blur that needs some improvement. Overall, the cameras are very good on the Motorola Edge 30.
Motorola Edge 30 Battery Life:
The Motorola Edge 30 sports a 4020mAh battery which is slightly disappointing as smartphones are having larger 4500/5000mAh batteries in this price segment. With heavy usage and the display set to Auto, the smartphone could easily last for one single day with some charge left which seems to be very good considering the 144Hz refresh rate and a smaller battery capacity.
Since there is Stock Android present you have great battery optimizations present and if you are doing normal usage like streaming social media, playing games casually, web browsing, etc. the smartphone could last for one and half-day to two days which is very good. The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours which is very good considering the size of the battery.
There is a 33W fast charger bundled inside the box which seems to be average as other smartphones in this price segment have support for 65/120W fast charging. The 33W fast charger takes around 0 to 40 percent in 30 minutes whereas the full charge from 0 to 100 percent takes around 1 hour 30 minutes which is a pretty long amount of time.
Motorola Edge 30 Audio Quality:
The Motorola Edge 30 sports a dual stereo speaker setup which is a good upgrade over the single bottom-firing speaker present on the Motorola Edge 20. The sound is very loud and clear but the back vibrates a lot as it is a very slim form factor. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present though. For a better audio experience, there is lossless audio present and also Dolby Atmos that provides enhanced sound output while playing games, watching videos, etc.
Verdict:
The Motorola Edge 30 seems to be a perfect premium mid-ranger as it brings all the necessary specifications like a higher 144Hz pOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 778G+ chipset for good gaming and performance, a slim form factor making it easy to hold and carry, 5G support is great, a good set of cameras and good battery life with excellent software experience with no bloatware.
But there are some areas where the Motorola Edge 30 could have been better like the build though having the acrylic glass is not as premium as proper glass, the front display is protected by Corning Glass 3 instead of Gorilla Glass 5, the Snapdragon 778G+ performs good in daily usage but when it comes to gaming, it is not as good as the Snapdragon 870 or the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset in the premium mid-range segment.
The battery capacity is slightly on the lower side and the charging speeds are mediocre compared to other smartphones, the cameras though good need some improvement, especially in terms of the front camera, and the software updates should be faster. Other than this, the Motorola Edge 30 is a great buy if you want an excellent software experience with all the basic specifications for daily usage.
This post first appeared on OnePlus 8 Pro Vs Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: Which Is The Better Flagship Of The Two?, please read the originial post: here
