Motorola Edge 40: 4 reasons to buy, 1 to skip

By Aman Rashid: The sub-Rs 30,000 smartphone space is probably the most exciting price segment right now, and probably the price segment, where smartphone makers promise to offer many top features, but the end result kind of under-delivers. Phones such as the Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus — great screen, great camera, but somewhat average performance. Or take the Poco F5, a good all-round product offering top-notch performance, courtesy of the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chip. But, talk about the camera, that could’ve been better.

And, so the gist of the matter is, on the surface, the sub-Rs 30,000 smartphones are presented to be relatively affordable devices that can give you the flagship experience of sorts, but in reality, something or the other is always missing. This brings me to the Motorola Edge 40, which is Motorola’s attempt at bringing “the top features” at a relatively affordable price of about Rs 30,000. And in my opinion, the Edge 40 can not only talk the talk but can also walk the walk, apart from its only con.

4 reasons to buy

— Design: Different phone makers with their respective offerings promise to nail the premium in-hand feel, but do they really? In the sub-Rs 30,000 price segment, there are phones that have a glass back but a plastic frame. And then, there are phones with metal frames but with plastic back. Looking at you — Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus and Pixel 6a. But the Motorola Edge 40 checks all the right boxes when it comes to premium design and superb in-hand feel.

— Large dual-curved display at the front, check.
— Metal frame, check.
— Faux-leather back, something that you get on Vivo X90 Pro worth Rs 85,000, check.
— IP68 dust and water resistance! Yes, you heard that right, IP68 on a sub-Rs 30,000, check.
— Clicky buttons with good tactile feedback, check.
— Fast and reliable in-display fingerprint sensor, check.

Basically, with everything combined, the Motorola Edge 40 in a slim and light package, not only looks good but also feels great in the hands. And I know, design is a subjective take, but honestly speaking, the design and build of a phone, and not just of a Rs 30,000 phone, but a phone’s design as a whole, doesn’t get any better than this.

— Display: The Motorola Edge 40 features an 8-Bit 6.55” FHD+ pOLED dual-curved display that refreshes at 144Hz and comes with 1200 nits peak brightness. And undoubtedly, this is one of the best displays that you can get on any phone, and boy oh boy, does it deliver! Content consumption is a visual treat, especially when you factor in the stereo speakers of this phone, you are surely going to enjoy watching videos and playing music on this phone.

The Motorola Edge 40 display also supports HDR10 playback, and if you watch HDR videos on YouTube, or if you can download HDR videos offline, the display has the support here. But unfortunately, the most popular OTT app, Netflix, does not support HDR playback. Now, this is something that’s Netflix’s problem with whitelisting the device, but again, both parties definitely need to look at the situation and sort this out.

— Performance: The Motorola Edge 40 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chip, which basically is a rebranded Dimensity 1100 chip that powered the Motorola Edge 30. So, the usual tasks, given the hardware and the optimised software, run just fine, with no problems whatsoever. App opening times are fast, RAM management is solid, and even during app switching, I never noticed any stutter or frame drop. Thermals are handled very well, as the phone does not get hot even under the heaviest of loads. I played a lot of Asphalt 9 and COD: Mobile, at high graphics and 60fps, for both games, and even after long sessions of gaming, the phone barely gets warm, which is great.

As for the software, it has to be one of the strongest suites of the Motorola Edge 40, as what you get here is stock Android 13, which means no bloatware at all, no ads, and no spam notifications. And overall, as expected, the software experience is clean, polished and refined. And the Moto Edge 40 is also promised to receive 2 years of Android OS upgrades,

— Camera: The Motorola Edge 40 comes with a pretty straightforward camera setup. You get two lenses at the rear — a 50MP primary OIS camera coupled with a 13MP ultra-wide angle camera. The front is graced by a 32MP selfie snapper situated in a centre-aligned hole-punch.

So, from the photos that I managed to click with the Motorola Edge 40, I think the phone is able to produce some really well-balanced shots with its primary camera both in terms of detail as well as colour reproduction. The ultra-wide angle camera also captures decent shots and, especially, I didn’t observe any barrel distortion in images, a common issue you get to see in photos taken from ultra-wide angle cameras on many phones. Other than this, shots taken in dim light are also captured well. To find out in-depth about the camera, be sure to check out the detailed review video linked below.

1 reason to skip

— Palm rejection: Yes, you read that right. While the Motorola Edge 40 nails almost everything that you’d need in a sub-Rs 30,000 phone, it struggles with getting a basic problem with curved displays right, i.e. palm rejection. So, the Motorola Edge 40 has some serious issues with palm rejection, which is the only annoying bit that I found about this phone. And it’s so annoying that at crucial points while playing COD: Mobile, my character died because I couldn’t shoot my target! Now, maybe a software patch or something could fix this, and yes, this is the only problem that Motorola needs to address with this otherwise high-performing smartphone.