Motorola Edge 50 Ultra

Review : Motorola Edge 50 Ultra

We've had the pleasure of seeing and playing the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra in April but it's now time to carry out review. Motorola has launched its flagship lineup for 2024 and the most specced out model is the Edge 50 Ultra. Unfortunately, for now none of the Edge 50 Series has a counterpart for the US market, but they are available in the UK and the rest of Europe. The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra in particular will cost you €999 for the base model, which comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It has one of the best chipsets on the market, a set of promising cameras and some AI features to elevate their performance, as well as a eye-catching and comfortable design. Motorola uses entirely recycled materials for the packaging, and it comes with Motorola's signature fragrance. It's a nice touch which makes the life of a buyer all the more pleasant. Inside, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra comes with a nice frosted plastic case, a 125W charger, and a USB cable. We loved the Nordic Wood finish. It was reminiscent of Motorola's Moto X first and second generation and their wood panels. It's a textured finish with rear grooves and a wood feel. There are a number of differences between Motorola Edge 50 Ultra and the 50 Fusion. The Ultra, naturally, has a higher-res display, wireless charging, faster wired charging, better cameras and a faster chipset. The Fusion, on the other hand, packs a bigger battery. Following is the detailed review for you to consider.

Battery

Motorola is one of the manufacturers which places a importance in charging speeds, and that can be seen throughout all of its Edge 50 series models. The Edge 50 Ultra comes with 125W charging speed, 50W wireless charging and 10W reverse wireless. With a 4,500mAh on board the phone can charge from 0-100% in about 23 minutes or so, if we are to judge from the already released Edge 50 Pro, which comes with the same battery and charging specs. Speaking of the Edge 50 Pro, one of its downsides was the rather mediocre battery life (compared to the competition), so we expect something similar from the Edge 50 Ultra, especially with the more powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 inside. The 10W reverse wireless charging is also super neat in case you decide to buy Motorola's first wireless ear buds, the Moto Buds Plus, or any other ear buds that allow wireless charging. 50W wireless charging is also pretty neat, as long as you have a wireless charger which supports this level of charge output.

Colours 

Forest Grey (silicone/vegan leather)

Peach Fuzz (silicone/vegan leather)

Nordic Wood (wood)

Performance

Flagship performance with higher power efficiency. One of the best things about the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is that it comes with the latest and greatest of Qualcomm chipsets, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. This chip is absolutely a capable one as far as performance goes, although not as capable as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The difference between the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is that the former cannot be overclocked and has more efficiency cores, while the latter lass less efficiency cores and an additional one for performance. In other words, the 8 Gen 3 is more powerful, but the 8s Gen 3 should be more power-efficient while still very capable. The Edge 50 Ultra comes with 12/16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which is fastest currently used in flagship mobile phones. It also has 512GB/1TB storage variants with built-in UFS 4.0 storage, which is also up to par with the competition.

Camera

The camera of the Edge 50 Ultra is where Motorola obviously takes the most proud and joy from its latest high-end flagship. Not only does it come with some rather impressive hardware, but it is also where the AI utilization is most visible. Following are the full Edge 50 Ultra camera specs:-

Main (wide): 50MP, f/1.6 aperture, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS)

Ultra-wide: 50MP, f/2.0, Autofocus

Telephoto: 64MP, 3X Zoom, f/2.4, Autofocus, OIS

Front: 50MP, f/1.9, Autofocus

You can record 4K video at 60FPS, and 1080P video at a maximum of 960FPS for slow motion. There's also an option to record in 10 bit HDR10+, although that would take up a lot of space. As far as AI is concerned, there are a few features which aid the camera performance. For one, you have Action Shot, which is the phone's ability to adjust shutter speed and ISO in low-light environments to capture as much light as possible. Next, we have Auto Focus Tracking, which helps keep subjects moving fast inside the frame clear to see when recording videos. Another video feature, and the more important one is the Adaptive Stabilization, which adjusts the stabilization based on how you are holding the phone and your movements. Lastly, we have the Auto Enhance feature, which actually comes from a master in photo editing software, Google. Motorola just decided to bake this feature into the camera app on the Edge 50 Ultra. Users have the option to choose from Natural (the default) and the Auto Enhance mode, the latter of which aims to edit the image so that it looks better.

Design and Display

Stellar display and sleek design, Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is a similar size to its predecessor (the Edge 40 Pro), or otherwise said it is a pretty large one, coming in at 161.1 x 72.4 x 8.6 mm. It is definitely not as heavy as some of the competition out there, though, weighing in at 197g, which is about 35g less than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Unlike other high-end flagship phones, the Edge 50 Ultra does not come in a glass sandwich body. Instead, it can have either a wood back or one made out of vegan leather. Motorola is well known for its alternative materials, and there is something to be said about the vegan leather back, which makes the phone less prone to slipping and does not attract fingerprints. Talking of the back, Motorola has altered the camera island, which used to look a bit less than appealing. Now it looks as if the back panel has perfectly covered that area, almost like a blanket which only reveals the outlines of where the camera island is. Unlike other flagships which come with titanium or stainless steel, though, the frame is made out of aluminium, which is lighter than both, but not as tough. The display on the Edge 50 Ultra is curved, which contrasts most of the other premium phones on the market as they tend to have flat displays instead. Naturally, this is a matter of personal preference, but an edge display seems fitting for a phone line up that includes the word in its name. At the front, you get a 1220 x 2712 pixels P-OLED display with refresh rate that reaches a maximum of 144Hz. The phone can also go to 2500 nits of peak brightness and supports HDR10+ content (no Dolby Vision support). Protecting this gorgeous display is Gorilla Glass Victus.

Audio Quality 

Motorola has been quite successful at offering great audio quality with its Edge series in the past couple of years. The stereo speakers on the mid-range Edge 50 Pro were overall pretty good, with great volume and overall good sound profile, but with a weird mushy/muted sound throughout the whole range. We expect the Edge 50 Ultra to be one level higher in terms of audio quality compared to the Edge 50 Pro, with clearer and richer sound. The Edge 50 Ultra has no 3.5mm audio jack, so you would have to depend on USB-C connectors or Bluetooth headphones.

Software

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra comes with Android 14 straight out of the box, and a Motorola's Hello UI skin on top of it. This includes familiar features such as the twist gesture to turn on the camera even while the phone is locked, or the chop gesture to turn on the flashlight. Motorola has also added some AI feature in the form of generative wallpapers, which is admittedly a gimmicky feature for most of the time. However, the twist here makes this feature a bit more interesting, as you can generate a wallpaper based on a photo of your clothing. Other than that, there are not generative AI features like the ones you would find on the Galaxy S24 or Pixel 8, unfortunately. For software update, you get 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security patches. 

Conclusion

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is definitely looking good, especially with those different back panel materials it comes in and the thin form factor. The curved display is not for everybody, though, but it also wouldn't be an proper "Edge" phone if it didn't include that. We are happy to see the importance Motorola has placed onto the camera system, which sounds like a potentially very capable one, especially if we were to speculate based on the Edge 50 Pro's camera performance. You also get quite the capable chipset inside, which is doesn't match the competition from Samsung exactly, but should offer more power-efficiency instead.