The sub-INR 30k segment in India has seen a lot of great options this year.
And now, Motorola has launched a shocker in this segment with the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, a phone which can easily be classified as the jack of all trades.
However, there are a few cost-cuts and drawbacks with the phone and the Motorola brand in general which could end up being deal-breakers.
A HUGE Display Upgrade!
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro has a 6.7-inch curved OLED panel. It has a resolution of 2712*1220 pixels (1.5K) and a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz.
Not only is this display bigger and sharper than its predecessor, the Motorola Edge 40, the peak brightness also gets a huge boost to 2000 nits.
Moreover, the display has 10-bit color depth and HDR10+ certification but it seems that Netflix HDR is not available yet as of the time of writing, so there’s hoping Motorola and/or Netflix enables it soon.
The display also gets Pantone Validation for color accuracy, which is something we have seen on certain OLED laptops in the past.
It also has SGS certification to protect against excessive blue-print emissions and prevent eye-strain.
(Mostly) Similar Design & Build
The Edge 50 Pro has a metal frame and the silicone vegan leather back (on two of the colors). It also gets an upgrade to Gorilla Glass 5 protection for the display.
As for the design, it has a camera island continuous with the rest of the rear panel, and is available in three colors: Black Beauty, Luxe Lavender and Moonlight Pearl.
The Moonlight Pearl color is said to have an acetate back with a pearl finish, while the Black and Lavender have silicone vegan leather for the rear panel.
The Performance Upgrade!
The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, a midrange chipset by Qualcomm introduced in late-2023. It is fabricated on TSMC’s 4 nm process.
Now there’s one major cost-cut on this phone, possibly to balance out the hardware cost of the rest of the phone: it has LPDDR4X RAM, and UFS 2.2 storage.
That aside, this phone comes in two variants in India, 8/256 and 12/256. Great to see that Motorola is not ripping us off with a 128 GB variant.
Charging > Battery
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro prioritises faster charging over a bigger battery.
Not only do you get a maximum of 125W wired charging support, we also get upto 50W fast wireless and 10W reverse wireless charging.
The downside, as expected is a smaller 4500 mAh battery.
There are two things to note regarding the charging situation in India:
- The base 8/256 variant comes with a 68W bundled charger in the box as a way of reducing the price of the phone, while the 12/256 variant gets the 125W charger.
- The 50W wireless charging feature is completely redundant in India, since utilising it requires a proprietary wireless charger which is not sold here.
Moreover, another bonus is that the included chargers are PD-compatible. The 68W charger can fast charge other PD-supported devices at upto 45W, while that number is 65W for the 125W charger.
Great Audio Experience!
It has Dual Stereo Speakers complete with Dolby Atmos enhancements, and it even supports Hi-Res Audio natively, which could be a boon to audiophiles who use IEMs and headphones which support high-res codecs.
There is also support for a new Spatial Sound algorithm developed by Motorola, as well as Snapdragon Sound improvements.
The (Complete) Cameras!
Historically, Motorola phones were associated with poor camera quality but that changes today.
- Main sensor: 50 mp, apparently has a 1/1.3″ sensor with f/1.4 aperture, multi-directional PDAF, Laser AF and OIS.
- Ultrawide lens: 13 MP snapper with a 1/3″ sensor size, f/2.2 aperture and 13 mm focal length, which also has AF for shooting macros.
- The biggest game-changer is actually the inclusion of a proper zoom lens, a 10 MP 3x telephoto with a 73 mm focal length and f/2.2 aperture with OIS.
- Selfies: The ISOCELL JN1, a 50 MP, 1/2.76″ sensor, with an f/1.9 aperture and AF.
For videos, there is support for upto 4K 30 fps recording on both the rear and the selfie cameras, which is great to see in this price segment.
There are a variety of AI features such as AI Video Stabilisation and AI Photo Enhancement Engine to improve the camera experience.
Furthermore, the cameras come with Pantone Color and SkinTone validation which ensures that the cameras capture real-world colors and accurate skin tones.
As an additional bonus for students, Adobe Scan is built right into the camera app for convenient document scanning.
Revamped software experience!
The Edge 50 Pro marks the official debut of Motorola’s new software skin, Hello UI, based on Android 14.
Hello UI aims to bring a balanced approach to Android: keeping the stock Android experience alive to an extent, but with the added advantage of extra features and customisations like lockscreen styles, Moto Gestures, Family Space, Moto Unplugged and Smart Sidebar. The Samsung DeX competitor, Ready For, is also present and accounted for.
