Motorola is finally bringing a new flagship-level smartphone to the U.S. with the Edge+ (2023). I've reviewed a couple of Motorola's budget devices, the Moto G Play and Moto G Stylus, recently, but it has been quite a long time since I've had the chance to use a phone from the company that actually feels premium. The Edge+ (2023) is replacing last year's Motorola Edge+ with refreshed specs across the board and a more aggressive price point.

In the two weeks I've spent using this phone as my daily driver, I've been really impressed. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 hums paired up with 8GB LPDDR5X RAM, all while running Android 13 with Motorola's elegant software layer on top. It also sports a new 12MP portrait camera with a 2X telephoto lens, and while it offers some helpful features for taking portrait pictures, the zoom becomes a mess much past the optical point.

The big question is, can the new Motorola Edge+ (2023) compete with others in its $800 price range, like the Pixel 7 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S23, and the OnePlus 11, without being on carriers' shelves? Because this year, the phone maker is breaking tradition, and not even long-time partner Verizon will be selling the phone. Regardless, the phone itself stands strong, and it's a solid option for anybody who wants a premium device but doesn't want to spend the big money to get it.

About this review: This review was written after two weeks of testing a Motorola Edge+ provided by Motorola. The company did not provide any input into this review.

Motorola Edge+ (2023): Pricing and availability

Motorola unveiled the Edge+ (2023) on May 2, but the phone goes on sale May 25 for $800 through retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and directly through Motorola. There are two configuration versions, with 256 or 512GB of internal storage, but both have 8GB RAM. While there are two storage options, there is only a single color: Interstellar Black.

Hardware and design: No flash or flair

Looking at the new Edge+, the first thing that comes to mind is the term "understated." It has glass on the front and back with a matte black aluminum frame. Both the front and back have quad curves, making the phone very comfortable to hold. Motorola also went with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus to protect both the display and the back. The glass on the back does have a nice matte texture that's good at hiding fingerprints but is very slippery. I highly recommend picking up one of these excellent cases for it.

To complement the display while watching movies or just listening to music, the Edge+ also has true dual speakers, which means it has a dedicated speaker on both the bottom and top of the phone and doesn't opt to use the earpiece for the latter. You'll get audio tuning by Dolby Atmos with a few different modes to enable, or you just leave it on smart mode, and it will change the settings based on what's playing. Either way, the audio sounds surprisingly full and doesn't get too terribly distorted at high volume levels.

Bucking the trend from the past few years of leaving out the charger from the box, Motorola is including a 68W Turbo Charger for recharging the 5,100mAh battery. The phone is also offering 15W wireless charging and 5W wireless power share. As for how the battery holds up to daily use, it's been great. I've consistently gotten a full day of use before needing to charge it up, and that's with the 165Hz refresh rate enabled. If you let the Edge+ automatically adjust the refresh rate and aren't a heavy user, the phone could probably get you close to two days of use.

Display and performance: A big step-up

The display on the Edge+ is a very pleasant surprise, with a 6.7-inch FHD+ pOLED panel capable of up to 165Hz refresh rate with an in-display optical fingerprint reader. Though I didn't find any apps or games that would push the display past 120Hz when using the auto-switch mode, there is a toggle to force the display into the higher setting, and it looked great. I never had any lag or stuttering when using the phone for watching videos, scrolling webpages and social media, or playing games.

The display also supports all the fancy video features you'd expect from a flagship device in 2023, like, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and others. My biggest issue with the display was that it doesn't get quite bright enough to be easily seen in direct sunlight, but it's still great to look at.

Even though the display on the Motorola Edge+ doesn't automatically hit the 165Hz max refresh rate, manually toggling it on works just fine, and it looks great.

Internally, the phone has all the modern specs you'd look for in a flagship phone, like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, 8GB LPDDR5X RAM, and 256 or 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. It's offering Bluetooth 5.3 and is Wi-Fi 7-ready to keep you future-proofed and connected for fast data transfers. Whatever tuning Motorola may have done to the hardware when it went into the Edge+ works wonderfully. I had zero issues with the phone through my testing, and it could handle anything I threw at it.

When comparing Geekbench 6 results to other devices in the Edge+ price range (and the higher-priced Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra with its custom version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 just for fun), Motorola's phone pulled in excellent numbers. As always, take any synthetic benchmark test with a grain of salt, as real-world use can vary from person to person. But for those who're interested, here are the comparison results:

Software: Understated and powerful

The Motorola Edge+ (2023) is launching with Android 13 with possibly my favorite Android skin, My UX. Motorola is pledging three OS updates and four years of security updates. As for the UI, or My UX, again, it's one of my favorite interfaces on a smartphone. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that I strongly dislike the UI on any of the best phones out, I prefer a scaled-back approach with options to adjust how the phone looks and operates. I'm a big fan of what Google does with the Pixel lineup, and Samsung's OneUI is starting to grow on me, I just wish I could have a vertical app drawer, and OnePlus has shifted away from the clean UI in Oxygen OS and has been adopting some things that feel less intuitive in its interface.

