Motorola Edge (2021) is announced, which is a successor of Edge (2020). It is also a companion to the Edge 20 family, which is manufactured for the abroad market. However, the new Edge (2021) is specifically targeting North America. Motorola went too far as they organized an event at Yankee Stadium for this new premium mid-range phone. The new Moto Edge, as the company referred to during the presentation, sets to its specs quite nicely.
But, while Motorola threw quite the pitch with its list of premium-grade features, the real catch is that this phone only sells at a mid-range price for a short time. At launch, Motorola is cutting $200 off the phone’s regular price, creating a real draw for what could very well be one of the better surprise devices of the year. It also promises to fix many of the things that we didn’t care for on the first Motorola Edge.
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Motorola Edge (2021) specifications overview
| Launch Date | August 31, 2021 (Expected) |
|---|---|
| Price | $699 ($499 on sale) |
| Brand | Motorola |
| Model | Edge 2 |
| Operating System | Android v11 |
| Sim Slots | Dual SIM, GSM+GSM |
| Sim Size | SIM1: Nano, SIM2: Nano |
| Network | 5G supported by the device, 4G, 3G, 2G |
| Fingerprint Sensor | Yes |
| Rear Camera | 108 MP + 8 MP + 2 MP |
| Front Camera | 32 MP |
Motorola Edge (2021) price and availability
The Motorola Edge (2021) will be available unlocked on September 2 at Best Buy, B&H, Amazon, and Motorola.com. The phone retails for $699, but promotional launch pricing means it sells for only $499 for a limited time. So if you’re considering picking one up, you should probably do it sooner rather than later to take advantage of this pricing.
Verizon and Spectrum Mobile will be selling the phone in the U.S. in the coming months, but no date is specified for now. The phone will also be available in Canada sometime later in 2021.
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Motorola Edge (2021) overall features
Despite being half the price of the original Motorola Edge, the new Motorola Edge (2021) packs a much faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor that felt every bit as fast as I would expect from a flagship device. There’s also a brand new 6.8-inch 144Hz display that’s an upgrade over the 90Hz display in last year’s Motorola Edge, even if it’s a downgrade from an OLED panel to an LCD one.
On a positive note, it has 576Hz touch latency, so touching the screen feels absolutely instant. It’s also completely flat this time around, while last year’s Motorola Edge featured curved screen edges and edge-aligned gesture-based actions.
The Snapdragon 778G enables both 5G and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, including 5G mmWave on Verizon’s network. A giant 5,000mAh battery is stuffed inside the surprisingly light metal-and-glass frame, and 30W turbocharging — with a charger included in the box — means you won’t have to wait long to top it up.
Tucked away underneath the sizable hunk of camera lenses is a 108MP main camera — another significant upgrade even from last year’s 64MP hardware. Of course, the hardware was never the real reason last year’s Motorola Edge had such a mediocre camera experience, but more on that in a bit. Motorola says it’s now using this massive 108MP sensor to do 9-in-1 pixel binning, effectively making those pixels 2.1-microns in size.
Just as we saw back in the HTC One M7 days, Motorola is calling these “ultra pixels” because of their size. Likewise, the 32MP front-facing camera uses 4-in-1 pixel binning to achieve a 1.4-micron pixel size, all of which should help low light performance significantly.
Motorola also fits in an ultra-wide-angle camera and a depth sensor on the back, further spending quite a bit of time talking up its new photography software. We’ll talk about that a little below.
The phone’s design is quite a bit different from last year and more closely resembles other 2021 phones, including with that flat display — a trend that’s been slowly building for the past few years. A side-mounted power button triples as a fingerprint sensor and a capacitive gesture key, which Motorola is using to replace some of last year’s edge gestures.
Motorola Edge (2021): the mid-range beast
At $500, it’s pretty hard to argue against the new Motorola Edge on paper. Time will tell if the software experience holds up to its end of the bargain, but Motorola certainly has a compelling phone that feels a lot more premium than its price implies. Whether the full retail price still feels that way is anyone’s best guess but, based on the far more expensive and less powerful Motorola Edge from last year, clean software goes a long way to keeping the experience solid for a long time.
To Sum Up
The Motorola Edge (2021) is a photography-focused mid-ranger with a modern design and solid specs. It has a 108MP primary camera, a 6.8-inch display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and a large 5,000mAh battery. Although its actual price is $699, it will be going for $499 on the launch sale. If you want to upgrade your Motorola phone, then this would be the ideal phone for you. Moreover, $499 for this flagship killer is a bargain in our eyes.
