Motorola Edge 40 review: happy medium

The Motorola company is actively expanding its line of smartphones in Ukraine, one of the latest additions of which was the mid-budget model Edge 40. The device offers a good set of specifications that are often inherent in flagship smartphones, but not for all the money in the world. How the manufacturer managed to achieve this and what they saved on, let’s find out in the Motorola Edge 40 review.

Motorola Edge 40 specifications

In the box

Traditionally, for Motorola, we have a fairly wide range of equipment by modern standards.

In the box with the Edge 40, you can find a 68 W power supply, a USB Type-C cable, and a plastic cover.

Design

Motorola Edge 40 is a 6.55-inch smartphone with a thickness of 7.49 mm, which can be called relatively compact by modern standards. Thanks to the aspect ratio of 20:9 and the weight of 167 grams, the device is really comfortable in the hand.

The entire front panel of the device is occupied by a screen with a small cutout for the camera in the center of the upper part, covered with protective glass. It is rounded at the edges, smoothly flowing into the aluminum frame of the case.

This design technique allows you to visually reduce the side frames and generally makes the front panel more expressive, but creates additional difficulties for those who want to stick a protective film or glass on the display.

The back of the Motorola Edge 40 is made of plastic, stylized as leather. When worn without a cover, it may rub off over time, however, it will not be noticeable on the black color, and the supply of other colors is still in question. Be that as it may, plastic is quite a practical material, besides, it is tactilely pleasant.

I would also like to note the nice block of two cameras, which, although they protrude quite strongly from the case, have a neat appearance.

For a mid-range model aimed at competing with the Pixel 7a and Galaxy A54, the Motorola Edge 40 generally has a nice design and a quality build, which is confirmed by the presence of water and dust protection according to the IP68 standard.

Display

The 6.55-inch display of the smartphone received a P-OLED matrix with a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels, a refresh rate of 144 Hz, a peak brightness of 1200 nits and HDR10+ support. The screen has a high-quality calibration and sufficient brightness to comfortably read text under direct sunlight.

In the screen settings, you can choose between two display modes: Natural and Bright. The latter has a wider color range, but a “colder” color rendering. Both modes allow you to adjust it manually, however, in Natural the color temperature will be “warmer”.

In addition to these settings, the user can change the refresh rate, choosing between automatic mode, 60, 120 and 144 Hz. The last two options will have the greatest impact on battery life.

There is also an option to reduce screen flickering, characteristic of OLED matrices at low light levels.

However, this can negatively affect the color rendering.

Platform and performance

The smartphone is built on the Mediatek platform with a 6 nm 8-core processor Dimensity 8020 and Mali-G77 MC9 graphics. The chip has four fast Cortex-A78 cores with a frequency of 2.6 GHz and four energy-saving Cortex-A55 with a frequency of 2 GHz. Complementing all this is 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of built-in UFS 3.1 storage.

The Dimensity 8020 chip itself directly competes with the Exynos 1380 used in the Galaxy A54. Based on the results of Geekbench 6, the Mediatek processor turned out to be faster and scores 1125 points when one core is loaded and 3665 points when all cores are loaded, the Samsung chip has 1006 and 2861 points.

The Motorola Edge 40 platform generally provides a good level of performance in everyday use and the smooth operation of the Android 13 operating system interface. In addition, the smartphone is suitable for modern games, it runs Call of Duty Mobile at high graphics settings and Diablo Immortal without problems.

During use, the Edge 40 case does not heat up, but the device becomes noticeably warm, but not hot, after 30-40 minutes in a graphics-demanding game. The throttling test shows that the processor starts to reduce frequencies after 10 minutes of maximum load, but not to a critical level.

The 3DMark Wild Life graphics stress test showed that the system stability level reached 98.8%, which is a good result.

The Motorola Edge 40 does not support microSD cards, which is not too relevant given the availability of 256 GB of memory, but adding a second physical SIM card will not work either. This model supports eSIM for an additional or primary phone number. We tested it with a Vodafone number, adding an eSIM went without any problems, the smartphone immediately found the right network and kept a stable connection.

In addition to the mobile network, you can also use the Wi-Fi 6e module to connect to the Internet. Other wireless protocols include Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC for contactless payments. It is worth noting that the module is located on top, closer to the left edge of the case, so you will have to get used to the fact that when paying, the smartphone must be brought to the terminal in this way.

Fingerprint scanner

The Motorola Edge 40 uses an optical fingerprint scanner located at the bottom of the screen. It is not too big, but it is fast and easy to use.

The scanner allows you to easily unlock your smartphone for use or payment, triggering when your finger touches the display glass.

Cameras

Despite the fact that manufacturers try to fit as many camera modules as possible into cheaper smartphones, in the Edge 40 Motorola fortunately followed a rational path, using two main cameras:

• 50-megapixel wide-angle with 1/1.55″ matrix, f/1.4 aperture, 1 μm pixel size, phase autofocus and optical stabilization;
• 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with 120˚ viewing angle, f/2.2 aperture, autofocus and electronic stabilization.

Taking into account the cost of the smartphone and its positioning, a quite adequate set of modules was obtained, which ensures good quality pictures. Let’s take a closer look at them and start with the main wide-angle camera.

During the day, it provides good detail and a wide dynamic range, and when the lighting deteriorates, although the software has to be more active in removing noise, optical stabilization still allows you to capture enough light so as not to lose important details.

The ultra-wide-angle module allows you to capture more of the scene during the day, which is convenient when photographing architecture or landscapes. It sometimes misses with the white balance, but takes pictures with good detail. When the light is reduced, it is more difficult for this camera to get into focus and provide high detail, however, if the frame is not too dynamic and there is enough artificial light, you can take good pictures.

The main 50-megapixel module allows you to take photos zooming up to 8x, and if at 2-3x in good lighting you can still get more or less quality pictures, then at 8x the crop is too strong.

The ultra-wide-angle module thanks to autofocus also has a macro mode, which can be useful for macro photography fans or if you need to see some fine print.

The front camera in the model is immediately 32-megapixel with an aperture of f/2.4, but without autofocus and, of course, without optical stabilization, but with various filters for smoothing the skin and enlarging the eyes.

Audio

The smartphone supports stereo sound thanks to two speakers, one of which is located on the lower edge of the case, and the other is combined with the speaker. This design provides an overall loud sound without hiss at maximum volume, but without significant volume or bass.

To connect headphones to a smartphone, you can use a wireless Bluetooth 5.2 module, which, pleasantly, supports the aptX HD codec from Qualcomm. Wired connection is possible only through USB Type-C directly or using an adapter for a 3.5 mm connector. However, it will have to be purchased separately.

Battery life

This model has a 4400 mAh battery, which with daily use lasted me almost 1.5 days with 4-5 hours of active screen time, which is quite adequate for a modern smartphone. But the thing is, it is without additional load in the form of games or a lot of YouTube/Netflix videos watched. For example, in the PCMark 10 battery life test, the device lasted 7 hours and 46 minutes under load and with the screen active.

So there is not a lot of battery life here, and I hope that in the next generation, Motorola will correct this point by simply increasing the thickness of the case. It definitely won’t make the smartphone any worse.

Fortunately, the Edge 40’s battery can at least be recharged faster, with the bundled 68W charger restoring the battery from 0 to 90% in just 30 minutes. In addition, the device supports wireless charging with a power of up to 15 W.