Motorola's My UX keeps things very simple and lets Android shine. But that isn't to say that it's devoid of character or ways to help you customize your phone. Hopping into the Moto app, you have different categories to personalize, adjust gestures, view security options, and more. The personalization section is a single place to change wallpapers, system fonts, UI colors, the shape of icons, and more. It's a great approach to have everything in one place for customizing the way your phone looks and operates. But you can also find these same adjustment points in the regular settings menu too.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Motorola phone with the beloved chop-chop to turn on the flashlight or the double-twist to launch the camera. The Edge+ also brings one of my favorite features called Peek for the lockscreen. So when you wake your phone by touching the display or picking it up, the phone won't show your lockscreen but instead show a dark display with the time, date, weather, and icons at the bottom for notifications. Pressing and holding on to one of these icons lets you see what the notification is, and depending on the notification type, you can then continue holding on to the icon and move your finger to some additional options like dismiss, archive, reply, and more. This is all done without unlocking your phone, but you can always disable this feature if you want to.

Another great software feature is being Ready For-certified. This lets you wirelessly connect the phone to a TV or display to mirror your phone easily as you can with other devices, but you can also wirelessly connect it to your PC. Just download the Ready For Assistant app to the computer and pair it to your phone. Once that's done, you can mirror your phone, share files, use the phone as your webcam, operate your phone in a desktop view, and even copy images, text, and screenshots from your phone.

Cameras: Surprisingly good

Ok, now we reach the section where the phone fails, right? Because that's been one of the drawbacks of Motorola phones in recent years. Thankfully, that's not entirely the case with the Edge+. Let's get the camera hardware specs out of the way first. It has a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, a 12MP f/1.6 rear portrait camera with a 2x telephoto lens, and a 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide that doubles as a macro camera.

As expected with almost any smartphone these days, even the best budget phones take decent photos in good lighting. But the Edge+ took excellent pictures in normal lighting scenarios and could even take decent ones in low-light situations thanks to Night Mode. I went camping this past weekend and took the Edge+ along with and Pixel 7 Pro to test out the camera. Below are the samples in good lighting.

Motorola Edge+ (2023) left, Google Pixel 7 Pro right

Here are samples in low lighting with Edge+ on the left and Pixel 7 Pro on the right.

Unfortunately, quality starts to drop off for the Edge+ when you want to zoom in. The portrait lens on the back doubles as a 2X telephoto camera, and while it's great at portrait photos, things get muddy fast once you go past the physical 2X range.

Motorola Edge+ left, Pixel 7 Pro right:

Lastly, I'll leave the photo section with some pictures taken on the Edge+ that I didn't capture comparisons for, so you can get some further idea as to what the camera is and isn't capable of. There is a mix of normal lighting, low-light, macro, portrait, and wide-angle images.

One area that usually gets left out when it comes to capturing the world and getting new features is video. Motorola is bucking that trend in the Edge+ by adding Horizon Lock, which acts similarly to the digital gimbal that many action cameras offer. When you go to video mode in the camera, you can tap the toggle on the edge of the screen, and it, as you might guess, determines the horizon line and maintains it no matter how the camera rotates. You can literally rotate the phone 360 degrees, and the video on the screen will look as if it isn't doing anything. Below is my attempt to record me recording a video on the Edge+ using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the result from the Moto phone.

Motorola Edge+ (2023): Should you buy it?

You should buy the Motorola Edge+ if:

• You want a flagship phone but don't want to spend $1,000
• You want a phone that has a high refresh display and still gets a full day of use per charge
• You want good cameras, but it isn't the most important feature to you

You shouldn't buy the Motorola Edge+ if:

• You need a phone that has excellent zoom capabilities
• You don't want to buy your phone outside the carrier system

Motorola has struggled to gain traction in the flagship space over the past couple of years for a few reasons. One is price; previously, it was trying to sell its phones for $1,000, which wouldn't be such a big deal if the entire phone experience was on the same level as others in that category. But it wasn't, primarily held back by lackluster specs and cameras. However, many of those issues were resolved with the Motorola Edge+ (2023).

The $800 price is obviously much more palatable than $1,000, but its lower price doesn't mean the phone is a slouch, either. Opting for a 165Hz display, excellent sounding stereo speakers, fast memory and storage, and the best processor Qualcomm offers all add up to a great smartphone experience. As for the cameras, they do a better-than-average job at taking photos. The main area where the experience falls off is in trying to zoom in on a subject. For some, that may not be an issue, but for me, I need a good zoom of at least 10X.

I probably won't continue to use the Edge+ as my daily driver, but I have no issues recommending it to a lot of people. It's a great phone that provides excellent battery life on top of being a solid performer in most categories. The drawback for many in the U.S. is that you'll need to purchase it outside cellular carriers. But if you're willing to buy it unlocked through Best Buy, Amazon, or Motorola, you'll get a great phone at a price that fits.