The Motorola Edge 50 Pro might come with a downgraded chip, but it is not as bad as it sounds

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro, which is also known in the US as the Motorola Edge Plus (2024), is Motorola’s upcoming flagship phone. It will act as the successor to the Motorola Ege 40 Pro/Motorola Edge Plus (2023), which came out last year.

Thanks to some recently leaked images, we know that the Edge 50 Pro will be announced on April 3 in India (most likely). This should mean we can expect a reveal of the US version, the Motorola Edge+ (2024), soon after.

Now, we already know quite a bit about the Edge 50 Pro. For example, Motorola’s branch in India revealed it will sport a tech-stacked 6.7-inch screen with 2000 nits of peak brightness, 1.5K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate capabilities, and much more.

What processor will be powering the new Motorola Edge 50 Pro was still a bit unclear, though, with our best guess being the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. Unfortunately, freshly leaked results from the Geekbench database (a benchmark for processor performance) have revealed that the 2024 Motorola flagship might come with the less powerful Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 (via MySmartPrice).

Motorola Edge 50 Pro with a downgraded chip?

Snapdragon chipsets are made by Qualcomm. The company has given catchy and marketable names to its different chipset series, dubbing those meant for flagships as the Snapdragon 8 series and those meant for mid-range models as the Snapdragon 7 series.

Now, last year’s Motorola Edge 40 Pro came with a flagship chipset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, to be more precise. That is the same silicon that powers the Galaxy S23 from Samsung.

So, are you starting to see the disappointing news here? Yes, if the leaked Geekbench listing proves true, the Edge 50 Pro will come with a downgraded chip, or said otherwise — one that is not of the flagship level.

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is still more than powerful enough

Now, before you go and start to throw rocks at the good folks at Motorola, let us tell you a little bit about Qualcomm’s latest mid-range processor.

First things first, let us get the elephant in the room out of the way. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 still COMES WITH On-device AI! Yes, that’s right, it is not just the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that has them.

This means the chip is capable of offline translation of multiple languages, improvements to video recording and image quality while taking photos, and neat features like the phone giving you situational prompts (start a workout notification if it senses you running, for example).

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 comes with eight cores, including a prime core that speeds up to 2.63GHz, three performance cores up to 2.4GHz, as well as our efficiency cores up to 1.8GHz. Would you look at that — a perfect match to the Motorola Edge 50 Pro Geekbench listing!

Compared to the Gen 2, the Snapdragon Gen 3 has a 15% faster CPU and a 50% higher GPU performance.

So, what we are getting at here, is that you shouldn’t worry about Motorola going from the flagship Snapdragon 8 to the mid-range Snapdragon 7 series with the Edge 50 Pro. The reality right now is that high-end chips are simply getting too expensive, complicated to manufacture, and beastly capable. In other words, you can look at mid-range chipsets as the flagship phones we were seeing two or three years ago.

Other specs of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro we expect to see are 12GB of RAM, a 512GB storage option, and a 50MP main camera.