Motorola Edge 70 Pro review: The slim battery champ that punches above its weight
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is one surprisingly good phone that is priced right.
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a pleasant surprise in the mid-range segment. | Image by PhoneArena
Motorola has mostly completed the process of refreshing its portfolio by releasing a healthy amount of foldable Razr and regular candybar phones, and one of the more sensibly priced new devices is the Motorola Edge 70 Pro.
An annual spec refresh, the Moto Edge 70 Pro is the perfect example of an upper mid-range phone done right in one of the most competitive niches. The phone packs some pretty decent hardware paired with Motorola's approachable Android interface and a fairly aggressive price tag.
However, as someone who's used the phone for more than a week, I'd say that two of its strongest aspects don't show up on the spec sheet. It has a spectacular design language save for the curved screen, as well as a pair of loudspeakers that have no business sounding this good!
This phone won't be available in the US, just as all numbered Edge-series phones before it. It will be available in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. In Europe, the official price is set to EUR 550, but it might be slightly different in other markets. If you live in the US, consider getting
Table of Contents:
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Design and Display
One sleek phone that carries a blast from the past
Beautiful in Pantone Zinfandel
I can't remember the last time I didn't like the design of a Motorola phone I had to review. Objectively speaking, Motorola phones are always built nicely, and despite the lack of super-premium build materials, always feature a very pleasant exterior. This is achieved by combining different colors and textures that are quite intriguing most of the time.
That's precisely the case with the Motorola Edge 70 Pro. A very thin and lightweight candybar phone that's perfectly balanced and feels good in the hand, the Edge 70 Pro is a phone that you'd probably want to use without a case.
One sleek phone that feels thinner than it actually is. | Images by PhoneArena
Two reasons for that. First, the silky smooth backplate pattern feels great to the touch, especially on the Pantone Zinfandel version I had the pleasure of reviewing. Second, the case that Motorola has bundled with the phone is terrible and provides zero protection to the display.
And that's an issue, because unlike most phones out there, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro features a screen that's curved on both sides, like most Android phones used to be a few years back. I can't say I'm a fan of a curved screen. Ghost touches, glare, and content distortion are some of the negative properties of these screens, and the Edge 70 Pro has most of these.
The curved screen also makes the side frame too thin and doesn't provide enough grip.
Like many Motorola phones, the Edge 70 Pro features a dedicated Moto AI key on the left side, but sadly, it's still non-customizable and can only be used to interact with the phone's AI features.
The phone is IP68/IP69 water and dust resisant, and also MIL-STD-810H certified shockproof. Pretty impressive for a device that's slightly more than 7mm in thickness.
Here's what's inside the Moto Edge 70 Pro box. | Image by PhoneArena
Inside the Motorola Edge 70 Pro box, you will find the phone itself, a USB-C cable, a hard TPU case with MagSafe functionality, and the usual manuals and leaflets.
The screen is lovely, but the curves are an issue. | Images by PhoneArena
The Moto Edge 70 Pro comes with a spacious 6.78-inch AMOLED screen. It can go up to 120 Hz during standard usage, but a 144 Hz mode is available when playing a game. We measured a pretty decent maximum brightness of 2731 nits, which makes it quite legible in bright ambient lighting conditions, but the minimum brightness of 2.6 nits is too high.
Colors are lovely and pop out; you can also customize their intensituy and vibrancy. Honestly, the only downside with this screen are the curves to the sides, which I'm no fan of.
This Motorola comes with an optical fingerprint scanner, which often requires a second reading before it will unlock your phone. It's also positioned too low on the screen, so it's quite inconvenient to use. Face unlocking is more intuitive, but not as secure, which leaves us in a pickle.
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Camera
A very decent triple camera
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro comes with a total of four 50MP cameras, three at the back and one up front. The ones in the rear use a combination of Sony and Samsung sensors, which usually leads to some inconsistencies in terms of overall image quality.
The telephoto has a fairly decent 3.5X optical zoom, but this one focuses at 20cm+, so it doesn't double as a macro camera. And indeed, Motorola relies on the ultrawide for ultra-close subjects.
The camera app is very feature-rich and even has an AI-powered camera filter creator that can create a style tailored to you.
How do images turn out?
Motorola Edge 70 Pro camera samples
Well, pictures taken with the phone definitely look lively, as it's a bit too trigger-happy in terms of vibrance, especially when you want to capture green fields and blue skies.
In such scenarios, the Motorola amps up the vividness with the ultrawide and main cameras, making any scene you capture too saturated and far from real life. The telephoto is a bit more tamed, but that's certainly due to its narrower field-of-view.
