The Flagship Smartphone Nobody Saw Coming

It is 2020 and we have a new flagship smartphone from Motorola

Can't say I saw this coming. Bit of a surprise, but a pleasant one

This is a real competitor from a spec sheet perspective. It's got the Snapdragon 865 inside

It's got this waterfall-like display dipping at a 90 degree angle. It checks the boxes that you'd be looking at

if you were in the market for a flagship smartphone in 2020

So the Motorola Edge Plus, the highest resolution camera ever, just ever, period, on a Motorola device ever

Well, it is probably the highest resolution that I've seen in a smartphone

108 megapixel triple camera system with ultra wide angle, macro closeup, and telephoto lenses

So that's your camera cutout. The best of Android streamlined Android 10

That's one thing that Motorola has done well in the past. They don't really mess with Android too much

They try to keep it close to the way it was intended from Google. Two days of battery life

I don't know. For who? For me? For everyone? That probably depends how you're going to use a thing

But it does have a 5,000 mAh battery. 18 Watt turbo power charging

And it also charges over wireless. It has 5G performance. With maximum processing power built

for 5G speed. They're talking, of course, of the Snapdragon 865. 12 gigs of memory

6.7-inch endless edge display, HDR10 plus OLED, and the 90-degree wrap around the edge around the

side of the display. This edge piece actually has some special functionality as well on this device

We'll show that off in a second here when I get it out of the box. Most powerful stereo sound

Now, dual stereo speakers, well you know I like to test that stuff out

Alright, so, simple stuff. Here is the device, I'm gonna set it to the side just for a moment

Sim tool, there is your turbo power brick, 18 watt fast charge

And your type C cable as well. No headset or anything, which is kind of a surprise because this device does actually maintain a headphone jack

Ooh, I don't mind that color. Look at that mirror looking blue situation right there

That's kind of nice. A blue steel kind of combination of colors going on

It's not enough to have a stock kind of one color look these days

It has to have some kind of reflection, some kind of lighting glow. So that's what your camera module looks like

Of course, we are in the times of the massive camera modules

This one, not quite as big as something like the S20 Ultra, but still quite large considering it's also packing in there that 108 megapixel sensor

You can use that to its fullest or you can toggle that back for more manageable files

if you don't plan on cropping later. I'm most interested in the wide angle as well as the macro performance

because I've seen, well, the macro performance on smartphones that I've seen recently

has been kind of hit and miss. Looking at it from that angle right there, it's got a silver to blue shift going on

Your speaker unit, one of your two speaker units, as well as your SIM tray and your USB type-C connection point

And then the headphone jack up here, 3.5 millimeters. How sweet it is

Now in the hand, the phone actually feels quite comfortable because of this edge design

It gives it a sort of a perfect curve to it. But on the table, it's got a little wobble to it

because of the off camera Wow look at how far that thing wraps around the side You looking at the overhead camera there from this angle You can it looks like it just dives off There

no bezel at all on the left and right hand side. So this is an interesting move for Motorola

considering the fact that other manufacturers who have had the aggressive edge situation in the past

have moved away from it. I'm looking at Samsung. Motorola on the other hand saying, well fine

We'll take that real estate and we'll service the individuals that want this science fiction look

Security setup for this device is fingerprint in display. This is going to cost $999 USD

Expensive, but the spec sheet puts it squarely in the flagship competition

At least it's in the flagship territory. And you're probably noticing a thing here that, of course, I'm going to have to check up on right away

because it has become the differentiating characteristic, not the chip. All of these have Snapdragon 865, not the OLED

not the big display, which this also has, but it's that refresh rate

This one doesn't go all the way to 120, but it does have 90 built in

and it looks like it's enabled right out of the box. It's set to 90 Hertz out of the box

smoothest, but consumes a little bit more battery. You can toggle it back to 60 Hertz

If you want to increase battery life further, why would you want to do that

What's wrong with you? You're paying for these fast refreshes. You're paying for the snappy, instant kind of feeling that you get from the flagship phone

You got to be at least 90 hertz these days. I mean, that's just the way it is. Things progress

They advance. People catch up. It becomes the new normal. So 90 hertz is where this one is

Like I said, not all the way to 120. But if you guys watched my video on refresh rates in general, you see a big performance jump even going 60 to 90

And that video attempts to illustrate it with the slowed down footage and all the rest of it

As I swipe around here, you go to the left. Nothing fancy. You're straight in the Google feed

And you pull down into your settings. This looks exactly like a Pixel device

Of course, there are some specialty things in here to deal with the edge display

with this edge portion. It's called the Edge Plus after all. How far that thing wraps around

I don't even know if the video does it justice. Of course, there have been others

but this is right up there. They say it's a 90 degree

They actually let you turn off the edge as well if for whatever reason you're not into it

Yeah, so if I head into the settings here, it does a nice little animation

of sort of how that operates. You can get your bezel back if you want it on the sides

on an app by app basis. So I can go in here in the settings and pick YouTube or something else and have it by default launch into the non-edge version of the app

Now I have very slim and trim black bezels as opposed to having it wrap as aggressively around the edge

Now the edge can also be used to show notifications if you place the device face down

Which I've never been super comfortable doing that myself. It's just not natural for me to place it face down

But anyways, if you do that, it'll show you incoming phone calls and various other notifications through a glowing light

Now, I just hit the power button. I like it. I was curious how they were going to implement it because of how far the edge wraps around

