Berlin (dpa) — "A phone full of life. A phone full of art. A piece of design," is how Motorola describes its Edge 50 Pro. The smartphone is "a canvas, a tool of expression, and a gateway to boundless creativity."
Bold words - but does the device actually live up to them? We tested one to find out.
What is immediately noticeable when unpacking is that the smartphone feels good. It has an artificial leather covering that’s a real treat for the hands. The device is 7.2 centimetres wide, making it slightly narrower than many devices of a comparable length (16.1 centimetres).
The rounded edges of the display are a matter of taste. Users with more delicate fingers have an advantage here. That’s because when apps are located on the edge of the screen, you sometimes have to aim very precisely get what you want.
What is impressive is the brightness of the 6.7-inch display (around 17 centimetres diagonal), the contrast, and the brilliance of the colours.
Motorola calls the phone "Pantone Validated," which means it conforms to the Pantone colour scheme, a system commonly used in the design world. This should appeal to designers who need accurate colour reproduction.
Personalizing your screen
The display can be visually changed in many ways — you can choose different designs as well as font and background colours. The icons come in five symbol shapes, including round, square, and speech bubbles.
One fun feature is that you can adapt the Edge 50 Pro to your own style using "Style Sync," which uses AI to let you turn a pattern in a photo into a wallpaper for your device.
For example, the AI can take a photo of an outfit and generates suggestions from it. In practice, during our test this only worked after a few attempts — the AI couldn't do anything with a cat's fur or a floral-patterned blouse, for example.
With numerous camera filters, Motorola looks to be aiming at Instagrammers, designers and artsy types. The selection is large and can be expanded with downloads.
Those who like to experiment will enjoy some video and camera features such as being able to to split the screen when taking photos or videos so that you can add in the person taking the shot.
Then there’s the “Magic Eraser,” which allows you to remove people or objects from photos. The quality varies, however. Some of the removals are elegant, but some are roughly blurred. The result is still convincing overall — at least on a smartphone display.
Solid cameras for a mid-range phone
The 50-megapixel macro camera on the back produces nice results with a small depth of field. But it’s weaker at full magnification. The zoomed-in images are not entirely convincing and sometimes appear coarsely pixelated.
The 50-megapixel selfie camera sometimes seems to react a little slowly. It also doesn't do so well when taking pictures of several people at the same time. Blurring can occur, especially when some people are standing further back or are moving.
Inside is a 3rd generation Snapdragon 7 processor with a mid-range performance, pretty much what you’d expect from a smartphone in this price segment.
The Edge 50 Pro is not really suitable for games with 3D graphics or graphically demanding apps but in everyday life and with standard games, it ran smoothly in our test.
A drawback for anyone who likes to expand their phone’s storage capacity: There is no memory card slot. But at least the Edge 50 Pro comes with 512 GB of storage as standard.
What is positive: The battery lasted a long time in our test. Motorola states that the 4,500 mAh battery lasts 40 hours. The smartphone also charges relatively quickly.
Decent phone at this price — but plenty of competitors
The Edge 50 Pro is intended to appeal to creative people, designers, and artists. And yes, it not only looks nice, but also offers a variety of useful design tools. However, calling it a "phone full of art" is stretching it a bit. Rather, it’s a solid smartphone overall.
The phone costs around €500 ($550) in Europe but at that price you’ll find lots of competition from Google, Xiaomi, and Samsung, for example. Their similarly priced models are sometimes more powerful than the Edge 50 Pro and may come with better cameras too.
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