Motorola Edge 70 Pro Review: A battery beast with style

Design

• From 7.19mm thick, 189.3g
• Stylish faux-material finish
• Regrettable plastic frame
• Encouraging durability ratings

Motorola has hit upon a winningly distinctive smartphone aesthetic, and by golly does it seem intent on milking it.

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro looks a lot like the two preceding Edge 70 models, as well as last year’s entire Edge 60 range, the current flagship Motorola Signature – a Motorola Edge 70 Ultra in all but name – and indeed the recent Motorola Razr Fold foldable.

This isn’t a criticism, because the brand’s phones stand apart from virtually every other on the market. Rather than the overplayed iPhone-wannabe flat surfaces and sharp angles of most of its rivals, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro is all curved edges, with a camera module that seems to be bashfully peeking through the silky rear cover.

Said cover is essentially plastic, but Motorola has a canny knack for making (and marketing) said artificial material to resemble something more natural. In the case of my Zinfandel model (which is suitably red-winey in tone), it has the feel of slightly rougher silk. The other two colours carry denim and wood-like finishes.

All of these finishes serve a dual purpose, both adding grip and making the phone feel more premium. That’s more than can be said for the Edge 70 Pro’s plastic frame, which is an unwelcome holdover from the Edge 60 Pro.

Gorilla Glass 7i isn’t the toughest material choice for that display either, especially given its exposed edges. With that said, the provision of MIL-STD-810H and IP68/IP69 certification goes well above the usual ruggedness standard, even for significantly more expensive phones.

The thickness of the phone depends on the finish, with my Zinfandel model the thinnest of the lot at 7.19mm. I weighed it in at a just-so 189.3g. It’s a reasonably slim and light phone that’s easy to live with.

Screen

• Big 6.78-inch pOLED screen
• Sharp 2772 x 1272 resolution
• Atypical 144Hz refresh rate

The Edge 70 Pro’s 6.78-inch pOLED screen is quite the looker, whether you’re a fan of those ‘2.5D’ curved edges or not.

It gets nice and sharp to the tune of a 2772 x 1272 resolution (which some call 1.5K), and it’s capable of hitting an impressive 5000 nits – albeit only in peak HDR playback conditions. In general use it gets bright, but not exceptionally so.

Motorola has a tendency to push a little higher than most on refresh rates, and sure enough, the Edge 70 Pro is capable of outputting at 144Hz.

I’ve always found this to be a slightly odd specification to push, as the potential gains are marginal at best, while it potentially places more strain on the phone’s processor and battery. As it turns out, neither proves to be a problem, but nor is this specification particularly advantageous.

Motorola’s default colour profile pops with a little more colour than I’d prefer, but the two alternatives serve to calm things down to something a little more realistic. I found Natural to be the most balanced look for day-to-day mixed use.

Camera

• 50MP Sony LYTIA 710 wide camera
• 50MP ultra-wide camera
• 50MP 3.5x periscope telephoto camera
• 50MP selfie cam with autofocus

I’m not a fan of the Motorola Edge 70 Pro’s hoiked-up price, but it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t at least partially earn its keep with its camera setup.

While this isn’t anywhere close to being the most impressive triple camera system on the market, you’re still getting three 50-megapixel cameras, all of a solid standard.

The main camera is a 1/1.56-inch Sony LYTIA 710. That’s big enough to scoop up sufficient light to capture nice vibrant shots in good lighting, and convincing snaps in Night mode – the latter with little of that uncanny over-brightened look that some manufacturers opt for.

In daylight conditions there’s a certain artificiality to the vibrant blue skies and green trees produced here, but nothing too egregious. I found it best to steer clear of any of the AI-based enhancements in order to get the most natural results though.

Meanwhile the Edge 70 Pro’s HDR compensation isn’t the most powerful that I’ve seen, occasionally struggling to rein in brighter areas, but it’s solid enough in most conditions.

Perhaps my favourite camera on this model is the new 50-megapixel periscope telephoto. Not only does it pack in more pixels than last year’s model, but it also hits a deeper 3.5x optical zoom length.

Shots taken with this camera in daytime lighting generally looked good, with a slightly more muted but arguably more natural tone than the main sensor. These two initial cameras will combine to capture decent 7x and even 10x shots, but 30x and 50x cropped images are a fuzzy mess that should be avoided.

