Motorola Edge Plus hands-on: back in the game

– You know Motorola, everyone knows Motorola.

They've been making phones foryears, but the last few years they haven't been making, like, really good phones.

I mean, they've been making good phones, but they've been mid-range stuff, two, $300 phones like theMoto G or Moto E series.

And they're great, but they're not thebest phones you can buy.

Until now, anyway.

Now they have the Motorola Edge Plus, which is its new flagship, its first flagship in years.

And this things' seriously impressive.

So let's dive in.

(upbeat music) It starts with the screen, which is where the name comesfrom, that Edge Plus thing.

'Cause it's a regularphone, but then the screen just kinda goes all the way to the edges and then past the edges.

Motorola says this actually curves almost 90 degrees downthe side of the phone.

The screen itself is a6.

7-inch display, which is the largest screen Motorola'sever put in a phone.

It's a 21:9 aspect ratio, though, so it actually feelsreally nice in your hand.

It doesn't feel like you're holding this giant, massive slate.

The screen has a 90 hertz refresh rate, so everything should look super smooth.

Although you can switch that down to only automatically enable, or just run it at 60 hertz in order to save battery life.

It's only an FHD+ panel, which is lower than some of the ultra-high resolution displays that we've seen in other phones, but Motorola say that's intentional.

It wants to make sure that it can get as much battery life as it can out of it, and that means running it at a little bit of a lower resolution thansome of the other competitors.

It still looks great, though.

Colors are bright, thescrolling is super smooth thanks to that refresh rate, and it's enjoyable to use.

(bright music) The edge display isn'tentirely cosmetic, though.

Motorola's doing a couplecool things with it.

So the first is somethingthat they call edge lighting, where the edge of thephone can actually light up when the phone is, say, face-down on a table.

So if you get a notificationcome in or a call come in, the edges'll light up so that you can see from across the room thatsomeone's calling you.

It also lights up with alarms or when you plug the battery in.

There's also some cool gestures.

You can double-tap on the sideto turn off the edge display if you just don't like theway it looks in an app, although if you don'tlike the edge display, don't buy a phone calledthe Edge Plus, maybe? And you can also use itto swipe between apps.

Motorola also saysyou'll be able to use it as a sort of trigger when playing games, so you'll be able to useit as shoulder buttons if you're running around in “Fortnite, ” but that's not quite working just yet.

The Edge Plus has stereo speakers.

There's a speaker on the bottom, which is the main speaker.

There's a speaker on top for the earpiece, which doubles as the secondspeaker for stereo sound.

And in the very brief timeI've used it, it's pretty loud.

Since it's 2020, there'sobviously no bezels or notches.

There's just a single hole-punch camera in the top-left corner.

It's a 25 megapixel camera, which works with the same Quad Pixel technology as a bunchof Motorola's other phones.

Motorola hasn't just focusedon the screen, though.

The entire phone is atop-notch Android device.

There's a Snapdragon 865 processor, which is Qualcomm's best, fastest, newest processor.

And it also has full 5G support.

It actually supports both sub-6 gigahertz and millimeter wave 5G.

Motorola says this shouldbe one of the fastest mobile devices that you'll be able to buy.

Obviously, we haven't been able to quite put that to the test yet.

It's gonna depend a lot on where you live and what kind of 5G connection it is, but they're really goingin that this will be a top-of-the-line phone.

12 gigabytes of RAM, 256gigabytes of storage, a 5, 000 milliamp hourbattery that Motorola says should last up to two full days.

They're really notcutting any corners here, and that includes theheadphone jack, still got one.

The top-line specs alsoextend to the cameras, and again, Motorola's notpulling any punches here.

The main camera on the EdgePlus is a 108-megapixel sensor.

It's the biggest and best camera sensor that you can put in a smartphone.

It's similar to the one Samsung's using on it's top-line monster, the S20 Ultra.

It can shoot 6K video, and you can either shootit at a full 108 megapixels if you really wanna cropin and get the details, or you can use it withQuad Pixel technology which shoots at a mere 27megapixels, the horror.

As for the other twocameras, there's also an eight-megapixel 3X zoom telephoto lens if you really wanna zoom inand get close on something, or shoot something from really far away that you'd still liketo see at a normal size.

And there's 117-degreeultra-wide at 16 megapixels that also has a really nice macro mode.

You can really punch in andget some really good details from small stuff, like a coin.

Things aren't quite finalizedyet with the Edge Plus.

The cameras, hardware and software are still being tweaked a little bit, so we'll have to put it to the full test once the device releases for real, but on paper it sounds impressive.

The Edge Plus fast charges over USB-C with a wire at 15 watts.

You can also fast charge itwirelessly at 15 watts, too, if you have a wirelesscharger that supports that.

You can also wirelesslycharge another device like a smart watch or a pair of headphones using the Edge Plus, but thatonly goes up to five watts.

Now for the big number, the price.

Motorola's selling this for 999, which puts it about in line with basically every othermajor flagship phone.

In the U.

S.

it'll only be on Verizon.

Motorola says that it'smaking this decision in part because it wants torely on Verizon's network, especially its 5G millimeter wave network, which is a particulararea of 5G that Verizon has been focusing on a lotmore than other carriers.

But still, if you don't have Verizon and you think this phone's cool it's a little disappointing to hear, especially in 2020 wherewe usually don't see these kinds of carrier lockdowns anymore.

Right now, it's a newflagship phone from Motorola, which we haven't seen in years, and that's just really exciting.

Obviously, we're gonna haveto spend a lot more time with this when it comes outto put it through its paces, see if it really does hold up next to the S20s and iPhones of the world.

As you might have guessed, we actually filmed thisvideo a few months ago, and in that time Motorola'sactually given us the release date for the Edge Plus.

It'll be out on May 14th in the U.

S.

It'll cost, again, $999, and it'll be exclusive to Verizon.

Stay safe and keepdoing what you're doing.

.