Motorola ThinkPhone review
Gorgeous 6.6-inch 144Hz display
The display is definitely one of the highlights of the Motorola ThinkPhone. It looks mighty impressive on paper. A 1080 x 2400 pixel resolution on a 6.6-inch diagonal works out to a density of around 399 ppi, which is perfectly crisp and sharp in person.
The panel Motorola is using gets plenty bright. We managed to get 514 nits on the slider and an impressive 1069 nits in bright outdoor conditions.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, |
White, |
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| 0 | 1760 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1274 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1205 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1198 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1069 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1047 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1015 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 974 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 946 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 831 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 828 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 809 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 804 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 797 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 786 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 768 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 767 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 690 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 517 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 516 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 514 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 501 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 499 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 496 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 487 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 484 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 476 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 471 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 460 | ∞ | |
Color reproduction accuracy is also very strong on the ThinkPhone. The panel offers 10-bit color. The phone has just two color modes in settings - saturated, which is the default and natural. Saturated mode aims for the DCI-P3 color space and gets pretty close. The blue and green channels are a bit boosted, but not by much.
Color mode settings
Natural mode is intended to cover the sRGB color space and, basically, aces that with DeltaE values low enough to be considered color-accurate.
The ThinkPhone has HDR10+ support on its display. In software, it reports decoder support for HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. No Dolby Vision. Interestingly enough, the Netflix app does not report any HDR compatibility, but that might be fixed with an update on Netflix's end.
HDR support • DRM info • Netflix playback capabilities
We are also happy that the ThinkPhone has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing streaming services like Netflix to offer FullHD streams to saturate its display resolution.
High refresh rate handling
As already mentioned, the Motorola ThinkPhone has a 144Hz refresh rate display. It offers a total of four refresh rate options in settings - 60Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz and Auto mode. The first three are really straightforward - the phone is simply set to a static 60Hz, 120Hz or 144Hz, and that's that.
Display refresh rate options • Available display refresh rate modes
However, 60Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz are not the only refresh rate modes available on the ThinkPhone. That list actually includes 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz. There is no 48Hz mode, as we have seen with other Motorola phones. Auto refresh rate mode promises Ai-driven automatic refresh rate switching and delivers on that promise as well, with a very dynamic and content-aware system in place.
What basically happens in practice is that the OS actively monitors what is currently on screen. If it sees any motion, it then determines whether it requires a boost up to 90Hz or higher to 120Hz and acts accordingly. The system works exceptionally well in our experience.
The only downside is that we never actually saw it trigger 144Hz mode. You need to go in and manually select the 144Hz mode to get a 144Hz refresh rate at all.
Here is a quick video showcasing how well Auto refresh rate mode detects things like the BlurBusters UFO test in a browser and then a video playing in both a local player and YouTube and switches to the optimal refresh rate on the fly.
Unfortunately, the Automatic refresh rate switching mode isn't quite as reliable when it comes to gaming. Some games we tried ran at 120Hz while others at 60Hz, despite the fact that we know these titles can render at above 60fps, and the ThinkPhone has the performance to facilitate that as well.
Games running in Auto mode
Thankfully, the fixed 144Hz mode works great with supported games and lets them render well above 60fps. Users should probably stick to it when gaming on the ThinkPhone. Mind you, we did observe the ThinkPhone lowering its refresh rate while gaming in 144Hz in situations where the game engine produced lower frame rates, which is great battery-saving behavior. You can still override this by selecting a refresh rate on a per-game basis using the Moto Play interface, which is great to see.
Games running in 144Hz mode
Overall, despite a few oddities here and there, we are quite impressed with the dynamic, accurate and content-aware way automatic refresh rate switching works on the ThinkPhone. It has one of the better systems around.
Battery life
The Motorola ThinkPhone has a solid battery capacity of 5,000 mAh. That's quite reasonable for its 8.3mm profile and 188.5 g weight.
The ThinkPhone managed a great battery endurance rating of 116 hours in our proprietary test. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has already proven itself as an efficient chip and is doing great all around in the ThinkPhone. Both off-screen and on-screen test results are great.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.
Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.
Charging speed
The ThinkPhone ships with a 68W Motorola charger. It is actually quite compact for its max output. It has the following output ratings: 5V@3A, 9V@3A, 15V@3A, 20V@3.4A and 11V@6.2A. From what we can tell, it uses USB Power Delivery at its core, and that 20V output makes it great for charging a modern PD laptop in a pinch as well.
The ThinkPhone charger reasonably quickly using its bundled adapter. We managed to get it from dead 53% in 15 minutes and then 86% in half an hour. A full charge took just under an hour, which is not chart-topping by any means, but not too shabby either.
Speakers
The ThinkPhone has a hybrid stereo speaker system, with one channel being handled by a dedicated bottom-firing speaker and the other by an amplified earpiece. This is a pretty common practice.
The speakers on the ThinkPhone are not particularly well balanced because of this trait, but on the plus side, they do get very loud. That's both a pro and a con, though, since there is a lot of distortion at high volume on the ThinkPhone. At least you can rest assured that you will always hear your phone ringing.
In terms of output quality, the ThinkPhone is solid, if not particularly exceptional in any way. For what it's worth, it sounds decent to our ears at a moderate volume - nice vocals, slightly muddy treble, and some bass.
Motorola has also included Dolby Atmos on the ThinkPhone. It offers a very robust set of equalizers with more than a few presets to choose from.
Dolby Atmos
The default Smart Audio option does a great job automatically optimizing for most scenarios, though, so we would recommend just sticking with that.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
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