Motorola is a successful maker of low-cost phones for the US, but its high-end strategy has stuttered over the past few years. Its last Edge+ flagship that appeared at the beginning of the pandemic didn’t make much of an impact and its resurrected Razr line is more of a cult classic than a best seller. That makes the 2022 Motorola Edge+ (starting at $849.99) a welcome reset—it’s a full-fledged flagship Android phone with a big screen, good connectivity on Verizon, and fast performance for $150 less than Samsung’s Galaxy S22+. We ultimately prefer the Galaxy S22+ and the iPhone 13 lineup thanks to better camera performance and software support, but if your priorities include a big screen, ease of use, and value, the Moto Ege+ is a fine alternative on Verizon.
Edge+ Design and Features
At 6.42 by 2.99 by 0.35 inches and 6.9 ounces, the Moto Edge+ is a big phone. Its 6.7-inch, 1080p OLED screen has a very glowing, saturated quality, and it feels distinctly larger than the Galaxy S22+’s 6.6-inch, 2,340-by-1,080 panel, although it isn’t quite as bright or sharp.
The phone comes in Cosmos Blue or Stardust White. Motorola sent me the blue model, which sports a deep, shimmery blue that looks a bit like automotive paint. The phone’s back is slippery and feels silky, but it rejects fingerprints well. Instead of an under-display fingerprint sensor, Motorola went with a physical one in the side-mounted power button. Some people prefer that implementation.
Motorola says an optional smart stylus, with a case to hold it, is coming soon. We didn’t get to test that and don’t have any other details, but judging from Motorola’s site, the setup looks like the Galaxy S21 Ultra with its add-on case. If the stylus works well, it could be a good competitor to the Ultra and Note phones.
Dual front-facing speakers are a little less loud than you get with the S22+, but they pull out vocals more distinctly when listening to music. Although the phone has no headphone jack, it has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound suite with support for the AptX Lossless codec, for super-high-quality wireless audio.
The Edge+ features only an IP52 for water-resistance rating, which means you can splash water on it, but not submerge it like most other flagship phones, which is disappointing.
The phone comes from Verizon in an 8GB RAM/128GB storage model for $849.99 or in a 12GB/256GB variant for $929.99. An unlocked 8GB/512GB unit costs $999.99. The phone I received has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Premium Power, Solid Battery
The Edge+ has the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and Qualcomm X65 modem as the phones in the Galaxy S22 lineup, the OnePlus 10 Pro, and other Android flagships, but there are always subtle differences in performance due to software.
Motorola’s software has traditionally taken a lighter touch than Samsung’s and that difference shows up in benchmark scores. The Edge+ benchmarked slightly higher on the PCMark application-based benchmark and noticeably higher on the Basemark Web web-based benchmark. Combined with its 144Hz screen, this is a speedy phone that feels speedy; scrolling is a pleasure.
The CPU Throttling Test app shows that the Edge+ started with higher performance than the S22+, maxing out at 312 kGIPS (thousand billion instructions per second) to the S22+’s 284 kGIPS, but it throttled much harder after about 10 minutes of heavy use while the S22+ stayed more consistent. Because the Edge+ started at a higher base, that resulted in about the same performance over 15 minutes, but you might notice the sudden drop while gaming.
The phone’s 4,800mAh battery turned in somewhat better performance than the Galaxy S22+. On our video rundown test, the Edge+ got 11 hours, 10 minutes to the S22+’s 10 hours, 30 minutes. Both fall short of the Galaxy S21 FE (11 hours, 40 minutes) and recent iPhones.
The Edge+ comes with a 30W wired charger, although it also works with an optional $69.99 68W wired charger or 15W wireless. It supports 5W power sharing, too. Using the included 30W charger, the phone got to 15% in 10 minutes and 39% in 20 minutes, while a full charge took 65 minutes. That’s a little faster than the S22+, which advertises 45W charging but mostly charges at 25W.
Built for Verizon
There are two different radio variants of the Edge+. The “mmWave SKU” is properly banded for Verizon’s 5G network, with low-band, high-band, and C-band, but it lacks T-Mobile’s 5G n41 and n71 bands, as well as important AT&T 4G bands such as b14. That is likely the model Verizon plans to sell.