I have to admit, photos do pop up, but that's not always a good thing. The photos above were taken in the default "Natural" style, imagine what happens when you enable the "Vivid" one...
Details are okay, but when you zoom in you'd realize the phone uses too much oversharpening and also tends to "hallucinate" at longer zoom levels, inventing details that might reflect real life in the best way. But the latter is a common issue with most phones when you zoom past a certain level.
Details are okay, but when you zoom in you'd realize the phone uses too much oversharpening and also tends to "hallucinate" at longer zoom levels, inventing details that might reflect real life in the best way. But the latter is a common issue with most phones when you zoom past a certain level.
Video Quality
The phone can capture videos of up to 4K@30fps, which turn out fairly detailed and strike a good balance between realistic and vibrant. The phone also supports a Horizon Lock feature that lets you capture stable portrait or landscape video even if you rotate the phone 90 degrees to the side or more, similarly to what Samsung introduced with the Galaxy S26 Ultra. However, just like on the Samsung phone, the feature is capped at 1080p@30fps, so you're not getting the most detailed footage.
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Performance & Benchmarks
Mid-range performance
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro features the Mediatek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset, a mid-range 4nm solution that provides decent day-to-day performance and good gaming performance.
The phone performs well. Don't get me wrong, it's a mid-range device so it is not expected to deliver stellar, iPhone 17 Pro Max or Galaxy S26 Ultra-grade performance, but it doesn't lag or struggle with any task.
If you are multi-tasking a lot and truly push it to the limits by juggling between many heavier apps and games, it will surely sweat a bit, but for regular Internet browsing and Instagram doomscrolling, this one is more than enough.
CPU Performance Benchmarks:
Geekbench 6: A high single-core score is what makes your phone feel snappy during everyday tasks like opening apps, typing and browsing. The multi-core score matters most when doing heavier work like video editing or gaming.
In the Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core tests, the Moto Edge 70 Pro shows a notable improvement over the older Moto Edge 60 Pro. This is a welcome inter-generational bump in performance; this is what I like to see.
GPU Performance
Wild Life Extreme is a heavy graphics workload used to measure a device's sustained GPU performance and thermal throttling. It uses older mobile rendering techniques and is friendly to older or lower-end mobile devices.
Similarly, the phone offers very decent gaming performance, with a very high peak performance that's a pleasant surprise. When throttled, it still performs fairly well as indicated by the low score in the stress test I ran on it. This definitely makes it a pretty decent phone for gaming. I played a couple of Call of Duty matches on it, and aside from the curved screen being a distraction, it fared as good as a higher-end Android phone.
Storage speed
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro comes with either 128GB or 256GB built-in storage, and no microSD card support. The RAM on board is 8GB or 12GB, respectively. Both storage models use UFS 4.1 type storage, which is among the faster ones around right now. In our storage benchmark test, the phone showcases decent storage speeds.
Storage tests measure how quickly your phone can move data. Random read and write show how fast your phone can find and move thousands of tiny, scattered files. This is the most important metric for an average user because it’s what happens when you open an app, check your notifications, or search through your photo gallery. Sequential read and write measure the speed of moving one giant, continuous file. You’ll notice this when you are saving a 4K video you just recorded or downloading a massive game update.
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Software
Motorola Edge 70 Pro screenshots.
Motorola traditionally has one of the cleanest custom Android skins that are very close to Google's implementation on its Pixel phones. Suffice to say it's as vanilla as it gets, but with the added benefit of featuring some signature Motorola functionalities like more customizable interface and lock screen, for example.
AI has a lot of presence on this phone. Aside from the default Gemini assistant, you can also interact with Microsoft's preloaded Copilot assistant. Moto's own AI, powered by Perplexity, is available here, with Copilot Vision responsible for the visual AI heavy-lifting. As a result, the phone can "pay attention" to your surroundings and create a summary or a transcription of what it sees or hears; of course, you can also chat with it.
Why would you use this one instead of Gemini? Motorola hopes that you'd develop the habit of using the non-customizable AI key on the left instead of rely on Google all the time, but honestly, I don't see a unique feature here that Gemini can't do.
At the moment, the phone runs Android 16 and will get three major updates, up to Android 19. Security support will last for two years extra for a total of five.
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Battery
What a champ!
Frankly, I'm still amazed by silicon-carbon technology to this day. You're telling me a phone that's slightly over 7 mm in thickness packs a 6,500 mAh silicon-carbon battery in the trunk? It's still difficult to believe, and if I didn't knew better, I'd accuse you of gaslighting me.
