Motorola Edge 50 Neo, a perfectly sized smartphone that boasts well rounded specifications.
It's the Motorola Edge 50 Neo. Motorola has offered this phone is something that other brands should learn from. This is a new and convenient phone in the mid-range category. No one wants to launch a compact phone anymore; many people prefer that brands launch handy, compact phones.
Usually, the flagship series by brands like Samsung comes with a handy or compact phone or occasionally, Google or Apple give out compact phones. However, this Neo from the Edge 50 series is one of that category. In the mid-range price, this phone will be priced at 23,999 INR.
It's eco-friendly packaging, and obviously, you get a phone inside. With the phone, you get a hard back cover that matches the color of the phone, and a fast charger too—it's a 61W fast charger and a Type-C to Type-C cable. There are four colors you can choose from. The one I have is Nautical Blue, Pantone-certified. Vegan leather and the frame, and side part are made from polycarbonate. I think its design might remind you of Edge 50, but this phone is way more compact and handy. Feels good to hold. Has a flat display. Its weight is not very high, about 170 grams, and though it is not a super-thin device, it is not too thick either.
Since it is a compact-sized phone, which is handy, normally, the maximum battery possible in such phones is limited, but they have included wireless charging, supporting 15W wireless charging. It's fitted with a 4,310mAh battery.
It also has proper IP64 water and dust resistance. The device is military-grade certified, and the display comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Some other essentials include dual SIM support, though it does not come with a headphone jack. The speakers, however, are dual stereo. They are not super loud, but they are decently loud. It supports Dolby Atmos and spatial sound, among other things. The haptic motor for typing or UI vibrations is better than standard ones—it feels more solid and responsive. Connectivity-wise, it supports 16 5G bands, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and 4G+ (showing carrier aggregation). There's also support for NFC.
Normally in phones priced between 20-25,000 rupees, you get a Full HD+ display; here, however, this is a 6.4-inch, 1.5k LTPO display with a 120Hz refresh rate, which can switch between 1Hz and 120Hz. It also has an in-display fingerprint scanner, a pretty decent speed for giving out a non-fingerprint display, and very minimal bezels and chin along the sides. You get HDR video playback, which works well on YouTube, though not supported on Netflix yet. It's always displaying and has a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.
This phone has plenty of features, which are barely found in this budget. As a balancing act, Motorola resorted to the use of the Dimensity 300 processor, DDR4 RAM, and UFS 2.2 storage. Overall, it will give you a good performance. You can casually game sometimes, this phone will do that easily. Being compact, Thet throttle graph didn't show many throttling parts.
This runs on Android 14 with Motorola's new Halo UI. A big change by Motorola is here. Normally, the promise is 3+4 or 2+3 years of software updates. Here, Motorola offers five years of Android updates and five years of security updates.
You get Adobe Scan and Smart Connect on the camera to wirelessly connect your phone to a laptop or TV to access apps, or to transfer files. There are features like stickers, folders, and Family Space as well. In place of the gallery, they have Google Photos, so you will get Magic Editor options as well. Now, moving on to the camera, they have even included a telephoto lens! With a 50MP main camera featuring OIS and a Sony sensor, a 13MP ultra-wide camera with autofocus doubled to work as a macro camera, and a 10MP 3x telephoto lens that allows the option of digital zooming up to 30 times, the phone also sports a 32MP selfie camera. I could click a few pictures quickly and for the price, the images came out pretty fine. It seems as though the colors could be somehow saturated, so you would definitely feel the urge to balance them manually if you prefer natural colors. You can shoot 4K 30FPS video on all the cameras, though you can’t switch between them while recording. The selfie camera also supports 4K video.
So, this Motorola product really fills the gap in the market, especially in the mid-range. Nowadays Brands are not working on compact and handy phones. But Motorola targeted the average user and added some cool features such as IP rating, military-grade certification, wireless charging, and telephoto lens. So, personally, it's great that a brand has decided to provide these features at this price point.
What do you think about this phone? Share your opinion in the comments below.