The 50-megapixel ultra-wide is pretty good at what it does. It’ll grab you solid landscape shots with decent detail, though the tone can wander away from that of the main sensor.

There’s a 50-megapixel camera around front, too, and it’s bolstered by autofocus. It does a more than serviceable job with selfies, extending to wide and close-up options and offering a convincing bokeh effect in portrait snaps.

One final positive: after disappointing us in the Edge 60 Pro, Motorola has finally restored full 4K/60fps video support to the package. Footage looks good, with more or less seamless zoom transitions, though I did notice a fair amount of wind noise.

Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 8500 processor
• 12GB LPDDR5X RAM
• 512 GB UFS 4.1 storage

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 8500 processor, backed by 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

A variant of that processor powers both the £349 Poco X8 Pro and the £649 Xiaomi 17T. In true modern Motorola fashion, then, its phone can be said to be punching slightly below its price tag in the performance stakes.

Only slightly, mind. Indeed, it could equally be argued that Motorola has its priorities in order here, giving us just the performance we need and shaving off needless headroom in order to prioritise other areas.

I have no complaints with the practical experience of using Edge 70 Pro. It sails between menus and deals with multiple open apps without pause, and can run Destiny Rising well on higher (if not tippity-top) graphical settings.

Still, there’s no doubting that you can get more performance for your money. The Poco F8 Ultra gives you the full Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 treatment for a similar price, though it otherwise lacks the Edge 70 Pro’s elegance.

Other contemporaries include the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, which is broadly comparable in both CPU and GPU terms, according to my benchmark tests. The iPhone 17e, meanwhile blows it out of the water and starts from a lower price, albeit with half the storage.

Motorola has packed in a pair of stereo speakers together with support for Dolby Atmos. They offer clear, spacious sound and good separation.

Software & AI

• Decent but increasingly cluttered Android 16 experience
• Confused AI offering
• Only three OS upgrades promised

Motorola’s software used to be second only to Google’s stock Pixel effort in its clean and unadorned appeal. It’s still one of the less obnoxious out there, but it’s getting busier.

The basic icons and menu layouts are fairly stock, and where Motorola has stepped in, it has done so with a fair amount of taste and reasonable restraint.

However, there are a couple of signs that the company is getting a little restless with simply following Google’s lead. The app tray here has a different, less appealing look, and has a bolted-on Newsfeed tab supplying news headlines and a couple of widgets. With Google Feed to the left of the home screen, it feels completely superfluous.

There are far too many preinstalled third-party apps, too, even if (as I did) you opt out of a bunch at the set-up stage. LinkedIn, Booking.com, Amazon Music, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are all present, yet completely unbidden. So too are games like Solitaire and Candy Crush Saga.

Elsewhere, confusion reigns with Motorola’s approach to AI. I’m perfectly happy with the company’s Moto AI, which assembles some core AI tools in a clean hub app, much as Motorola does with general tools in the exemplary Moto app.

However, Motorola has also taken to installing Perplexity and Copilot on all of its Edge phones – and that’s on top of Google’s Gemini. There’s a lot of AI overlap here, which is liable to breed bewilderment in even more tech-savvy types.

Another problem I have with Motorola’s offering is the relatively poor update promise. Three major OS upgrades and five years of security support isn’t much when rivals such as Google and Samsung are offering a flat seven years.

Battery Life

• 6500mAh silicon carbon battery
• 90W wired charging
• 15W wireless charging

If Motorola has knocked anything out of the park with the Edge 70 Pro, it’s the battery and charging provisions.

We were impressed with the Motorola Edge 60 Pro’s stamina, but the company has upped its game here, increasing the size of the silicon carbon cell to 6500mAh.

This was sufficient to get me through a full 14-hour day of heavy usage (5 hours 10 minutes screen on time), which included hours of YouTube viewing, a fair amount of web browsing, and some intensive benchmark tests, with almost 60% left.

It’s comfortably in the two-day bracket, and I could even see the Motorola Edge 70 Pro extending into a third day if your average use is on the lighter side.

The charging provision is good too, with 90W wired charging able to get you a full charge in about an hour. Just 30 minutes will get you past the halfway point.

There’s also 15W wireless charging, which is always welcome.

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Should you buy it?