In fact, Hello UI gets boosted with a variety of new AI features like AI Generative Theming, which generates cool stylised wallpapers based on the clothes that you are wearing.
Motorola also promises 3 major OS updates and 4 years of security patches for the Edge 50 Pro.
Additional features
It also has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, USB 3.1 support via the Type-C port for 4K video output and faster wired transfer speeds, alongside NFC which enables Tap-to-Pay services.
Furthermore, it has 15 5G bands, Bluetooth v5.4, WiFi 6E support and an in-display fingerprint scanner.
Major Cons
While Motorola has done its best to jam-pack the phone with the best possible hardware for the price, there are some cons which could end up being deal-breakers.
- The biggest drawback for this phone’s potential longevity is the UFS 2.2 storage, which isn’t ideal for this price segment.
- The battery size is a compromise. While Snapdragon-powered Motorola phones have historically been very good at battery optimisation, I feel 4500 mAh is way too less a capacity in 2024.
- The company is notorious for awfully slow major updates. For example, its predecessor, the Edge 40, is currently still on Android 13, six months after the Android 14 rollout.
- Moto Premium Care is a valiant attempt to improve the after-sales experience, but as a current Motorola phone owner, my personal repair experience with them has been nothing short of horrible.
A Killer Price!
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro might have some major deal-breakers, but that price is crazy aggressive.
In India, it starts at INR 31,999 for the 8/256 variant and INR 35,999 for the 12/256 variant.
motorola Edge 50 Pro price in India.
What's your take on the pricing?#motorolaEdge50Pro #AIArtEdge2024 #IntelligenceMeetsArt pic.twitter.com/OVmOUWjB9a
— Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) April 3, 2024
Introductory offers include a flat INR 2,000 discount for the first sale, and additionally, upto INR 2,000 exchange bonus on any old phone OR upto INR 2,250 discount on HDFC Bank Credit and Debit Card EMI purchases.
Combining the card offers and the flat discount, the Edge 50 Pro can be had for as low as INR 27,999! And that, my friends, is G.O.A.T pricing right there!
For INR 28k, despite the phone’s cons, nothing else even comes close.
(My personal suggestion to any potential buyers reading this would be to avoid the 12/256 variant. The 8/256 variant is enough value.)
My personal opinions and concerns on Motorola Edge 50 Pro
For starters, Motorola has nailed this phone. It offers every single flagship-grade feature like a proper 3x zoom lens, metal frame, IP68, wireless charging, USB 3.1 and NFC at a very affordable price. It will end up being an all-year value pick and their bestseller for sure!
However, this should not be a surprise: Edge 40 was the same formula but let down by the horrible MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chip, which caused heating and battery drain issues for a lot of users. The 7 Gen3 on the Edge 50 Pro will easily fix those problems.
The real problem with Motorola is that it falls far behind on four major aspects: less marketing, abysmal offline availability, updates and after-sales.
- Motorola phones are so great value that the company gets less money for marketing and promotion. Till date, many young people nowadays think of Motorola as “that old brand from our childhood”, and this image does not exactly sell premium phones. They have started hiring celebrities for promotion but need to do even better marketing.
- I have only ever seen the Motorola Edge series being sold through online channels like Flipkart, with extremely limited offline availability (usually just Reliance Digital outlets). Given a vast majority of Indians buy phones offline, this is something to be improved upon.
- They seriously need to shed their brand image of slow major updates. It is the single factor which makes Motorola software rank very low for online tech enthusiasts, when in reality it is actually quite a perfect combination of stock Android with more features & customisations.
- I don’t need to say enough about their horrible after-sales. I personally had a very bad experience with my Edge 30 Fusion’s rear glass repair not too long ago (I’ll link it below), and it makes me hesitant to recommend Motorola phones to the masses ever since.
[MY REPAIR EXPERIENCE WITH MOTOROLA'S SERVICE CENTRES IN INDIA (and why I will hesitate to recommend the brand in the future)]
A LONG THREAD….please go through this when you have the time, take a seat and I apologise for the length in advance. pic.twitter.com/J7S2kZOF4O
— Aryan Gupta (@SavageAryan007) December 30, 2023
If Motorola can work actively on fixing these four major issues, their sales will easily sky-rocket to new heights and then they might actually have a decent chance of achieving their lofty market share and sales ambitions.
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