Motorola Edge 30 Ultra review: flagship processor and 200 megapixel camera in a phone under €1,000

After a long period where 12 megapixels was the norm in the smarpthone camera market, several manufacturers have in recent years started experimenting with higher resolution sensors. We quickly reached 48, 64 or even 108 megapixels, but it’s only now, almost two years after the official launch of the first 200-megapixel sensor, that we’re seeing one in reality. The first smartphone on the market to bring image capture at this resolution is the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, the American brand’s new flagship. But are 200 megapixels enough to make a difference in the high-end smartphone space?

Motorola Edge 30 Ultra doesn’t stand out much with its design

The Edge brand is the one that Motorola has used for the past three years to launch its best-featured phones, and the Edge 30 Ultra, even if it changes a little on the outside, is currently the best the brand has to offer. We’re talking about a phone that looks premium right out of the box, featuring a curved-edge display, a matte-textured glass back that’s pleasant to the touch, and a large camera module on the back. The only thing that catches the eye on the materials list is that Gorilla Glass 5 is used, not the new Victus version.

It’s hard to come up with a new design in 2022 without a phone that doesn’t look like others from the past, so Motorola didn’t even try. If you’ve seen a curved edge phone in the last 4-5 years, this one looks the same, with a central cutout for the camera. The power and volume buttons are tautly stacked on the right side, and are integrated on a very thin metal edge. The power button has little ridges to make it easier to find. Unfortunately, it doesn’t integrate a fingerprint sensor, probably due to the limited surface area available. However, the solution of integrating it into the screen is not that unusual either.

On the back, the frosted glass has a “soft touch” texture, similar to what we most recently encountered on the OnePlus 10 Pro. Incidentally, the colour is similar too, a black with shiny particles in the light. The camera module houses three sensors and is integrated into a multi-layered island. First we have the base level, where the flash is positioned, the top level, where we find the secondary cameras, and the main camera needs another level to house the 200-megapixel sensor alongside a matching lens. This isn’t the largest camera module we’ve encountered, despite the resolution, but it’s among those that stand out the most. Even with a case, it won’t sit completely flat on a desk.

And speaking of cases, Motorola ships one in the Edge 30 Ultra’s package, along with even a 125W outlet charger and USB-C cable. Basically, this will be one of the high-end phones with accessories in the bundle, despite its off-the-shelf price not even reaching €1,000. The three Edge 30 models’ packaging is made only from recycled materials and can be recycled in turn.

The screen is very fluid, but doesn’t use the latest technology

Motorola is one of the companies pushing screen performance up lately, even if it’s not based on the latest technology. The screen on the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra offers Full HD+ resolution with a refresh rate of 144 Hz, not 120 as is the norm in the high-end area already, but it’s not LTPO, so it will only be able to vary between 144 Hz and 60 Hz, depending on the applications you run. Still, we’re talking about a 10-bit colour display and HDR10+ compatibility. It’s the brightness of over 1,000 nits that makes this model stand out though, offering a pleasant user experience even in bright sunlight.

Less pleasant are the curved edges. While the phone’s design gains points on a purely aesthetic level due to these edges, in practice they attract unwanted reflections in use and make pressing certain buttons in apps that are towards the edge harder. Most manufacturers have either given up or are starting to give up on curved edges, and the fact that the Edge 30 Ultra uses such a screen seems like a downgrade.

Performance is at a high level, but held back by the cooling system

It’s easy to intuit what level of performance a phone achieves, especially from the high-end area, even before testing begins. The Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, like all top-end phones of late, adopts Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. Thus, the test results are in that performance area.

What you can’t know in advance is how the processor behaves depending on the interior design of the device. The cooling on the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra isn’t all that much to brag about, though. In a stress test via 3DMark, the phone manages to retain only half of its original performance after about half an hour. Thus, it’s not exactly a “gaming” phone for those who expect to play for long periods of time on high settings.

In other respects though, such as productivity, this is one of the best performing devices available today.

Benchmarks

• AnTuTu – 1.064.475
• GeekBench – Single-Core: 1,317 / Multi-Core: 4,211
• 3DMark Wild Life Extreme – 2.750
• 3DMark Wild Live Extreme Stress Test – Best loop: 2.756 / Lowest loop: 1.215 / Stability: 44.1%
• PCMark – 15.597

Motorola Edge 30 Ultra offers good battery life and extremely fast charging

Motorola’s designers seem to be more focused on design than other benefits, at least when it comes to the Edge 30 models. Thus, the Ultra doesn’t have a 5,000 mAh battery, as we’ve seen on other top phones in recent years. However, the 4,610 mAh battery isn’t exactly to be ignored either, offering very good battery life for a device in this class. We’re talking about a full day’s worth of fuss-free use under normal and even heavy use at times, and even two for those who don’t spend all day with their phone in their hands.

And add to all this the extremely fast 125W charging. We’re talking a maximum of half an hour for a full charge and much less for 20-30 or even 50% to 100% charges. What’s more, those who choose a wireless charger can charge at up to 50W, and the Edge 30 Ultra can reverse charge headphones or other accessories (even other phones) by charging wirelessly at 10W, not just 5 as other devices do.

Motorola’s software continues to be relatively “clean”

Motorola is a brand known in the market for minimal customizations of the Android interface. Thus, the company’s MyUX uses many of the design elements of “standard” Android, from the notifications area and quick features, to the power menu, settings menu, and app drawer. All are completely stock. That doesn’t mean they can’t be customized, but users are free to choose whether they want the Google experience or one more to their liking.