But they put a nice texture to it and they put it on the back edge of the edge

And so you can distinguish it really quickly. It's not a problem. How fast

Yeah. yeah it a that a nice fingerprint scanner that a fine fingerprint scanner I mean let be honest All these manufacturers many of these manufacturers sharing components at this point sharing technologies Peak display is kind of like an always display

so you can interact with notifications when the screen is off. An attentive display keeps the screen on

when you're looking at it, when it senses that you're looking at it. The edge touch, on the other hand

gives you special features, but it's not offensive. You don't see it when you're looking straight at the device

like some of the stuff Samsung has done in the past. you only see it from the edge and I guess you kind of get used to the location of it because

you learn that it's just below the power switch you tap it again it turns off you tap it again

it fills up so it's a subtle thing but I guess you may want to have that on demand and accessible to

you on a per app basis maybe if you're having unintentional presses although as of right now

I'm not really experiencing that who knows when that stuff starts to pop up actually look at this

90 Hertz, little 90 Hertz experiment for you. Oh, I didn't even mention the front facing camera cutout

It's a hole punch style in the top corner and it is tiny. Now that little tap on that side section can actually do a couple different things

You can have it do what it just did, which is turn the edge display on and off

Or you can have it switch to your last app, which is kind of a cool feature

So this actually might be more useful, assuming that you're going to leave the Edge on most of the time

The device is called the Edge Plus. You probably would want to

So with this configuration, you tap over here and you go back to the previous app

So let's load YouTube. Go back home. I'm back to YouTube. I'm flying

I'm multitasking. It's kind of nice. I don't know. It's a little gimmick

It's an extra feature. but they're trying to figure out ways to make this useful beyond just looking at it one thing

i should mention actually just doing that this is a 1080p it's an fhd plus display so no fancy

exotic resolutions here how big of a deal is that oh i don't know it i guess it depends on the user

if you are cross shopping this against an s20 ultra for example you're saying to yourself man

I have better resolution, I have the higher refresh, but the thing to remember with the S20 Ultra

out of the box, it's also FHD. And if you do put it in its highest resolution setting

then you lose that refresh rate. So it's kind of a bizarre compromise you make

on that particular device. Out of the box here, at least what Motorola is saying

is they're like, look, take the FHD, we think it's fine, and you're gonna get better battery life

and take the 90 Hertz. That's their pitch. you decide how important that is to you. I've been running the S20 Ultra in both resolutions

but when I'm forced to choose between 60 hertz at the higher resolution and 120 hertz

at the lower resolution, I'll take the refresh all day long. That's my opinion

Like I've said in the past, to me, this is the least offensive location to put your front facing

camera. If it's not going to be some sort of motorized pop-out situation, this is the most

out of the way. Typically, whatever video you're watching, nothing important is down there

Now let's turn up the volume here. Oh, okay. You might be surprised to find out that in most cases, these substantial looking things are probably not going to be as good of a solution in most cases as a more typical display

I'm pretty happy with that sound. I don't know. What did they say? It's the greatest thing I'm ever going to hear in my life

What was the actual terminology there? They said most powerful stereo sound I don know Look it sounds good It has the low end that I looking for It kind of in line with other flagships What about these

cameras? Let's jump into those. Ooh straight away many different photo modes

I like that. Portrait, cutout, macro, spot color, cinemagraph, 108 megapixel ultra resolution with an automatic HDR setting and it's wondering if I want to

do macro because obviously I'm looking at the table. Okay, so here we have a 1x setting. That's

your default camera. Here is your ultra wide. And we have a 3x telephoto. If we move back to the

ultra wide, this also becomes your macro. You just simply move close to your subject. So I will dip

this down whoa yes look at that so this is that macro shot and that is wild i mean this is one of

the best macro shots i've seen out of a smartphone camera yeah you know what that's a that's a fun

camera obviously the standard camera the regular focal length the wide as most manufacturers call

looks the best to my eyes ultra wide is usable I like the uniformity with the color balance across

those two cameras the zoom on the other hand it's a bit of a step back from a quality perspective

compared to the other two but the macro mode is maybe the most fun of the bunch like look at this

cool detail and stuff that you can get out of it so I like the versatility this kind of seems to be

the sweet spot right now you get your ultra wide you get your telephoto and you get your big

megapixel count and then a macro as a bonus it's crazy what we're asking for in flagships in 2020

but yes this one has that versatility so there are smartphones with more cameras than that but

that's the main stuff that you're probably interested in yeah so what can we say what

can i say about this device i kind of like it i think i think it's a nice one to add to the mix

I like the big battery for one just say 5000 that's where we're at you want a powerhouse phone

we're going to put 5000 and call it a day and I've been using a 5000 milliamp hour phone recently and

it would just it would suck to go back to something different it's not just about the battery rating

on the spec sheet there's also optimizations and things that determine what kind of battery life

you actually get and when you combine the fact that this thing isn't running a crazy resolution

and they pick 90 hertz instead of 120, it may actually get better battery life

than my S20 Ultra, which would then, well, that would be a trade

that you'd have to try to figure out which one you'd prefer. I like this color that they've gone with

Yes, it's glass. It's definitely a fingerprint magnet. Keep in mind, it does, there is a wobble factor

I like the fact that they gave a couple of extra functions to the edge portion

and it's not just sitting there only for looks. I like the fact that they put the texture on the power switch

I like the fact that there's a headphone jack. Call me crazy. It's kind of just a why not situation

I understand we've all, everybody's moving past it, but you have it in there and it's a differentiating factor

when compared to other flagships. I really like the macro mode. I think that's a major bonus and actually useful

The one big factor to consider though, obviously, is the fact that this is a Verizon exclusive

So if you're gonna be interested in it, it has to be available to you you have to be a verizon customer obviously so there you have it

it is the brand new edge plus from motorola motorola back in the flagship smartphone game in 2020