First Impressions: Motorola Edge 50 Pro

With a nice design that’s well thought out, attractive colours and a good range of mid-range specs, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro could be a good pick for those who want an Android phone that looks a little different to everything else. 

Introduction

Motorola has just unveiled the Edge 50 Pro globally, and I had a chance to spend some time with the phone before its reveal.

Launched at the same time as the Motorola 50 Edge Ultra, the Edge 50 Pro is a £599/€699 mid-range Android phone that packs lots of storage, a slick design and a smattering of AI features.

Could this be one of the best mid-range phone choices for 2024? Here are my early impressions after a few days with the phone.

Screen and Design

• Marble or vegan leather finishes
• 1200p display with HDR support
• Feels great to hold

Motorola wants the Edge 50 Pro to stand out among the crowded Android market, and it does. This is a good-looking phone, coming in a trio of attractive colours with two distinctive back materials. 

There are two vegan leather choices, a very nice purple and a far more neutral black. Motorola’s vegan leather is soft, grippy, and a lot warmer than the colder aluminium or titanium much of the competition uses. The material, which Motorola said was constructed sustainably,  also manages to eradicate fingerprint marks and it should age well over time.

I really like how Motorola pushes the rear material and colour up and into the camera bump, ensuring it feels like a complete device. Alongside the leather, there’s also a white marble finish available and Motorola said that each of these would look slightly different.

At 186g it’s a light phone too, and there’s an IP68 rating and welcome extras like Qi wireless charging.

The Edge 50 Pro sticks with the curved display of its predecessor, even if this trend is starting to lose popularity. I like how Google went to a flat display for the Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung followed suit with the S24 Ultra and I’d have liked to see Motorola switch too. Still, the curved display is high quality: 1200p resolution, OLED, 144Hz refresh rate and 2000 nits of reported brightness.

Specs and Software

• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip
• 512GB storage and 12GB RAM
• Seriously fast 125w charging with charger included

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro sits below the Edge 50 Ultra (but above the Edge 50 Fusion) and it doesn’t quite have the internal grunt of its pricier sibling. Qualcomm’s 8s Gen 3 chip makes way for the still very capable Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, while there’s a max of 512GB storage rather than 1TB and 12GB of memory.

I’ve only been using the phone for a few days, so not enough time to judge the performance completely, but it certainly isn’t as snappy as the Ultra, especially when it comes to snapping photos and processing the images.

What is fast though is the charging. The Edge 50 Pro’s 4500mAh battery has 125w charging, and you even get a charger capable of those speeds included in the box. To make it even better, this charger is a USB-C to USB-C model, meaning it can be used to fast charge other devices, including some laptops. 

The Edge 50 Pro runs Android 14 (no word on how many updates it’ll get) and in typical Motorola fashion the additional apps are more beneficial than simply games you’ll instantly want to delete. There are some AI tricks too, although nothing that stands out above generating themes based on a photo. 

Camera

• Triple camera array on the rear
• 50MP selfie camera
• AI enhancements

Easily the biggest difference between the Edge 50 Pro and the Ultra is the camera array. The Edge 50 Pro packs a mere 10MP telephoto and 13MP ultrawide, neither of which really had the detail to make images stand out in my initial testing. It’s a shame when secondary cameras feel like an afterthought, but it is to be expected when mid-range prices have to be hit.

It’s a much better story with the main camera, though. This 50MP sensor has a very wide f/1.4 to let lots of light in, OIS and fast autofocus. 

I’ve been shooting pictures over the past couple of days and while there is a lot of sharpening going on, giving some detailed images a slightly fake look, the results are mostly good with lots of bright colours and natural bokeh.

Motorola is pushing AI, and the camera includes the ‘Intelligent Photo Enhancement Engine’. According to the brand, this is there to ‘remove the guesswork’ out of photography and give you strong results without too much faff. I feel this might be what’s pushing up the sharpening