Motorola has a thin smartphone with a large battery that Apple and Samsung would love to have.

Really slim, beautifully light, and with long battery life. Motorola is giving Apple’s iPhone Air a run for its money with the Edge 70. But there’s one annoying thing about it.

It’s practically in the air, even though no one is actually mentioning the name iPhone Air. And no one needs to during the unveiling of Motorola’s Edge 70. It’s clear: the 5.9-millimeter-thin smartphone is aimed at those who might also buy an ultra-thin iPhone Air or a slim Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. Motorola may be a bit late to the party, but it’s making a distinct statement of its own.

It starts with the colorful design: Motorola has collaborated with Pantone to create three color combinations that really stand out:

Gadget Grey: A greyish-black color with bright blue camera rings and buttons.

Bronze Green: An olive tone combined with a greenish gold tone.

Lily Pad: A grey-green with accents in metallic orange.

In times when the internal components of all smartphones are actually good enough, such a look makes a real statement.

Inside is a surprisingly large battery.

Moving on to the internal components: The hardware is sufficiently fast (Snapdragon 7 Gen 4), the 12 GB of RAM is ample, and 512 GB of internal storage is sufficient for plenty of photos and videos. The 6.67-inch (approx. 17 cm) OLED display is pleasantly bright and has a very narrow bezel. Weighing just 159 grams, with its aluminum frame and grippy back, the Edge feels pleasantly light in the hand. It offers the same satisfying feel as Apple’s competitor—the conclusion: A smartphone can be this wonderfully light.

Thin yet with good battery life

While most of the iPhone Air’s technology is housed at the top under the camera bump to make room for the small 3150 mAh battery, the Edge 70 has a more distributed design. It also features stereo speakers. Despite this, the slim device packs a large, modern 4800 mAh silicon-carbon battery. For comparison, Samsung’s ultra-thin Galaxy S25 Edge has a 3900 mAh battery.

Motorola’s battery keeps going and going – even without an external battery pack. In our tests, it easily lasted a day, sometimes two. Furthermore, the battery charges significantly faster than its direct rivals from Apple and Samsung, with a maximum charging speed of 68 watts.

Finally, the cameras: Four colored rings adorn the back of the device. However, these don’t house four cameras, but two: a wide-angle and an ultra-wide-angle camera, each with 50 megapixels. The two remaining rings contain the flash and a light sensor. Samsung’s slim Galaxy S25 Edge also features two cameras, while Apple attempts to solve everything with a single camera on the iPhone Air.

What the AI ​​camera doesn’t see, it sometimes guesses – sometimes incorrectly.

The Edge’s dual-camera system generally delivers beautiful photos with vibrant colors. Some images are initially disappointing, but after 1.5 seconds of AI post-processing, they suddenly look impressive. The camera performs exceptionally well in portraits, while dynamic scenes with lots of movement sometimes turn out well, and sometimes faces remain slightly blurry. There is no optical zoom.

Occasionally, the Moto AI’s photo enhancement engine makes mistakes, leading to arbitrary blurring in the image or a lack of detail. This is because what is blurry is then “sharpened.” It doesn’t always succeed perfectly.

Robust and durable

A key theme for Motorola during the presentation was the smartphone’s durability, including its battery. To this end, it underwent US military certification: drops, heat, cold, dust, water – none of these should pose a problem. The slim aluminum casing with its plastic back is also virtually impossible to bend with reasonable force. Further supporting its durability is its complete water- and dust-resistance, meeting IP68 and IP69 standards.

Motorola guarantees four years of Android updates and six years of security updates. This means the smartphone will receive security patches until 2031.

Not a complete ecosystem, but on the way there.

However, the Edge falls short of its more streamlined competitor in one crucial area: services. While Moto smartphones connect well to Windows PCs via Smart Connect, QuickShare allows data sharing between smartphones, and Google services aren’t bad, the Android device still doesn’t reach the level of integration an iPhone offers, with seamless, pre-installed services that work with other Apple devices.

But Motorola is working on it. In recent years, the brand has developed a growing ecosystem of smartphones, watches, trackers, and headphones that work well together.

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