Motorola Edge 70 Pro review: Premium design, robust camera & battery life

A couple of weeks ago, Motorola's premium mid-range phone Edge 70 Pro, hit stores in India.

It is available in two variants— 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage— with prices starting at Rs 38,999.

Design, build quality and display

The new Edge 70 Pro's design language takes inspiration from other Edge 70 series family of phones and also the Motorola Signature (review).

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

The device comes in three PANTONE-certified colours— Lily White with marble finish, Titan and Tea in a satin luxe finish. Our review unit is the latter. It has a premium fabric-like texture. It is also does a fine job repelling the sweaty fingerprint smudges on the back.

It flaunts a familiar curved square-shaped camera module on the back with colour-matching gold-like shiny accents with a metallic finish.

The device also has a sturdy plastic-based mid-frame around the display with a similar shiny olive-like colourway with matte finish, matching the textured back panel.

Also, it comes with a super slim body with around 6.99mm thickness, weighs 190g, and the display cascades onto the frame on the sides. It is very easy to hold and operate single-handedly.

It should be noted that lily white model measures 7.29 mm, a bit thicker than the other variants.

The Motorola phone may look like a slim, cute phone, but it is built to withstand daily wear and tear and last for several years.

The display is safeguarded by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 7i shield against scratches when kept in the close confines of a pant pocket with keys and coins.

Further, it boasts of an IP68 + IP69 rating and a MIL-STD-810H military durability rating. It is capable of surviving a dip in the swimming pool for close to 1.5 metres (approx. five feet) for close to 30 minutes. It can function in extreme temperatures.

On the front, it flaunts a 6.8-inch 1.5K (2772 x 1272p) 10-bit Extreme AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, up to 5,200 nits peak brightness.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

It is good for multimedia consumption on OTT apps and doom scrolling on Instagram Reels and Meta's Facebook indoors. However, outdoors, you have to take a bit closer to chest height to view content due to the reflection issue.

It also features a Type-C port, stereo speakers tuned with the Dolby Atmos system, dual-SIM slots and an in-display fingerprint sensor. The latter works smoothly with a low false rejection rate.

Performance

Inside, it houses a 4nm class 3.4GHz MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme series octal-core processor with Arm Mail-G720 MC8 GPU. It promises to deliver 40 per cent improvement in CPU boost, 30 per cent in GPU performance and 65 per cent faster NPU compared to the previous iteration.

In actual, practical terms, the phone, as advertised, performed smoothly without any lag. However, the software is kind of buggy. All phones in the market will have one or another small issue. It is not a big deal, as a software update can fix them.

The device features 4600mm² vapour chamber. It promises 18 per cent better cooling than the predecessor. It manages to efficiently dissipate heat when running generative Artificial Intelligence apps such as Moto AI, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, playing AAA games or operating a camera.

Indoors, you won't face overheating as such, but outdoors with summer conditions, it does kind of warms up when recording high-resolution video, but not overwhelming to complain.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

The device runs on Android 16 and is guaranteed to get three years of OS updates and five years of security software patches up to 2031.

It is available in two configurations-- 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage.

Though the phone comes in a slim form factor, Motorola has managed to pack a massive 6,500mAh battery. It can easily last a whole day with extreme usage, including consuming content only on a cellular data plan.

It boasts a 90W TurboPower fast charging capability. It can charge the device from zero to 50 per cent in around 20 minutes and hit the 100 per cent mark in one hour.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Photography

The Edge 70 Pro features a dual-camera module— main 50MP (with LYTIA-710 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, OIS: Optical Image Stabilisation) + 50MP (with 122-degree ultra-wide autofocus camera, macro option, multispectral sensor) with LED flash on the back.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Like all the premium Motorola phones, the phone does a pretty nice job with clear, crisp photos in the sunlight. It manages to get a near-accurate skin tone of humans.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

However, when capturing colourful subjects such as flowers, they appear a bit more vibrant and prettier than they appear to the eye.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

It supports 2X optical zoom and can digitally zoom up to 20X. The optical zoom ensures lossless quality images.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample with 2X zoom.

Also, the digital zoom works amazingly up to 10X with sharp photos, but begins to accumulate noise beyond that point.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample with 10X zoom.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample with 20X zoom.

In close range, as you can see from the samples, Edge 70 Pro gets perfect shots with all minute details in the frame.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

With portrait mode on, the phone excels at capturing a sharp image of the subject and artfully blurs the background to deliver a bokeh effect.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

At night, again, here too, the phone gets pretty crisp photos. It manages to balance the night's darkness and absorbs the right amount of light from the lamp posts and neon lights to ensure the words on the billboards are clear and sharp.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Though it doesn't support ultra-wide angle mode, the camera can manage to capture a wide area, or a group photo in a frame without a software trick.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

It boasts several AI features to enhance the sharpness of the photo. It can even reduce the blur in the photo, remove reflections in addition to objects, and photo bombers off the frame without any trace.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

On the front, it houses a 50MP (f/1.9) autofocus camera. It does a fantastic job with sharp, clear selfies in natural light.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

It also comes with a boatload of tools and filters to enhance the face's skin tone, even the shapes of the eyes, cheeks and jawbone to make it photogenic.

Both the front and the back cameras can support 4K video recording up to 60frames per second. The video quality is absolutely top-notch.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Final thoughts

Considering the overall aspects, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a cost-effective upper mid-range phone. It is not just a pretty looking phone, but a smooth performer and delivers good on long battery life and a solid camera hardware.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

It is available in two variants— 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage— for Rs 38,999 and Rs 41,999, respectively.

Motorola phone will be up against Nothing Phone (4a), Samsung Galaxy A37 5G, Redmi Note 15 Pro, OnePlus Nord 6, among others

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