Motorola Edge 70 review: a big battery makes this ultra-slim phone easier to recommend | Stuff

Introduction

Thin phones are suddenly more popular than a TikTok dance craze, but almost all of them will set you back a considerable amount of cash. The Motorola Edge 70 is the first to break that pattern, sacrificing a few specs to slot more into the mid-range but still staying impressively slim: it measures in at a mere 6mm (or 5.99mm if you want to get pedantic).

While both the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge have it licked for outright skinniness, you’ll pay a whole lot less to slip an Edge 70 in your pocket. You’re also getting more storage as standard for your £699/€799 (as ever with Motorola, US audiences should expect it later under a different name, or not at all), and a much beefier battery.

As with all size zero smartphones, though, the big question is whether it’s worth paying the extra to lose a few millimetres. Last year’s Edge 60 cost considerably less for similar specs, and also had a dedicated telephoto camera. Having lived with the Edge 70 for the last week, I’m only partly convinced.

Design & build: slimmed down but still stylish

Motorola’s “Impossibly slim” marketing doesn’t cut the mustard once you break out the callipers, as both the 5.8mm Galaxy S25 Edge and 5.6mm iPhone Air are skinnier still. But the Edge 70 is undeniably svelte – and importantly doesn’t feel like it costs a third less than either of its willowy rivals. A significant 20g has also been shed since last year’s Edge 60, making this one seriously lightweight handset. I really noticed it – or rather didn’t – compared to the thicker flagship phone I normally use.

You’re not giving up a thing in terms of sturdiness, with an IP69 resistance rating and full marks from the military standard 810H test for extreme environments. Gorilla Glass 7i is about as good as it gets for scratch protection for mid-range phones, too.

It looks the part, with an aluminium frame that’s cool to the touch and a micro-textured nylon material on the rear panel that’s great for grip and hides fingerprint smudges almost perfectly. The rear camera module bulges out to almost twice the thickness of the rest of the phone, but the transition is a subtle one.

I like the contrasting blue accents around the rear camera lenses and the key dedicated to Motorola’s AI efforts on the left side; they add a bit of character to my appropriately-named Gadget Grey review unit. I’m sure the colour scientists at Pantone had a laugh when naming that particular shade. The Lilly Pad and Bronze Green versions have more personality. All three proudly display the relevant Pantone swatch on the rear panel.

My only real grumble is the placement of the under-display fingerprint sensor, which sits a bit too close to the phone’s bottom edge to reach comfortably – at least while holding it one-handed. It’s speedy and accurate enough, at least.

Screen & sound: as clear as ever

The Edge 70’s 6.7in P-OLED display doesn’t stray too far from the ones that’ve graced recent Motorola mid-rangers. It has a familiar 2712×1220 resolution, so looks plenty sharp and detailed from a typical viewing distance, and the bezels are suitably trim. The panel is fully flat this time around, though, rather than sporting subtle curves at the sides like the Edge 60.

The 60-120Hz variable refresh was quick to kick in when scrolling and swiping through menus, so I didn’t feel the need to manually force it into high gear 24/7.

Pantone has officially given it a thumbs up for colour accuracy, but I’d be surprised if that were true of all three colour modes. My Edge 70 review unit defaulted to a Vivid preset, which seriously pushes up the saturation; I thought the Natural preset was far more balanced, with the Radiant setting striking a good balance between the two.

Otherwise contrast and black levels were consistently great, with HDR10+ content looking particularly punchy. Motorola’s 4500 nits peak brightness claim only refers to a tiny portion of the screen when showing HDR footage; real-world shine isn’t nearly that high, but still copes well enough outdoors for a mid-ranger. Viewing angles were also as good as I’d expect from a mid-tier OLED.

Skinny phones can suffer on the sound front, but the Edge 70 puts in a decent showing with its down-firing main driver and earpiece tweeter. Expect to reach for headphones for music and movies, but there’s enough volume and clarity here for quick YouTube catchups or podcasts.

Cameras: pixel count isn’t everything

It might look like there are four separate lenses around the back of the Edge 70, but only two have sensors behind ’em; the third contains the flash, and the fourth seems purely decorative.

Photography seems to be where Motorola was forced to scale things back from last year’s Edge 60 in order to get this phone so thin. That phone had a dedicated telephoto lens, but here the lead snapper is made to pull double duty using sensor cropping for 2x magnification. Both it at the ultrawide secondary have 50MP sensors, as does the punch-hole selfie cam up front.

Motorola’s computational image processing hasn’t made any giant leaps from last year, so image quality is largely on par with the previous Edge generation. That translates to decent dynamic range and a respectable amount of preserved detail across the board, with enough exposure consistency between the lead and ultrawide lenses I has happy to jump between the two rather than favour the main camera.

