A couple of weeks ago, Motorola's premium mid-range phone Edge 70 Pro, hit stores in India.

It is available in two variants- 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage- with prices starting at Rs 38,999.

Design, build quality and display

The new Edge 70 Pro's design language takes inspiration from other Edge 70 series family of phones and also the Motorola Signature (review).

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

The device comes in three PANTONE-certified colours- Lily White with marble finish, Titan and Tea in a satin luxe finish. Our review unit is the latter. It has a premium fabric-like texture. It is also does a fine job repelling the sweaty fingerprint smudges on the back.

It flaunts a familiar curved square-shaped camera module on the back with colour-matching gold-like shiny accents with a metallic finish.

The device also has a sturdy plastic-based mid-frame around the display with a similar shiny olive-like colourway with matte finish, matching the textured back panel.

Also, it comes with a super slim body with around 6.99mm thickness, weighs 190g, and the display cascades onto the frame on the sides. It is very easy to hold and operate single-handedly.

It should be noted that lily white model measures 7.29 mm, a bit thicker than the other variants.

The Motorola phone may look like a slim, cute phone, but it is built to withstand daily wear and tear and last for several years.

The display is safeguarded by Corning's Gorilla Glass 7i shield against scratches when kept in the close confines of a pant pocket with keys and coins.

Further, it boasts of an IP68 + IP69 rating and a MIL-STD-810H military durability rating. It is capable of surviving a dip in the swimming pool for close to 1.5 metres (approx. five feet) for close to 30 minutes. It can function in extreme temperatures.

On the front, it flaunts a 6.8-inch 1.5K (2772 x 1272p) 10-bit Extreme AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, up to 5,200 nits peak brightness.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

It is good for multimedia consumption on OTT apps and doom scrolling on Instagram Reels and Meta's Facebook indoors. However, outdoors, you have to take a bit closer to chest height to view content due to the reflection issue.

It also features a Type-C port, stereo speakers tuned with the Dolby Atmos system, dual-SIM slots and an in-display fingerprint sensor. The latter works smoothly with a low false rejection rate.

Performance

Inside, it houses a 4nm class 3.4GHz MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme series octal-core processor with Arm Mail-G720 MC8 GPU. It promises to deliver 40 per cent improvement in CPU boost, 30 per cent in GPU performance and 65 per cent faster NPU compared to the previous iteration.

In actual, practical terms, the phone, as advertised, performed smoothly without any lag. However, the software is kind of buggy. All phones in the market will have one or another small issue. It is not a big deal, as a software update can fix them.

The device features 4600mm² vapour chamber. It promises 18 per cent better cooling than the predecessor. It manages to efficiently dissipate heat when running generative Artificial Intelligence apps such as Moto AI, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, playing AAA games or operating a camera.

Indoors, you won't face overheating as such, but outdoors with summer conditions, it does kind of warms up when recording high-resolution video, but not overwhelming to complain.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro.

The device runs on Android 16 and is guaranteed to get three years of OS updates and five years of security software patches up to 2031.

It is available in two configurations-- 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage.

Though the phone comes in a slim form factor, Motorola has managed to pack a massive 6,500mAh battery. It can easily last a whole day with extreme usage, including consuming content only on a cellular data plan.

It boasts a 90W TurboPower fast charging capability. It can charge the device from zero to 50 per cent in around 20 minutes and hit the 100 per cent mark in one hour.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Photography

The Edge 70 Pro features a dual-camera module- main 50MP (with LYTIA-710 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, OIS: Optical Image Stabilisation) + 50MP (with 122-degree ultra-wide autofocus camera, macro option, multispectral sensor) with LED flash on the back.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.

Like all the premium Motorola phones, the phone does a pretty nice job with clear, crisp photos in the sunlight. It manages to get a near-accurate skin tone of humans.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro's camera sample.