The highlight of every Motorola smartphone is the pure Stock Android experience that you get with no bloatware. Now Motorola is back with the Edge 30 series this year with some of the good upgrades over the Edge 20 series. The Motorola Edge 30 Pro is the premium offering from Motorola all set to take on premium flagship smartphones from brands like Samsung, OnePlus, iQOO, etc. 

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro is packed with almost all the flagship features like a premium build and design, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, a great set of triple cameras, and a 4800mAh battery with support for 68W fast charging and 15W fast wireless charging. The bloatware free software provides a smooth experience as it ships with the latest Android 12.

So how good of an upgrade is the Motorola Edge 30 Pro over its predecessor and will it create a statement for itself when compared to other flagship smartphones in the market? Let's find out in the full review.

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro has a glass sandwich design like that of its predecessor with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on the front whereas the back has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection. The back of the smartphone gently curves to the sides as it is much easier to hold. The back also has a capsule-shaped camera module that houses the triple cameras, the third microphone with a LED flashlight.

The camera module does not protrude much. The back shines when light strikes at different angles and you get two different colors - Cosmos Blue and Stardust White. The Cosmos Blue color has a slight gradient pattern that changes from black, purple, or blue, and the matte finish provides a good grip and weighs around 196grams making it quite lighter and easier to hold.

Around the sides, there is a carbon fiber frame instead of an aluminum frame that is present on the Motorola Edge 20 Pro. This frame houses the volume buttons and the power button on the right side where the volume buttons sit on top of the power button so it does feel slightly difficult to reach the top. The left side remains completely cleaner. 

On the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone only whereas the bottom has a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a speaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot. There is neither a microSD card slot nor a 3.5mm headphone jack. The back does not have an IP67 rating but you do get an IP52 rating which makes it dust and splash resistant. 

There is a single punch-hole display on the front located on the top at the bottom with minimum bezels to the sides. Overall the build and design feel premium and Motorola has not cut corners anywhere. 

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro sports a 6.7-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) pOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. However, Motorola could have provided a Quad HD+ display here but you do get a higher 144Hz refresh rate compared to other smartphones that have a 120Hz AMOLED display. As this is a pOLED display, you get great viewing angles and color reproduction.

However, this is not an LTPO panel nor do we get an Adaptive refresh rate as we get on some other premium flagship smartphones but still it is a good display. Talking about the refresh rate, you have three different options to choose from - standard 60Hz, 144Hz, or Auto-Switch where the refresh rate automatically switches between 60Hz or 144Hz depending on the application in usage. 

When comparing the 144Hz to a 120Hz display, you may not find any such difference as everything feels smoother in all the daily activities like playing games, streaming social media, web browsing, etc. Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate which means faster touch responses while gaming or multitasking. 

The display on the Motorola Edge 30 Pro can reach a peak brightness of 700nits which is good but still far behind compared to other flagships that can reach a peak brightness of more than 1000nits. However, the display can have good brightness under direct sunlight. The color temperature of the display can be set to either a warmer or cooler tone and you get two different color modes - Natural and Saturated.

Setting the display to Natural results in more realistic colors thus covering the sRGB scale whereas the Saturated mode provides much more vivid colors that cover the DCI-P3 gamut scale. Though this is a pOLED display, you miss out on an in-display fingerprint scanner and instead you get a side-mounted one that is faster and more accurate but since this is a premium flagship, an in-display one could have made more sense.

The display on the smartphone has support for HDR10 content and you get Widevine L1 so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms, but currently, there is no HDR support on Netflix as of now and Motorola will soon fix this issue in a future software update. Overall, the display is good for media consumption but slightly higher brightness levels and an LTPO panel would have made it better.

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro is powered by the latest and greatest chipset from Qualcomm i.e. the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. The performance feels really good as it can handle all the tasks like streaming social media, shooting images and taking videos, playing games, etc. with ease. There is no stutter or lags while playing heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc.

