The unlocked Motorola Edge 5G goes up for pre-order at a hefty discount

UPDATE: As it turns out, the $200 discount first spotted at B&H Photo Video is a nationwide affair, rapidly expanding to both Best Buy and Motorola’s own official US e-store, where the Edge 5G is currently up for pre-order in an unlocked variant.

The “expected ship date”, aka the phone’s actual release date, is also carved in stone as July 31, at which point the killer $200 off promotion may or may not go away. Unfortunately, there are still no words on US carrier availability. Our original post follows below.

Announced alongside its Plus sibling exactly three months ago, the Snapdragon 765-powered 6.7-inch handset is available at Best Buy for $699.99, while B&H Photo Video is surprisingly charging as little as $499.99. That’s right, the phone appears to be heavily discounted while still on pre-order, although B&H cannot commit to a firm delivery date for early adopters just yet.

The retailer is simply promising to fill orders for the incredibly inexpensive 5G-enabled device on a “first-come-first-served basis”, unlike Best Buy, which lists July 31 as its anticipated “release date.” For its part, Motorola never mentioned a release or pre-order start date when confirming the $699.99 US recommended price of the non-Plus Edge 5G a few weeks back.

Listed as compatible with both GSM and CDMA carriers, the unlocked Motorola Edge 5G is unlikely to work on Verizon’s blazing fast but hard to find mmWave-based 5G network. Instead, you’ll probably have to settle for 4G LTE support for Big Red, as well as 4G LTE and both low and mid-band 5G connectivity on T-Mobile and AT&T.

Although the Edge is technically still not cheaper than the hot new OnePlus Nord 5G, the latter device is not set to become widely available stateside. That means this handset’s direct competitors are the likes of the LG Velvet and Samsung Galaxy A71 5G, both of which are officially priced at $600, as well as the $700 OnePlus 8.

With the exception of the OnePlus 8, all of these affordable 5G phones pack an upper mid-range Snapdragon 765 SoC. At 500 bucks, the Motorola Edge 5G also offers a generous 6 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of internal storage space, as well as microSD support, and yes, even a good old fashioned headphone jack.

While its 6.7-inch OLED display is not exactly impressively sharp, sporting a respectable resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels, those aggressive curves certainly make the Edge stand out from the pack. The quad rear-facing camera system is not bad either, including a 64MP primary shooter, 8MP telephoto lens, 16MP ultra-wide-angle sensor, and a largely useless 3D Time-of-Flight lens that B&H isn’t even listing in the handset’s spec sheet.

Last but certainly not least, the Motorola Edge 5G trumps the LG Velvet in the battery capacity department with a massive 4,500mAh cell, which obviously comes with a little added heft and a thicker profile.

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