Back in 2016, before Apple made it trendy, Motorola yanked the headphone jack from its phones. The following year was the last time it made a high-end Android phone. In 2020, it's hoping for a comeback. The Motorola Edge series is its first honest attempt to compete with the wave of $1,000-plus devices on the market now, and to do it the company is bringing back that 3.5-mm audio jack it cast aside.
There are two phones in the lineup, the Motorola Edge Plus ($1,000), which is exclusive to Verizon, and the Motorola Edge ($700), which you can buy unlocked and use on all major US carriers. Both pack all the features you'd expect to find, from excellent battery life and great performance to silky-smooth displays. They're good phones, but competition is fierce, and Motorola has priced these phones a bit too high.
The best part about the Edge Plus and Edge is the massive 5,000-mAh and 4,500-mAh batteries inside them, respectively. The former will easily take you to the end of day two. That's with me streaming a bunch of Dracula on Netflix, snapping photos of my dog with the camera, playing games, and catching up on all the TikTok videos my partner sends me. The regular Edge often lasts until 7 or 8 pm on the second day before needing a recharge. It's rare to see high-end phones last so long.
The flagship runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 processor, the same chip powering rival phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20. That processor keeps the device operating smoothly, even with a speedy 90-Hz screen. This means the screen refreshes 90 times per second, making scrolling and moving around the operating system feel noticeably more fluid than a typical 60-Hz display.
You get almost the same 6.7-inch OLED screen on the regular Edge, along with the 90-Hz refresh rate. The only difference is the Edge Plus supports HDR10+ (as opposed to HDR10 on the Edge). That means slightly better brightness and colors sometimes, but it's not really something you'll notice. The Edge also doesn't have as powerful a processor (the Snapdragon 765), but I rarely noticed any stutters in performance. They're both fast.
The screens get just bright enough to see outside on sunny days, the stereo speakers are really loud (they sound as good as a dirt-cheap Bluetooth speaker!), and the in-display fingerprint sensors on the front haven't given me much trouble. I'm happy to see the headphone jack make a return for folks that prefer the cord too.
It's a shame the phones lack any formal IP rating for water resistance. The Motorola Edge Plus and Edge are water-repellant, but Motorola didn't bother to pay for the IP68 rating you'll find on other flagships. It claims its own tests match the spec (at least for the Edge Plus). I left the Plus submerged in water for about 25 minutes and it still works, but official testing would give buyers peace of mind, considering the high price tags. These devices will be fine in the rain, but I'd be wary around pools.
Two areas where they differ are storage and software support. The Edge Plus comes with 256 gigabytes of internal storage and no MicroSD card slot, so you can't expand space if you fill it up. The Edge, on the other hand, has 128 gigabytes of storage with MicroSD support. It's an odd omission for the $1,000 phone.