Motorola Edge 50 Pro

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is the middle model of the Edge 50 family and the one that tries to deliver the most visible hardware for the money: a curved 6.7-inch pOLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, a main camera with an f/1.4 aperture, a genuine 3x telephoto lens, 125W wired charging, 50W wireless charging and IP68 protection, all driven by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 platform. This review is based on the published specifications and on Motorola's own announcement and product pages. It treats the company's performance, camera and battery statements as claims, not as measured results, and it does not quote prices that Motorola did not publish on the pages consulted.

Where it sits in the lineup

Motorola announced the Edge 50 Pro on 16 April 2024 alongside the Edge 50 Ultra and the Edge 50 Fusion, presenting the trio as a new generation of the Edge line built around design, camera quality and the company's Moto AI features. According to the announcement, the Pro went on sale first in selected European and Latin American markets at a starting price of 699 euros, with Asia and Oceania following later. No US price appears on the pages consulted, so none is given here. Inside the family, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra sits above it with a larger camera system, while the cheaper Motorola Edge 50 uses an older Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 variant, a 120Hz screen and a lower-resolution 32MP selfie camera, although its battery is larger at 5,000 mAh. Further down Motorola's catalogue, models such as the Moto G85 cover the mainstream budget segment. The successor generation includes the Motorola Edge 60 Pro.

Design and display

Motorola describes the Edge 50 Pro as a phone with contoured edges, a sandblasted aluminum frame and a back finished either in vegan leather or in a special-edition pearl material that the company says is handcrafted in Italy. The three colours are Black Beauty, Luxe Lavender and Moonlight Pearl, and the pearl version has a distinctive streaked, brushed look that sets it apart from most phones in this price range. The phone is rated IP68 against dust and water. In its footnotes Motorola defines this as immersion in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for up to 30 minutes in laboratory conditions, and it adds that damage from exposure beyond the rating is not covered by the warranty, which is the usual caveat for water resistance claims.

The screen is a 6.7-inch pOLED panel with curved edges and a Super HD resolution of 2712 x 1220 pixels. The refresh rate reaches 144Hz, which is higher than the 120Hz found on the standard Edge 50 and on most phones near this price. The panel is HDR10+ certified, and Motorola's product page talks about over a billion colours on a nearly borderless display. As a marketing detail, the company calls the Edge 50 family the first smartphones with a Pantone Validated camera and display, a certification meant to confirm that colours and skin tones are rendered accurately. Whether that matters in daily use is subjective, but it signals that colour accuracy was a design goal. Audio comes from two stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support and Snapdragon Sound for compatible Bluetooth headphones.

Performance and software

The chip is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, an upper mid-range platform. Motorola promises smooth gameplay, fast frame rates and quick file transfers, but it publishes no benchmark figures, and none are invented here. In practical terms the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 belongs to the tier below the Snapdragon 8 series: it should handle everyday apps, social media, video and most games comfortably, but it is not aimed at sustained, maximum-settings gaming. The memory options are described as up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. The footnotes clarify the RAM arrangement: the 12GB model carries 12GB of physical RAM and can borrow up to another 12GB from storage through the RAM Boost feature, while the 8GB model has 8GB of physical RAM with up to 8GB of virtual extension. Virtual memory is a convenience for keeping more apps open, but it uses storage space and is not a substitute for physical RAM.

Motorola's pitch for the software centres on Moto AI. The announcement lists a generative wallpaper tool called Style Sync that turns a photo of a pattern into four images, a Photo Enhancement Engine, and camera-side tools such as Adaptive Stabilization and Auto Focus Tracking, plus a Long Exposure mode. Google Photos is the default gallery, and Motorola says further editing tools such as Magic Editor and Photo Unblur would arrive through it. The pages consulted do not name the Android version or an update policy for the Edge 50 Pro, so this review does not state either; buyers who care about update commitments should check Motorola's regional pages before purchase.

Camera

The rear camera system is where the Edge 50 Pro separates itself from many rivals at its price. The main sensor is a 50MP unit with an f/1.4 aperture, which Motorola says is the widest aperture available in a smartphone and which it claims lets in 64 percent more light than a comparison it cites. A wider aperture helps in dim scenes and gives more natural background blur. The second camera is a 10MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom and optical image stabilization, which the announcement points out is rare in this class; Motorola also quotes a Super Zoom of up to 30x, which is a digital, software-assisted figure and should be expected to lose detail. The third camera is a 13MP ultrawide that doubles as a macro lens and can focus as close as 3 cm.

The front camera is a 50MP unit with autofocus, a higher resolution than the 32MP selfie camera on the standard Edge 50. The Moto AI features add motion-focused tools for filming moving subjects, and the camera is tied to Pantone's skin-tone validation. As with any camera claim, results depend on processing, and independent comparisons are the right place to judge image quality; what the published hardware shows is a main camera with a large aperture, a real telephoto and a high-resolution selfie camera, a combination that is uncommon below flagship prices.

Battery and charging

The battery capacity is 4,500 mAh, which is modest compared with the 5,000 mAh or larger cells in many competitors. Motorola compensates with very fast charging: 125W wired TurboPower, which the company says can reach a full charge in as little as 18 minutes and give up to 12 hours of use from four minutes of charging, and 50W wireless TurboPower, which is unusually high for the segment. Motorola also quotes up to 40 hours of power on a charge for a median mixed-use profile and notes that these figures are approximate and depend on network conditions and settings. A buyer should expect the phone to recover quickly rather than to last longer between charges than larger-battery rivals, and should check whether the charger is included in the box in their market, since the pages consulted do not settle that point.

Who it is for

The Edge 50 Pro suits people who want features that are normally reserved for more expensive phones: a high-refresh curved OLED, a telephoto lens, very quick wired and wireless charging and an IP68 body, wrapped in a design that looks different from the glass-slab norm. It is a good fit for photographers who value the 3x optical zoom, for people who top up the phone in short bursts, and for buyers who like the pearl or vegan-leather finishes. Those who prefer a larger battery should compare it with the Galaxy A56 or the Pixel 9a, which take different approaches to endurance and software support.

Compromises to consider

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is a capable but not top-tier chip, so heavy gamers will find flagship phones faster. The 4,500 mAh battery is smaller than average, and the fast charging is the main mitigation. Motorola does not state a software update policy on the pages consulted, and no official US price is listed there. The curved screen can be less comfortable for some users because of accidental edge touches and reflections, and the virtual RAM extension should be seen as a bonus rather than a reason to choose a smaller physical RAM model. Finally, availability varies by market, so colours and memory configurations may differ from the ones described here. For a ranking of how it fares against similar devices, see the rankings page.