With such a massive battery and a fairly inconspicuous chipset, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro has all the makings of a battery champ, and it's definitely one!
The phone achieves 22 and a half hours in our web browsing test, which aims to emulate a standard phone usage workflow. You can also stream up to 16 hours of video, and finally, the phone achieves 13 hours in our gaming test.
Overall, the phone achieves a battery estimate of a little over ten hours of combined usage, which is way above the average result!
Can you run this phone down in a day? I mean, sure, you probably can, but you will have to really put your mind into it and do nothing else. With regular usage, you can easily squeeze two days of usage, or more.
PhoneArena Battery Test Results:
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Audio Quality and Haptics
The Motorola Edge 70 Pro has no business sounding this good, but it does. It has a pair of excellent loudspeakers that support Dolby Atmos, so that you get sound with little distortion even at maximum levels, a wide sound stage, and clear vocals. The mids are meaty, and it's only the bass that's slightly on the weaker side. I'm quite impressed as I expected way less.
The same can't be said about the haptics. Like most mid-range Motorola phones, the vibrations are weak and high-pitched, which isn't the premium experience one would want to experience daily. Still, some corners need to be cut to achieve an aggressive pricing, and great haptics are among the first things that are dropped from the roster.
Motorola Edge 70 Pro Specs
And here's a complete rundown of the Motorola Edge 70 Pro specs:
|
|
| Motorola Edge 70 Pro | Motorola Edge 60 Pro |
| Dimensions | |
|---|---|
| 162.7 x 75.6 x 7.19 mm (~11.91 mm with camera bump) | 160.7 x 73.1 x 8.2 mm |
| Weight | |
| 190.0 g | 186.0 g |
| Size | |
|---|---|
| 6.8-inch | 6.7-inch |
| Type | |
| AMOLED, 144Hz | P-OLED, 120Hz |
| System chip | |
|---|---|
| Mediatek Dimensity 8500 Extreme MT6899 (4 nm) | Mediatek Dimensity 8350 Extreme SM7550-AB (4 nm) |
| Memory | |
| 8GB (LPDDR5X)/256GB (UFS 4.1) 12GB/512GB |
8GB (LPDDR4X)/256GB (UFS 4.0) |
| Type | |
|---|---|
| 6500 mAh | 6000 mAh |
| Charge speed | |
| Wired: 90.0W Wireless: 15.0W |
Wired: 90.0W Wireless: 12.0W |
| Main camera | |
|---|---|
| 50 MP (OIS, Laser and PDAF) Sensor name: Sony LYT-710 Aperture size: F1.8 Focal length: 24 mm Sensor size: 1/1.56" Pixel size: 1.0 μm | 50 MP (OIS, Laser and PDAF) Aperture size: F1.8 Focal length: 24 mm Sensor size: 1/1.56" Pixel size: 1.0 μm |
| Second camera | |
| 50 MP (Ultra-wide) Sensor name: Samsung ISOCELL JNS Aperture size: F2.0 Sensor size: 1/2.76" Pixel size: 0.64 μm | 50 MP (Ultra-wide) Aperture size: F2.0 Pixel size: 0.64 μm |
| Third camera | |
| 50 MP (Telephoto, Periscope) Sensor name: Samsung ISOCELL JN5 Optical zoom: 3.5x Aperture size: F2.0 Focal Length: 81 mm Sensor size: 1/2.76" Pixel size: 1.0 μm | 10 MP (OIS, PDAF) Optical zoom: 3.0x Aperture size: F2.0 Focal Length: 73 mm Sensor size: 1/3.94" Pixel size: 1.0 μm |
| Front | |
| 50 MP | 50 MP |
See the full
Motorola Edge 70 Pro vs Motorola Edge 60 Pro specs comparison
or compare them to other phones using our
Phone Comparison tool
Should you buy it?
I didn't expect to like the Motorola Edge 70 Pro as much as I did.
Overall, it doesn't have any major flaw and passes most requirements one might have of a great mid-range phone with flying colors. It performs well enough, has excellent battery life, great peak brightness, a capable camera, lovely speakers, and lovely and durable design. The only aspect of it that I'm not totally into is the curved screen; I just like flat ones that much more.
At the price tag at which it arrives, which is less than EUR 550 in the EU, it's challenging to argue against this phone. Most of its rivals cut many more corners in the same price niche, making the Edge 70 Pro a surprisingly decent offering.
Definitely worthy of your consideration!
Popular stories
Latest News
Things that are NOT allowed:
To help keep our community safe and free from spam, we apply temporary limits to newly created accounts: