Motorola’s New 2026 Edge Is Svelte, but I Hope It Tees Up Something Bigger

I’ve quickly become a little obsessed with the look of the new Motorola Edge for 2026 during my brief hands-on time with it so far. The $600 phone’s new and noticeably lighter design feels great in the hand. The Pantone martini olive green color shade is emblazoned on a smooth texture that Motorola describes as “twill-inspired.” The 6.3-inch display — now with rounded corners instead of last year’s curved edges — gives the phone a more relaxed, easier-on-the-eyes appearance.

It’s the design refresh I’d like to see more often on new handsets, especially if they’re expecting us to pay a premium for them. A lot of the phones we’ve seen in 2026 so far look the same as their 2025 counterparts, and are getting a lot more expensive to boot, with $100 or even $200 price hikes. By comparison, the 2026 Edge is $50 more expensive at launch than its predecessor.

Instead, I quite like that Motorola’s Edge phone is leaving the more staid gray and black colors behind in favor of this look, accented with gold around the camera bump and the side rails. The phone’s 160-gram weight also makes it one of the lighter phones out there for its overall size. That’s including a three-camera array with a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom alongside 50-megapixel wide and ultrawide cameras. (For reference, Samsung’s $900 Galaxy S26 weighs in a touch heavier at 167 grams, while the $500 Google Pixel 10A is 183 grams.)

I’ll need more time with the cameras to see how they perform in a variety of situations, but a few sample photos I took of the decorations around the office show plenty of color in a variety of items. For instance, the wide-angle camera captures plenty of detail and color throughout the Lego Death Star that’s on display. When moving over to the telephoto lens, I’m able to use the 3x zoom to focus in on one of the scenes in the center.

The move to a 10-megapixel lens is slightly more noticeable — there’s some variance in the color shades of the red between the Lego photos and it’s a little grainier — but the camera gets the job done in terms of zooming into a scene without resorting to the digital zoom we commonly see on similarly priced phones that lack a telephoto camera.

The zoom is more effective in this simpler photo of a red dragon in the office, in which the telephoto camera is able to pick up quite a bit of detail by keeping its focus on the center of the image.

Most other specs on the phone are solidly midrange — including the phone’s MediaTek Dimensity 7450 processor that’s similar to what’s in the base Razr 2026. It does mean that the Edge is powerful enough to support the company’s various Moto AI features, which include photography enhancement tools such as the AI-powered Signature Style for adjusting how colors process after taking photos. The phone’s 5,000-mAh battery can recharge at 60-watt wired speeds. (For reference, last year’s Edge — with slightly faster 68W speeds — recharged from 0% to 65% in our 30-minute test.)

My biggest concerns however, are the Edge’s limited 128GB of storage along with a short upgrade cycle commitment of two years — plus three years of security updates. It’s a constrained amount of storage for a $600 phone, but it’s likely buyers won’t have to pay full price, as the Edge might become discounted quickly. Last year, Motorola’s Edge had a $550 MSRP but some phone carriers sold it for $300 no contract needed. And if this year’s Edge does become similarly discounted, it might be an attractive option when put up against other devices that normally sell in the $300 range.

But what I really hope with the Edge’s revamped design is that Motorola finds a way to eventually bring the company’s new Signature phone line to the US. That phone — currently only available internationally — has the best of both worlds: the similarly premium look with a ton of high-end specs such as a 5,200-mAh silicon carbon battery with 90-watt wired charging speeds, 50-megapixel wide, ultrawide and telephoto cameras along with seven years of software updates. Maybe we’ll eventually get the company’s Signature, but perhaps the Motorola Edge is merely the ramp-up to that higher-end phone.