Motorola Edge+ review

Android 10, lightly Moto-modded

Motorola has settled on a mostly stock Android experience for its smartphones, even the ones that aren't part of the Android One program. Even so, there's a an extensive list of custom features nicely bundled in the Moto App.

Moto Actions are an assortment of clever ways for interacting with the phone - including a karate chop for toggling the flashlight on or off, twist motion to launch the camera app, three-finger screenshot gesture, accelerometer-based ringtone silencing.

Moto app • Actions

Moto Display is a bit more feature rich on the Edge+ than on your average Moto. Edge Touch is an action bar on the side which you can use in a number of ways - swipe in for customizable shortcuts, swipe down for access to the notification shade and quick toggles, swipe up for the task switcher and app drawer. Double tapping the bar, on the other hand, can be set up to do one of two things - it will either switch back and forth between the two last used apps, or it will disable the display edges thus shrinking the usable app area within the flat portion so that text doesn't spill to the sides making it difficult to read. You could argue that disabling the edges on a phone that makes a big deal out of its edges is somewhat counterintuitive, but the option is there if you want to use it. You can adjust the bar's location along the height of the phone as well as pick the left or right edge, but you can't have both.

Moto Display: Edge Touch

Edge lights is a set of features that will light up the curved sides of the display for calls and notifications, as well as when charging the phone. You can set those to only be active when the screen is facing down for maximum coolness effect. This is when the bundled case with its raised top and bottom lips comes in handy.

Moto Display: Edge Lights

The other two features in this category aren't Edge exclusives. Peek Display, the not-always-on display, will show notifications and let you interact with them right there on the lock screen plus it will wake up when you pick up your phone. The 'Attentive display' will keep the screen on as long as you are looking at it.

There's a brand new Personalization feature that lets you customize the look and feel of your Moto. You can play around with the size and layout of the icons on the homescreen, change the system font, and pick an accent color for the quick toggles.

Moto Gametime is the company's set of tools for enhancing mobile gaming and now it offers a cool new feature - you can add virtual triggers on the edge, which you can use in popular action games. Another standout capability is the option to have two additional software buttons (Left and Right), which you can assign in-game actions to and position anywhere on the display.

If you turn on Immersive mode, it will filter out calls and notifications for you, while the Performance section allows you to turn off adaptive brightness, disable the edge portions of the display and turn on audio enhancements.

An optional in-game floating icon called Toolkit gives you quick toggles for calls and notifications, access to your choice of two messaging apps as well as access to the full Gametime settings.

Moto Gametime

Gestures are the means of choice for navigation on the Edge+. It's a relatively custom implementation with a single elongated bar on the bottom of the screen. Swiping upwards takes you to the home screen, a swipe up with a pause brings out the recent apps menu while swiping further up brings up the app drawer. You can quickly switch between recently used apps by swiping sideways on the bar. Sadly, you can't hide it and it's there, eating up screen estate at all times, except for full-screen videos and games. If you want Back, then just swipe in from the edge of the screen - that gesture's sensitivity is adjustable too, though we didn't find any issues with the default 3/4 setting.

If, on the other hand, you want to have the classic three-button navigation bar, Motorola still gives you the option to switch to it from Settings.

System navigation

All of these aside, the rest is pretty much Android 10 as Google intended it to be.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher • Quick toggles

Synthetic benchmarks

The Motorola Edge+ has the Snapdragon 865 inside, in true top-tier fashion. There are no RAM and storage configurations other than the 12GB/256GB one we have here for review and that too makes a flagship statement. Let's see how it ranks next to other flagships.

Rather nicely, in fact. That is to say, it posts virtually identical single-core results in Geekbench as the rest of the Snapdragon 865 crew and places around the middle of the (still tightly spaced) pack in multi-core.

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  1332
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  929
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  928
• Realme X50 Pro
  911
• Motorola Edge+
  910
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  910
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  910
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  905
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  904
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  902
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  900
• Huawei P40 Pro
  780
• Motorola Edge
  586

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  3503
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  3402
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  3387
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  3374
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  3331
• Motorola Edge+
  3295
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  3289
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  3269
• Huawei P40 Pro
  3197
• Realme X50 Pro
  3175
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  2728
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  2697
• Motorola Edge
  1862

Antutu places the Edge+ a notch below the Android overachievers, but still comfortably ahead of an Exynos-powered Galaxy S20 Ultra or a Huawei P40 Pro.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  595246
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  593717
• Realme X50 Pro
  592447
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  575601
• Motorola Edge+
  574155
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  573276
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  557056
• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  536883
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  528631
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  527612
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  514485
• Huawei P40 Pro
  496356
• Motorola Edge
  305989

The Moto pulls ahead in the GPU tests topping charts in GFXBench left and right. It's not a huge advantage, just the odd frame per second, but Edge+ is consistently ever so slightly better.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  120
• Motorola Edge+
  89
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  87
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  86
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  86
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  86
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  86
• Realme X50 Pro
  86
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  86
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  85
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  85
• Huawei P40 Pro
  75
• Motorola Edge
  34

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Motorola Edge+
  83
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  75
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  74
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  61
• Realme X50 Pro
  60
• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  60
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  59
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  59
• Huawei P40 Pro
  52
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  43
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  43
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  42
• Motorola Edge
  32

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  67
• Motorola Edge+
  52
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  51
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  51
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  51
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  51
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  51
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  51
• Realme X50 Pro
  51
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  51
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  50
• Huawei P40 Pro
  44
• Motorola Edge
  19

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  57
• Motorola Edge+
  48
• Realme X50 Pro
  45
• LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
  44
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  43
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  42
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  42
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  41
• Huawei P40 Pro
  31
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  25
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  25
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  24
• Motorola Edge
  18

Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Motorola Edge+
  32
• Realme X50 Pro
  30
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  29
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  28
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  26
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  17
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  17
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  14
• Motorola Edge
  12

Aztek OpenGL ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Motorola Edge+
  33
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  32
• Realme X50 Pro
  31
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  29
• Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
  29
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  19
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  18
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  17
• Motorola Edge
  12

In 3DMark the Edge+ edges ahead once more in the OpenGL version of the benchmark. In the Vulkan-based test it's tied at the top with the Red Magic 5G and the iQOO 3, still a notch above the rest.

3DMark SSE OpenGL ES 3.1 1440p

Higher is better

• Motorola Edge+
  7409
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  7261
• nubia Red Magic 5G
  7250
• Realme X50 Pro
  7221
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  7159
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  7127
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  6713
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  6593
• Huawei P40 Pro
  6062
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro
  4432
• Motorola Edge
  3004

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1440p

Higher is better

• nubia Red Magic 5G
  6678
• vivo iQOO 3 5G
  6675
• Motorola Edge+
  6666
• Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  6526
• Realme X50 Pro
  6472
• OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
  6425
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
  6308
• Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (60Hz, 1440p)
  6249
• Huawei P40 Pro
  5637
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro
  4233
• Motorola Edge
  2801

The Motorola Edge+ does heat up after repeated benchmark runs, quite significantly so. It manages to maintain near-peak performance in the process, however, so that's nice. The 90Hz display, near-stock Android, and heaps of RAM also ensure that it delivers a fluid experience at all times.