Motorola includes many proprietary features though, such as a proprietary always-on display, or “edge” lights that alert you that you have unanswered notifications, as well as the Ready For desktop interface, which includes several modes such as for productivity, multimedia or gaming. Motorola’s interface is one of the few that can rival Samsung’s DeX in these respects.

Good news is that the Edge 30 Ultra is one of the competitive phones when it comes to software support. Motorola will deliver 3 system updates and provide four years of security updates on this model. Unluckily, the Edge 30 Ultra was released right around the time Android 13 officially hit the market, so we’ll see the maximum Android 15 on this model, as it ships with Android 12 from the factory.

The fingerprint sensor is flagship, but the speakers mid-range

Fingerprint sensors have already been on phones for about 10 years, so everyone’s expectation is that this is “commonplace” technology that’s guaranteed to work. Recent history has shown us that this is not quite the case, and that some brands, even reputable ones, can fail even with such “simple” technologies. Fortunately, the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra benefits from a quality fingerprint sensor. We’re talking about an optical solution, integrated into the bottom of the screen, that quickly detects fingerprints and works even when the screen is off.

Speakers on mobile phones are a tricky subject indeed, and few companies can boast good quality for music playback. Unfortunately, the Edge 30 Ultra doesn’t quite reach the flagship area with sound, despite integrating Dolby technologies and even having the Atmos logo permanently emblazoned on the top of the bezel. The sound is loud, but not extremely clear at high volume. High and mid frequencies are a bit muddled, and bass is almost non-existent. These speakers sound like rather average phone speakers.

The 200-megapixel camera shows off the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra

Of course, the most exciting thing about this model is the camera, offering first-time access to a 200-megapixel camera. It is, however, joined by an above-average camera selection in terms of specs, but not necessarily extremely high-performing compared to other flagships.

The 200-megapixel camera is also the only one that’s optically stabilized in the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra’s arsenal, so this will be the one that’s most useful, especially in low-light conditions. Incidentally, the zoom camera is billed as a portrait camera, and compared to other such cameras on the market, it has an f/1.6 aperture. The ultrawide camera, in addition to high resolution, also boasts an extra feature: the ability to take macro shots.

We thus appreciated Motorola putting macro capture in the camera selection menu, something we’ve rarely encountered. Even though there are many phones with dedicated macro cameras, few have a quickly accessible button, with most hiding the function in the “other functions” menu.

Photo day

In daytime, most photos taken with the Edge 30 Ultra are good or very good, with lots of detail and good exposure, no burnt areas. You can see the difference between the main and ultra-wide cameras when it comes to dynamic range, however, with photos having more detail on the 200-megapixel camera in both brightly lit and shadowy areas. The zoom camera is decent, but seems somewhat useless for general photography. Other devices use a crop on the sensor for a 2x zoom, which now seems somewhat “commonplace” in the phone photography area. I would have preferred a 2 or 3x crop on the main camera and a larger 5 or 10x optical zoom that really makes a difference.

At night, only the 200 megapixel camera seems to me suitable for stills. The ultra-wide camera manages to deliver slightly above-average results, but the frames are rather dark and lacking in detail, while the exposure time is quite long. On the zoom camera, the night mode has some strange effects, where dark areas are spoiled and appear in a blue tint, probably due to an odd calibration of the photo sensor backlight. In contrast, the results on the main camera are good, and sometimes even night mode is not necessary. Taking pictures at 200 megapixels and then downscaling them to a lower resolution has the advantage that it can decrease image noise and improve the detail captured.

Photo night

You can, of course, also capture images directly at 200 megapixel resolution, but the results are so large and hard to process that it’s not really worth the effort. Ultra-Res mode also works on the ultra-wide camera, for shooting at 50 megapixels. But the results aren’t impressive, as the extra resolution significantly increases the size of the photos, but not the level of detail. Images processed at lower resolutions offer a comparable level of detail at smaller sizes.

Certainly the Edge 30 Ultra has an above-average camera, but despite using a very high-resolution sensor, it’s definitely no better than those used on other phones in its performance range. The camera set tends more towards the mid-range than the flagship area, but it’s good that there are now intermediate solutions. Previously we were seeing a huge jump between mid-range and flagship, and this 200 megapixel camera seems to be a perfect fit between those performance zones.

Conclusions

The Edge 30 Ultra is the flagship of the Edge series and the best performing smartphone currently produced by Motorola. At the same time, it’s the first phone with a 200-megapixel sensor on the market, but alternatives will soon start appearing. It’s equipped with high-end hardware and makes some interesting choices to hit a lower price threshold than the flagship competition.

It looks like Motorola has learned from the mistakes of previous models, and if the Edge 30 Ultra’s price evolves in a similar fashion to what we’ve seen in the past, it could be a truly competitive flagship killer in just a few months. With such a model on the market at a discount down to around €650 or €700, it will be hard to recommend a OnePlus model in the same price range over it. At the moment, the €800 (3,999 lei) price is quite appealing, but there are already comparable or lagging alternatives in some respects (Galaxy S22/iPhone 13), and aside from being able to boast a 200 megapixel camera, there’s not one element that really makes this phone stand out in comparison.