Pantone has given its approval for how the Edge 70 captures skin tones, but everywhere else I thought it produced colours that are super saturated. Uusing the Natural picture preset rather than the “Signature style”, skies appeared far richer and blue than they did in reality, while grass was almost luminous at times. This wasn’t the case with indoor scenes or once the sun was setting, suggesting the HDR processing is working overtime. I’m sure it’s an approach that’ll please social media snappers, but it wouldn’t be my pick for capturing a true-to-life image.

At least the main camera handles noise well and exposes accurately at night, managing to balance highlights and shadows rather well for the mid-range hardware.

Software experience: no shortage of smarts

Motorola used to have one of the cleanest takes on Android outside of Google’s own efforts, but if the Edge 70 is any indicator things have really gone downhill lately. It absolutely shoves bloat down your throat, not even letting you get through the initial setup without two separate prompts to download a bunch of third-party dross. The stock weather app is also stuffed with ads – and can only be disabled, not fully uninstalled.

It’s a shame, as the interface is still a breeze to get around. There are plenty of customisation options, familiar gesture shortcuts, and enough lock screen widgets to keep you tweaking for a while, and Motorola has largely stuck with Google’s default apps rather than knock up duplicates in-house. There are bunch of productivity tools lurking in the app drawer, which can be handy for file sharing with a PC or using the phone as a webcam.

Of course AI is inescapable: Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Google Gemini are all preinstalled, along with Moto AI. Only the latter can be woken with the physical shortcut key on the side of the phone. A press-and-hold reveals prompts to “take notes” which records audio (with speedy, accurate transcription) and remember this”, which stores a screenshot in device memory so you can query it later. I’ve not personally needed to use them a lot during my testing, but I can see the appeal if you’re constantly taking screenshots or making voice notes.

Four years of operating system upgrades is a respectable offering for a mid-range phone, with only Google and Samsung having committed to more. The Edge 70 also arrives running Android 16, so you won’t be waiting around just to get onto the current version as you will with some affordable phones.

Performance & battery life: step in the right direction

The Edge 70 is a bit of an outlier for Motorola, who has switched to using MediaTek silicon for almost every phone outside of its flagship Razr foldable. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset has already done the rounds in China and India courtesy of Vivo, Realme and others, but this is the first time I’ve seen one in a phone bound for the UK and Europe. It’s paired with 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage here.

Officially Motorola says to expect around 25-30% performance gains over the Dimensity 7300 CPU in the outgoing Edge 60, while AI-based jobs could see as much as a 65% uplift from the dedicated NPU. Synthetic tests show a clear advantage over the MediaTek-equipped Nothing Phone 3a Lite – but you’d hope as much, given that phone costs almost a third of this one. A similarly-priced Samsung Galaxy S25 FE is faster in pretty much every test.

That doesn’t mean this phone is a slouch, though. Apps load as fast as I’d expect from a mid-range handset and flicking between recent apps isn’t a chore either. Gaming is merely OK for the money, with most of the titles I tried defaulting to medium or high settings, but few of ’em are maxing out the Edge 70’s 120Hz maximum refresh rate. If you want more oomph, you’ll have to look at the thicker competition.

On the flip side, a mid-tier chipset isn’t as power hungry as a high-end one – and with a comparatively colossal 4800mAh battery inside it, the Motorola Edge 70 is a bit of a slim stamina star. Silicon-carbon battery tech gets you 25% more capacity than Samsung can squeeze inside the Galaxy S25 Edge, and it makes all the difference in daily use.

While I struggled to see that phone through a full day of moderate to heavy use, I had a lot more in reserve here. Not so much I didn’t still charge up overnight – but it also meant I could leave the portable power bank at home, and not have to think about a mid-afternoon top up just to make it home on a single charge. As ultra-slim phones go, this is the new standard.

Wired charging speeds also have Samsung licked, managing 68W over USB-C. 15W wireless refuelling is a dead heat, and neither phone is Qi2 ready, but Motorola puts a case with built-in magnets inside the box.

Motorola Edge 70 verdict

Every crazy thin phone I’ve tested to date has been forced to compromise in one way or another. The Edge 70 is the closest any have come to being the total package, which is impressive given it has a more mainstream price than the key competition. It’ll comfortably last a day of use, and won’t keep you waiting when it’s time to refuel. Motorola hasn’t skimped on the styling or materials, either.

Performance and camera image quality are more in line with the more affordable side of the mid-range spectrum, though, so you’re definitely paying over the odds in order to lose a few millimetres. If photography or gaming grunt matter more, you may want to shop around.

Motorola Edge 70 technical specifications