In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Ultra HDR graphics with Ultra frame rates and also you can run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates. There has been no lag or stutters as such but after long hours of gaming i.e. 4-5 hours, the back of the smartphone feels quite warmer as we all know that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 overheats. 

Motorola has not provided any sort of liquid cooling but has slightly underclocked the performance a bit to prevent overheating. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could maintain a sustained performance of around 65-70 percent which is decent, and also in benchmarks, the scores were good. The Motorola Edge 30 Pro is available in only one variant - 8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB UFS 3.1 storage only.

In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and 13 bands of 5G. Overall the performance and gaming feel excellent on this smartphone.

The biggest highlight of every Motorola smartphone is the software experience as you get a Stock Android experience like on all Google Pixel devices but Motorola has provided some extra features and customizations in their user interface which is called MyUX. The look and feel are close to Stock Android whether it is the quick toggles, settings menu, or the system icons.

Motorola has a host of customizations where you can change the icon shape and size, and different wallpapers, and also you have other Motorola-specific features like Moto gestures that include karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight, twisting the smartphone back and forth to turn on the camera three-finger swipe on the display to take a screenshot, etc.

Other features include Peek Display and Attentive Display where the display disables screen timeout as long as some person is looking at the display. In the Play section, there is a GameTime utility where you can block necessary calls and notifications and also do screen recording during gaming. Like all the Motorola Edge smartphones here you also have the Ready For feature present.

Ready For allows them to use your Motorola smartphone user interface on a Windows-based computer or laptop where you can use it for file transfer, and video calls on a larger display. You can also send some files from the laptop/computer to the smartphone very easily. It is very helpful while you are multi-tasking on a larger display. 

As this is based on Android 12, you get the widget picker which shows the different sizes of widgets, and these pick the color based on the wallpaper. Material You theme is also present where the Google apps, settings menu and quick toggles can be set to different colors based on the wallpaper that is being used. There is also a Privacy Dashboard which shows permissions for various applications.

It also lets you know which application is using the camera and microphone and also you can use the location for certain applications. One of the biggest factors of every Motorola smartphone has been the bloatware-free software experience as here you do not get any bloatware. In terms of software updates, the Motorola Edge 30 Pro is assured of another two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches.

In terms of camera, the Motorola Edge 30 Pro does seem to be a good upgrade over the Motorola Edge 20 Pro but feels slightly downgraded due to one reason. The triple camera setup consists of a 50MP f/1.8 Omnivision (OV50A) sensor for the main camera with OIS, a 50MP f/2.2 Samsung JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. 

The first two cameras are a good upgrade over the Motorola Edge 20 Pro's cameras but it lacks a telephoto camera which is present on the Motorola Edge 20 Pro. On the front, there is a massive 60MP f/2.2 camera which is by far one of the largest selfie cameras on a smartphone until now. 

The images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper but the dynamic range could have been better. The noise is present in the background by a larger margin and contrast is also very high. The colors look slightly undersaturated and with HDR turned on, the colors come out natural. 

At night, the images from the main camera come out with good details but they look slightly softer compared to other flagship cameras as noise is slightly on the higher side and the colors look slightly washed out. With the dedicated night mode turned on, the images come out with natural colors and the dynamic range is also better. The details look sharper with very less noise in the background.

The 50MP ultrawide camera has the Samsung JN1 sensor found on some other flagships. The images from this camera come out with sharp details but there is some amount of noise present in the background. The dynamic range could have been slightly better though. You can also capture images using the larger 150-degree field of view mode and there is the fisheye mode which captures sharper details with less distortion.

At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details but the colors look slightly desaturated and the contrast is not so good. The dynamic range is good and the noise is also very less. With the dedicated night mode turned on, the details look much sharper and it also reduces noise in the background. The colors come out slightly natural and it is always recommended to use the night mode for low-light images.