The “sub6 SKU” is the unlocked model. That one has all of T-Mobile’s bands, AT&T’s and Verizon’s 4G bands, and AT&T’s and Verizon’s C-band, but not millimeter-wave. It’s not clear whether the unlocked Edge+ will support AT&T’s 3.45GHz; AT&T has said it will give a list of supported phones closer to launch. (The frequency is in the phone, but the firmware needs to support it.)
I tested the Verizon model, which has dual-SIM functionality clumsily turned off. The SIM slot only holds one chip, but there is a “SIM cards” menu in Settings with a grayed-out toggle for second SIM options. US carriers continue to kneecap dual-SIM functionality.
Over a strong signal, the Edge+ turned in terrific speeds in testing, especially on Verizon’s mmWave network, where I got just about 3Gbps. Testing it in an area with mixed mmWave and C-band, the phone showed C-band coverage and speeds of 250 to 700Mbps.
I compared 4G signal strength with a Galaxy S22+ on Verizon’s network. Overall, the two phones performed similarly, with one exception: When buried down in a basement, the S22+ maintained a connection to a very weak signal for 30 seconds longer than the Edge+ and recovered from the dead zone three seconds faster when I took them back outdoors.
Voice calls on flagship phones are table stakes at this point and the Edge supports all of the top-of-the-line voice codecs for clear calls.
Motorola’s Android
Moto includes a lot of its well-thought-out, crowd-pleasing gesture extensions to Android and keeps bloatware to a minimum. The phone defaults to Google Messages and Google Photos rather than having duplicate apps, which is always nice to see. My favorite Motorola extension is the one where you twist your wrist to launch the camera. On big-screen phones like this, it’s tough to launch the camera and take pictures with one hand, and that gesture makes it easy.
The always-on display features are very useful—the display lights up when you lift the phone or look at it, and you can touch notification icons to quickly glance and see if that text is important enough to warrant unlocking the phone.
One of Motorola’s newer features is Ready For, an app that mirrors your phone screen on your PC and lets you transfer files. It works to open a window on your PC that lets you see and run your phone’s apps, but I couldn’t drag-and-drop files, and transferring files through a share sheet option didn’t work with non-photo file types. For file transfers and working with phone apps in multiple windows, Samsung’s DeX mode is better.
Ready For does have one killer use, though: It can turn the phone into a wireless webcam for video calls on your PC. It’s a little temperamental (don’t touch it when it’s running!), but it worked more quickly and with less fuss than the third-party apps I’ve seen, and it made me look a lot better than my laptop cam does.
I’m disappointed in Motorola’s software support pledge, though, which is to update the phone only through Android 14 (with three years of security updates). Samsung plans to keep phones in the S22 lineup up-to-date through Android 16.
Camera: The Downside
Motorola makes a daring choice with its camera: There are a lot of sensors, but no optical zoom. This seems like a big oversight for an $850 phone.
Here, you get a main 50MP f/1.8 camera that takes 12.6MP images with quad-pixel binning by default. There’s also a 50MP, 114-degree ultra-wide lens that defaults to 12.6MP images, and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. On the front, there’s a 60MP f/2.2 camera that defaults to 15MP images using quad-pixel binning. If you want to zoom into things, you have to deal with digital zoom, unlike with the latest OnePlus and Samsung models, which have optical zoom.
Any high-end camera phone can take good photos at default setting in good light, as you can see in the image above. The challenge is things like low-light environments and portrait mode; in those situations, the Edge+ fails.
Whether the photo is indoors or out, front camera or rear, Motorola’s low-light software just isn’t anywhere near Samsung’s in terms of quality. Images taken with the main camera are distinctly less sharp than low-light photos taken with the Galaxy S22+, and some badly misjudge colors. Night mode selfies range from washed out to pixelated messes.
Portrait mode shots I took with both the front and rear cameras gave me a ruddier skin tone than the Galaxy S22+ but had trouble judging the edges of objects—not just a chain-link fence (which is admittedly tricky), but also the edge of a fuzzy jacket (which shouldn’t be so tricky).
A Welcome Alternative to Samsung
The Moto Edge+ offers several flagship features to shoppers for whom camera quality isn’t paramount. The phone’s big 1080p screen is easy on the eyes, it has enough battery life to get you through the day without worry, and it’s plenty fast, both in terms of hardware and connectivity on Verizon’s network. Our Editors’ Choice winner remains the Samsung Galaxy S22+, though. It costs a bit more, but the Galaxy S22+ is fully waterproof, has a much better camera, and will get more future Android updates, making it a better buy in the long run.
