Edge 40 Pro Is Motorola’s Most Capable Smartphone in Years, But Can You Buy It?

Motorola has carved out a solid share of the premium smartphone market in the US and beyond, but it’s had less luck with its flagship and sub-flagship devices. The new Motorola Edge 40 Pro, announced today, has all the makings to be a contender in the flagship space.

Whether it can go head-to-head with the likes of the Google Pixel 7 Pro, OnePlus 11 5G, and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra remains to be seen. Motorola didn’t officially announce North American availability for the phone, but it heavily implied that the Edge 40 Pro will eventually make its way to US shores.

Like any good flagship, the Motorola Edge 40 Pro has the top mobile processor available, which in this case means the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. There’s 12GB of LPDDR5x RAM built in to help with multitasking and you can choose either 256 or 512GB of UFS 4.0 internal storage.

(Credit: Motorola)

The screen is one of the standout features. It’s a 6.67-inch pOLED display with a refresh rate of up to 165Hz, which exceeds the 144Hz speed offered by most flagships. It has Full HD+ resolution at 2,400 by 1,080, which isn’t as high as the Quad HD displays on some phones, but it supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.

Motorola has often included only splash protection for its phones. It appears that the company has listened to feedback, as it upgraded the Edge 40 Pro’s protection to an IP68 rating for dust and water. This is a hue improvement over previous Motorola flagships.

Motorola packs some impressive rear cameras into the phone. There’s a 50MP primary sensor with an aperture of f/1.8 and OIS, a 50MP ultrawide/macro camera at f/2.2, and a 12MP portrait lens at f/1/6 with a 2x zoom factor for blurred backgrounds. The selfie camera captures large, 60MP images at f/2.2. Video capture is possible up to 8K30, 4K60, 4K HDR10+, and slow motion up to 960fps.

The Edge 40 Pro battery is decently large at 4,600mAh, but it charges powers up more rapidly than phones from Google and Samsung with 125W TurboPower charging. It also comes with 15W wireless charging and 5W power sharing. The battery is a touch smaller than the 5,000mAh cells found in many of today’s flagships, but Motorola is known for tuning its batteries well.

Connectivity includes solid mid-band 5G support, Wi-Fi 6E (Wi-Fi 7-ready), Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, GPS, and dual SIM card slots.

The phone ships with Android 13, but the company was mum on software support. Software updates are one of Motorola’s weaknesses. As long as that’s sorted, this phone has all the on-paper makings of a serious player in the flagship Android space.

The phone will launch in Europe in “the coming days” for €899.99 (approximately $980), with Latin American releases to follow.

Regarding the US, Motorola says, “With the exciting announcement of Motorola Edge 40 Pro in Europe and LATAM, Motorola is reinforcing its commitment to bringing premium smartphone experiences to the hands of more consumers. Today, Motorola is also excited to share its commitment to expand the Edge family in North America this year.”

With any luck, that means we’ll see the phone, or a variant thereof, before too long.