The best of everything from Motorola but priced slightly higher.
The budget flagship segment has many smartphone offerings that bring in flagship performance with all other aspects like a good display, premium build and design, good set of cameras, etc. and brands like Xiaomi, Realme, and iQOO have been doing very well and off late Motorola also joined this segment thus giving stiff competition in the market.
Motorola Edge 30 series had a good start this year as Motorola launched their flagship i.e. Motorola Edge 30 Pro (Review) which brought some segment's best specifications like a premium build and design, a good 144Hz pOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, a good set of cameras and much more. Recently, Motorola has another offering in the form of Motorola Edge 30 Fusion which packs in very good specifications.
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has almost all the specifications found on the Motorola Edge 30 Pro but goes for the slightly less powerful Snapdragon 888+ chipset and there are a couple of changes compared to the Motorola Edge 30 Pro. So can this new entrant set the benchmark in the budget flagship smartphone segment? Let's find out the full review.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Design:
When it comes to build and design, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion sports a premium design where the back has a smooth texture or we can say faux leather that gives a solid grip while holding in hands. The back also houses the rectangular camera setup with a dual-tone finish that houses the triple cameras with a LED flashlight. Then at the bottom, there is a Motorola logo also.
It sports a three-layer sandwich design that has a metal frame placed between the back and the front display. The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is available in two colours - Cosmic Grey and Solar Gold. The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion weighs around 175grams which makes it lightweight also the back has an IP53 rating which makes it dust and splash-resistant up to some extent.
Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power button and volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. The smartphone is curved around the edges which does feel slightly sharper. At the bottom is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone and a dual SIM card slot.
There is neither any microSD card slot for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack present. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone with the Dolby Atmos logo. On the front, the display is curved around the sides and there is a single punch hole located in the centre on the top. Overall, the build and design are very good and do lift the appeal of the smartphone.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Display:
On the front, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion houses a 6.55-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) pOLED display which is a 10-bit display and the colour reproduction and viewing angles are very good. Like all Motorola smartphones, you get a 144Hz refresh rate which makes multi-tasking smoother on the display. Coming to refresh rate, there are three different options - 60Hz, 144Hz and Auto option also.
At 144Hz, the display feels very fast and fluid and if you want to save battery life, then the 60Hz is a good option. Setting the refresh rate to Auto, the display switches between 48Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz depending on the content on the display. Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate which provides faster touch responses.
In terms of display brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 1100nits which is good but could have been better and under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility. The display on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion offers two different settings - Saturated and Natural where Saturated covers the DCI-P3 colour gamut whereas Natural covers the sRGB colour space.
On the front, the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and you get an optical in-display fingerprint scanner which is located slightly at the bottom and works fast. The display on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has support for HDR10+ on YouTube and also there is support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HD content on OTT platforms like Prime, Netflix, etc.
But currently, there is no support for HDR on Netflix as of now and maybe Motorola fixes this issue in a future software update. Overall, the display is great for media consumption and but you do get some accidental at times around the curved edges of the display.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Performance:
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has a powerful Snapdragon 888+ chipset which is found on many flagships of 2021. In terms of daily tasks, the smartphone can handle all tasks easily whether it is scrolling through webpages, rendering videos, or playing games. All games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc can run smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any lag or stutters.
In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates and also you can achieve HDR frame rates with Ultra graphics there are no frame drops or lags noticed but still there is no support for 90fps as of now. After long hours of gaming, the smartphone does feel slightly warmer as Snapdragon 888+ had a history of overheating in the past.
In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent which is very good considering the history of overheating found on smartphones having this chipset in the past. In benchmarks, the smartphone scores are very well. Regarding network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and you have support for 13 bands of 5G.
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is available in only one variant - 8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB storage with UFS 3.1 speeds which are slightly disappointing as Motorola could have provided a 12GB RAM with 256GB storage variant also. Overall, the performance and gaming feel very smooth on a daily basis.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Software:
Like all Motorola smartphones, this one also has Motorola's MyUX built on top of Android 12. MyUX resembles exactly a clone of Stock Android as found on Pixel smartphones. However, Motorola has provided a lot of customization to make the user interface feature rich. Some of the features of Android 12 are present like the Material You theming engine that allows widgets to adapt to wallpapers.