There is no dedicated telephoto camera so you are restricted to 2x digital zoom using the main camera. The zoomed-in images come out with details that look sharper but colors look slightly desaturated. The third camera is a 2MP depth sensor for portraits. The portraits have good edge detection but the details look slightly softer and the background blur is also perfect but here the skin tones look slightly unnatural.

The ultrawide camera on the Motorola Edge 30 Pro also doubles up as a macro camera that takes details that look sharper and colors that look natural. Since it has autofocus, the dynamic range is very good compared to other dedicated 5MP or 2MP macro cameras. The noise is also hardly present. On the front, there is a 60MP camera for selfies. 

The selfies come out with details that look sharper and the dynamic range is very good. The noise is considerably lower but the colors look slightly desaturated at times. The field of view is much larger though. The selfie portraits come out with very good edge detection and background blur is also very good. There is no such oversharpening in the background.

In terms of videos, the main camera can record 8K videos at 30fps and these videos have good dynamic range and details look sharper but colors look slightly desaturated. There is some amount of noise in the videos though there is OIS. With the Ultra Steady Mode turned on, the videos come out with good stabilization and contrast was good but the colors look desaturated.

However, the main camera can only record 4K videos at 30fps as there is no support for 60fps recording present which will be ssson fixed by Motorola in a future software update. The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps which is slightly disappointing as other smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset can record 4K videos at 30fps on the ultrawide camera.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good details and dynamic range is also decent but could have been better. The noise is slightly prominent in the background and color saturation is not so good. With the Ultra Steady Mode turned on, the videos come out with good dynamic range with less noise but colors still look desaturated. Motorola has to work on the color saturation for its main and ultrawide cameras.

The front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and these videos have good dynamic range with details looking sharper and contrast is also very good. The noise is very low as there is EIS also present. The skin tones look natural but portrait selfie videos suffer from oversharpening in the background. Overall, the cameras are decent on the Motorola Edge 30 Pro and need a lot of improvement.

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro houses a larger 4800mAh battery which is not having much larger capacity but it can last a single day with heavy usage which includes playing games like BGMI, watching videos for longer hours, clicking photos and videos, etc. With normal usage that includes streaming social media, web browsing, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for two days which is very good.

The presence of Stock Android and the excellent RAM management resulted in a screen-on time of around 6-7 hours which is really good for a smartphone having the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. The Motorola Edge 30 Pro has support for 68W fast charging which seems to be good upgrade over the 30W fast charging on the Motorola Edge 20 Pro.

The 68W fast charger takes around 55 minutes from a full charge from 0 to 100 percent and around 85 percent under 30 minutes which is fast and good. Other than that, there is also support for 15W fast wireless charging and 5W reverse wireless charging which wew not present on the Motorola Edge 20 Pro. Using any wireless charger, the Motorola Edge 30 Pro took around 1 hour 30 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 percent. 

Overall, the battery life is very good with faster charging speeds.

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro houses a stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear. The clarity of bass is very good but loudness at the maximum settings could have been little bit better. There is Dolby Atmos present under the Smart audio setting that has for different profiles - Music, Movie, Game and Podcast. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present.  

The Motorola Edge 30 Pro seems to be a perfect value flagship that brings all the flagship specifications like a premium build and design, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset that provides excellent performance and gaming, a good set of triple cameras, good battery life with fast charging, and the most important of all is the excellent software experience with no ads or bloatware.

However, there are some areas where the smartphone does fall short especially in terms of cameras which could have been better in terms of color saturation and the main camera performance is not as good as that of other smartphones, though you get Stock Android the software updates cycle could have been better and also there is no IP rating as this is a premium flagship from Motorola.

Motorola has focussed on all the core aspects in delivering a successful product in terms of design, display, performance, software, battery life and decent cameras. The Motorola Edge 30 Pro also seems to be a very good upgrade over the Motorola Edge 20 Pro in almost all the aspects except that you miss out on the telephoto camera. 

The pricing is also kept right and this seems to be the best value for money flagship around that can give fierce competition to other flagships in the market.