Motorola Edge 20 Pro review

Design, build quality, handling

Edge is just a name with this year's Motos; the curved screens of the original models from 2020 are now gone. The Pro's front is flat as any other of the Edge 20s, a design and engineering choice that will sit well with more conservative folk that find sloping displays a hindrance to usability. It's undeniably at least a little less fancy, though.

The Edge 20 Pro is anything but cheap or plain looking, however. The Gorilla Glass 5-clad 6.7-inch OLED, planar as it may be, has reasonably thin bezels all around and a small-ish punch hole for the selfie camera - tiny, in fact, when you consider the sensor size of the 32MP selfie camera in there.

The back of the phone comes in one of two finishes - glass or vegan leather. Our review unit is the glass variant, its GG5 nature making it a match for the front in terms of durability. Called Midnight Blue, the handset has a matte finish with an underlying iridescent effect - it's neither mundane, nor too flashy.

It does tend to pick up fingerprints, and it's not particularly easy to clean either, but the smudges aren't too prominent. It's not as slippery as most matte glass phones, though, and we reckon that grip and smudges walk hand in hand.

There's another color variant with a glass rear, and that's called Iridescent Cloud - white is the base here, but it too plays with light into all sorts of pale blue and pink hues. The vegan leather option only comes in Blue.

There's a Motorola bat logo above the midpoint on the back, and it's just a design touch - some Motos have a fingerprint reader embedded there, but not the Edge 20 Pro.

The camera is in the top left corner, and it's an island with some complex topography. There are four different height levels, the three-camera peaks sticking ever so slightly out of a common ridge, raised above the ground level, which terraces down once more to the sea of midnight blueness.

This whole stepped-up design makes a whole lot of sense when you consider just how much the cameras protrude from the back. Motorola just did its best to make a more gradual transition. That hasn't helped much for reducing the phone's tendency to wobble on a flat surface, though you may very well not care one bit about that. If you do, the included case resolves the issue, though it's not quite the looker itself.

The Edge 20 Pro is a millimeter thicker than the Edge 20 - hardly an issue, as it measures a svelte 8mm at the waistline. But that extra mil has meant that they couldn't go with the vanilla model's flat back and the Pro slopes gently to the sides, a lone reminder of the original Edge's curves.

Motorola Edge 20 Pro (left) next to the Edge 20

Motorola says that the phone's outer frame is made of an aluminum alloy with resin coating. What that means to our fingertips is that it feels less premium than exposed metal. It easily picks up fingertips, too, perhaps even more so than the back.

The frame is home to the physical controls, and we'd say that none of the buttons is conveniently placed. The power button, which also houses the fingerprint sensor, is a good two centimeters above the midpoint on the right - on a large phone that makes it barely okay for right thumb operation and essentially out of reach for left index finger access when holding the phone in what we'd call a natural grip.

Right thumb reaches the FPR okay • Left index finger access requires a change of grip

All that being said, the fingerprint sensor works really well. Unlocking with either finger is quick and trouble-free - even the gymnastics required for lefties don't result in misreadings. If anything, the less than ideal position makes accidental touches - the bane of side-mounted sensors - less likely, though you can still set up the phone to require a press as opposed to the default touch-only operation.

The volume rocker, placed above the power button, is also hardly convenient to get at.

The Edge 20 Pro also features a dedicated Google Assistant key. In line with the rest of the buttons, this one is in a pretty awkward position, too - very high up on the left side. On a positive note, if you're not one to actively use Google Assistant, you'll likely appreciate having the key out of your way.

The Edge 20 Pro has a dual nano-SIM slot, located on the bottom of the phone. There's no provision for a microSD card, though. You'll note that the card tray has a red gasket to keep the elements out - it's only IP52-rated, so refrain from dunking it in the pool, but don't worry if you get caught outside in the rain with it.

Other bits you'll see next to the card slot are the USB-C port, the single loudspeaker and the primary mic. Up top, there's another mic and nothing else - so no headphone jack on the Edge 20 Pro.

Dual SIM tray on the bottom • Lone mic up top

The Edge 20 Pro measures 163x76x8mm and weighs 185g for the vegan leather variant or 190g for the glass-backed options. The numbers are roughly comparable to competitors like the Mi 11 or the OnePlus 9, while the vivo X60 Pro is tangibly more compact while the Zenfone 8 Flip is considerably heavier and bulkier.