Motorola Edge 70 review: Stylish slim design with decent performance

Last week, Motorola launched the new Edge 70 series Android mobile in India.

It features slim design and comes with decent hardware we expect in a mid-range phone.

Design, build quality and display

The highlight of the new Motorola phone is its ultra-thin structure. Measuring around 5.99 mm in thickness, the Edge 70 is one of the slimmest phones in the market. It weighs just 159g.

It is so light, and this may bring a lot of anxiety. I usually travel by bus between home and the office and have to regularly check my pockets to reassure myself that the device is still there.

The device is available in three PANTONE-certified colours-- Lily Pad, Gadget Grey and Bronze Green. Our review unit is the latter. It looks lovely in the sunlight. Additionally, it features a textured finish on the back. It excels at repelling dust and sweaty smudges on the back and also offers a good grip for the fingers to hold the device firmly.

Motorola Edge 70.

Though the Motorola Edge 70 looks fragile, it can handle daily wear and tear quite well. It is made of sturdy materials. It comes with MIL-STD-810H military durability certifications. It is capable of working in extreme temperatures.

Also, it comes with an IP68+IP69 rating, meaning it can survive a drop in a water body for up to 1.5 metres (around five feet) for close to 30 minutes and also withstand high-pressure water jets.

Furthermore, the display is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 7i shield, which safeguards it against scratches when in a pocket or backpack with metal objects like coins and keys in a close, confined space.

On the front, it features a 6.7-inch 1.5K (2712 x 1220p) 10-bit pOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, offering up to 4500 nits peak brightness.

Motorola Edge 70.

The screen is decent for consuming multimedia content from OTT apps, watching short videos on social media platforms, read messages without any hassle indoors. However, under direct sunlight, one has to take the phone close to view the content.

The in-screen fingerprint sensor does a fine job with a lower false rejection rate. The device also features dual-SIM slots, stereo speakers tuned with Dolby Atmos, and a Type-C USB port.

Motorola Edge 70 comes with AI Key feature.

There is also a dedicated AI key in the top left side of the frame. It can be programmed to summon Moto AI or turn on the audio recorder, go back, screen recorder or any other function as preferred by the user.

Performance

Under the hood, the Edge 70 houses a 4nm class Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 with Adreno 722 GPU, 8GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. It is available in only this configuration.

The device works smoothly in terms of day-to-day activities. It also supports most of the battle royale games available on the Google Play Store.

Also, it supports all popular generative AI applications including Gemini, Perplexity AI and more. It also comes with the Moto AI feature, which can assist users with contextual responses about the screenshots taken on the phone.

Motorola Edge 70's CPU performance score on Geekbench 6.0.

The device runs Android 16-based Hello UI. Though it is cleaner and simpler than most of the rival brands, the user experience was kind of ruined by bugs. However, this is not a deal breaker as the software update fixes them.

The company says the device is guaranteed to get at least three years of Android OS updates up to 2028 and four years of security updates for protection against emerging cyber threats up to 2029.

Though the phone is very slim, the company has managed to put a big 5,000mAh capacity battery. It can easily last a full day under normal usage with a mix of Wi-Fi and cellular network.

Motorola Edge 70.

However, if the device is fully reliant on the cellular network all day, one may have to rely on a power bank around evening time to extend the phone's battery life till they retire to bed in the night.

On the bright side, the Motorola Edge 70 supports fast charging.

With a 68W TurboPower charger, the device can charge from zero to 50 per cent in under 20 minutes and hit the 100 per cent mark within 50 minutes.

Motorola Edge 70.

Photography

The Motorola phone features a dual-camera module-- a main 50MP (with f/1.8 aperture, OIS: Optical Image Stabilisation) and a 50MP 120-degree ultra-wide sensor (with Auto Focus camera, macro option) with LED flash on the back.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

It takes pretty good photos in the sunlight. As you can see from the sample photos, the subjects, flowers in particular, appear bright and vibrant in the frame.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

Even in close range, the phone excells with capturing minute details more crisply.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

It also take wide angle photos. It manages to capture a wide area within the frame, without any software tricks.

Motorola Edge 70's ultra-wide-angle photo sample.

Motorola Edge 70's photo sample with 1X.

It supports digital zoom. The images appear clear up to 5X zoom, but beyond this point, the photos begin accumulate noise and become too grainy by the time it reaches the 20X max zoom.

Motorola Edge 70's photo sample with 10X.

Motorola Edge 70's photo sample with 20X.

With portrait mode, the Edge 70 does a good job with sharp focus on the subject and artfully blurs the background.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample with Portrait mode.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

At night, the focus seems to lose its speed. With a bit of patience, one can take good pictures with less noise.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

On the front, it features a 50MP camera. It takes brilliant selfies in sun-lit environments and a decent quality photos indoors with controlled light conditions.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

Both the front and back cameras can record up to 4K videos at 60 frames per second (fps). The video quality is decent at best.

Motorola Edge 70's camera sample.

Final thoughts

It comes with a visually appealing super-slim form factor with impressive build quality. In key aspects such as photography and overall performance-wise, it does a decent job.

Motorola Edge 70.

As noted earlier, with a full charge, it can last a whole day with mixed reliance on Wi-Fi and 5G cellular network. If you are outside the city and fully reliant on cellular data, you may require a power bank in the evening.

The Hello UI software has a good share of bugs in it, and it kind of ruins the user experience. But, this is not a deal breaker, as this can be improved with firmware updates.

The device will be available in three PANTONE-certified colours-- Bronze Green, Lily Pad and Gadget Grey -- for Rs 29,999 (8GB RAM + 256GB storage).

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