Depending on the wallpaper, the colour gets applied to various Google applications and also in some parts of the user interface, there is also the Privacy Dashboard present to set the permissions of the application and see which application uses a microphone and camera. You also have the Moto application where you can change icon shape and size, have different gestures, wallpapers, etc.
Some of the gestures include karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight, twist back and forth to open the camera, swipe from the edge to screen and vice versa to open split screen but you do miss out on the Power Touch feature found on other Motorola smartphones. There are also the Attentive Display and Peek Display and also you get Gametime Utility in Play section and Dolby Atmos feature.
There is also the Ready-For feature that allows to stream smartphone user interface in the television and can also be used in laptops thus providing a Windwos-like experience and lets you take video calls also. However, there is no bloatware which is very good and when it comes to software updates, you are assured to get another two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security updates.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Cameras:
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion houses a triple camera setup at the back which consists of a 50MP f/1.8 Omnivision OV50A sensor for the main camera, a 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 camera.
The images from the main camera come out with details that have good dynamic range but the details look softer. The exposure is well under control in the background but there is some noise present. Using the Ultra-Res mode, the colors come out natural but details look softer and some oversharpening is present in the background.
At night, the images from the main camera come out with good details with colors coming out natural in the background but the images do look slightly overprocessed and noise is slightly on the higher side. With the dedicated night mode turned on, the details do look slightly sharper and the noise also gets reduced to some extent. However, the dynamic range is good.
The 13MP ultrawide camera does a good job when it comes to dynamic range and details also look sharper with very less noise present in the background. However, there is some distortion around the edges but the contrast is good and colors look natural. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details and dynamic range with less noise in the background.
The ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera which takes macro images with good dynamic range and since it has autofocus, this camera can go very close to a subject and details come out shrper with natural colors and no noise in the background. In terms of portraits, the dynamic range and edge detection are good with proper background blur but the human skin tones look slightly softer.
In terms of selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and details also look sharper with skin tones looking natural and also there is less noise present in the background. The portrait selfies come out with good level of details and edge detection is also very good but there is some amount of oversharpness in the background.
The main camera on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion can record 8K videos at 30fps and the videos come out with good dynamic range with great contrast and details also look sharper and even in 4K at 60fps, the footage has details that look sharper and noise is very less in the background since you get OIS. In terms of color reproduction, they come out natural.
The ultrawide camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which is rarely found on most smartphones and the videos have natural colors and good dynamic range with very less distortion around the edges especially the presence of EIS helps. On the front, you also get EIS in the videos and you can shoot 4K videos at 30fps which come out with good level of details and skin tones come out natural with less noise around.
Overall, Motorola has given a promising set of cameras in this price segment.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Battery Life:
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion houses a 4400mAh battery which is slightly smaller size but still good enough as the smartphone is slimmer at 7.4mm at the sides. With normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, playing some casual games, etc. with the display set to 144Hz, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.
With heavy usage that includes playing heavy titles like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile and other heavy multi-tasking like rendering videos, continuously calls for 7-8 hours with the display set to 144Hz, the smartphone lasted for one day and slightly more thanks to the excellent battery optimizations provided by Stock Android.
The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours which is very good. In terms of charging speeds, there is a 68W fast charger bundled inside the box that can take around one hour to charge from 0 to 100 percent completely and you get a USB Type-C to Type-C cable inside the box so you also have support for USB PD charging but there is no support for wireless charging which is not an issue.
Motorola Edge 30 Fusion Audio Quality:
The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion houses a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds loud and clear with no distortion present. You do miss out on a 3.5mm headphone jack but you do get Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound quality.
Verdict:
Overall, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is a great budget flagship offering that brings the right balance of all the specifications like a premium build and design, a powerful Snapdragon 888+ chipset for daily performance and gaming, a nice 144Hz pOLED display which is curved and good for media consumption, a good set of cameras and you also get great battery life with excellent software experience.
But there are quite some improvements needed like the main camera needs some improvement in terms of details, night photography needs some improvment and the presence of a 12GB RAM with 256GB storage would have been a better deal. However, the presence of a telephoto camera and slightly better software update cycle would have been better.
The pricing is slightly on the higher side compared to many smartphones in this price segment having the Snapdragon 888+ chipset, but what you are getting here is the best of everything and the clean software experience compared to other smartphones.
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
