Motorola Edge 40 First Impressions: New Flagship-Killer in Town?

The Motorola Edge 40 claims to offer best-in-class hardware.

Written by Pranav Hegde, Edited by Roydon Cerejo | Updated: 25 May 2023 18:11 IST

Motorola Edge 40 First Impressions: New Flagship-Killer in Town?

The Motorola Edge 40 in Nebula Green colour with a vegan leather finish

Highlights

Motorola Edge 40 features a MediaTek Dimensity 8020 SoC
The phone has a 50-megapixel main camera with an f/1.4 aperture
It sports a 144Hz curved-edge display

The Motorola Edge 40 is the first smartphone in the new Edge series to launch in India. It packs premium hardware while being priced very aggressively in the upper mid-range segment. Motorola calls the Edge 40 a ‘flagship killer' and at Rs. 29,999, it offers many best-in-class features. Is the Edge 40 the real deal? While our review is in progress, here's our first impressions of the phone.

Motorola's going the environmentally-friendly route when it comes to the retail box. Fortunately, it is just limited to the packaging materials which consist of plastic-free wrappers, a recyclable box cover and soy-ink for the printed text. You do get a charger and a USB Type-C cable in the box. The company has also bundled a transparent hard case along with some documents and the SIM eject tool with the Edge 40.

The Motorola Edge 40 comes with a 68W charger in the box

Moving on to the phone itself, the Motorola Edge 40 has been launched in two finishes. The colour we have is called Nebula Green, which comes with a vegan leather back panel. There is also an Eclipse Black variant with a vegan leather back, and a Lunar Blue colour with a PMMA acrylic finish which is essentially plastic but with a frosted, glass-like look.

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The Motorola Edge 40 is quite slim at 7.58mm and only weighs 171g. It's worth noting that the blue variant with the plastic back is a tiny bit slimmer and lighter. The metal frame gives the Edge 40 a premium touch and adds to the good in-hand feel. Unlike most phones out there, the Motorola Edge 40 has a curved frame and rear panel, which helps it rest comfortably in your palm.

The phone is also IP68 rated and is claimed to be the world's slimmest 5G smartphone to get the official certification for water and dust resistance. Notably, it is also the most affordable smartphone in India currently with an IP68 rating.

On the front, the Motorola Edge 40 has a 6.55-inch pOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. The curved-edge screen has a hole-punch cutout at the top for a 32-megapixel front camera. The full-HD+ display gets HDR10+ certification and claims to offer up to 1,200 nits of peak brightness.

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Motorola Edge 40's curved display has a fairly thin chin bezel

The Motorola Edge 40 has a dual-camera setup on the back. It features a 50-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.47 aperture, which is the widest in the segment. Theoretically, it should help capture more light while maintaining a fast shutter speed. There is also a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera with autofocus, which means it can be used to shoot macro images as well. In addition to this, the Edge 40's rear camera setup can shoot portrait mode images at 24mm, 35mm and 50mm. We'll be testing how well these features actually work in the full review.

Under the hood, there is a MediaTek Dimensity 8020 SoC which is based on a 6nm fabrication process. The device comes with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage in India. It also packs a sizable 4,400mAh battery with support for 68W TurboPower fast charging out of the box. In addition to this, the Edge 40 also supports 15W wireless charging.

Motorola Edge 40 does not come with any preinstalled bloatware apps

In terms of software, Motorola Edge 40 runs on the Android 13-based MyUX skin. It offers a near-stock Android experience with some customisation and personalisation features added on top. There are also some neat productivity, security and connectivity features, such as ThinkShield, Ready For, and more, which we will be talking about in the full review, coming soon on Gadgets 360.

Samsung Galaxy A34 5G was recently launched by the company in India alongside the more expensive Galaxy A54 5G smartphone. How does this phone fare against the Nothing Phone 1 and the iQoo Neo 7? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Motorola Edge 40

REVIEW
KEY SPECS
NEWS

Design
Display
Software
Performance
Battery Life
Camera
Value for Money

Good
Excellent build quality, IP68 rating
Immersive multimedia experience
Capable performance unit
Clean, feature-rich software
Wireless charging support

Bad
Average battery life
Cameras need more optimisation

Read detailed Motorola Edge 40 review

Display 6.50-inch

Front Camera 32-megapixel

Rear Camera 50-megapixel + 13-megapixel

RAM 8GB

Storage 256GB

Battery Capacity 4500mAh

OS Android Android 13

Resolution 2400x1080 pixels

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Further reading: Motorola, Motorola Edge 40, Motorola Edge 40 5G specifications, Motorola Edge 40 Price in India

Pranav Hegde Email Pranav Hegde

Pranav Hegde writes about everything tech. He is a part of the Reviews team at Gadgets 360 and writes majorly about smartphones. Pranav has been a part of the industry for four years now. Other than writing about consumer tech, Pranav is also passionate about photography and enjoys bike rides to picturesque locations. He is available on Twitter as @PranavHegdeHere and on email at pranavh@ndtv.com. More