Portable Motorola Edge 40 Neo Mini-Review

Just had my first phone call on the thing, and the edge lights (which are literally just a pattern at the screen edges) worked that time. Might just be some notifications that it's not working for, then. More data required!

One other strange thing: when I'm in the main house, the Wi-Fi connects over Wi-Fi 6 - complete with a little "6" in the tray icon. In the office, it's Wi-Fi 5. I use mesh networky things, and the two devices should be identical - and they should both be offering Wi-Fi 6 to connected devices.

Not sure what's going on there, but it feels like it's probably more an Asus problem than a Motorola problem.

 

Yup! Twisty-wristy for the camera, too.

 

My first Android phone was the Motorola Milestone, which - if I remember right - had the same feature. It also had a slide-out keyboard, which was ace.

It *also* had a bug whereby the autofocus in the camera would work fine for 30 days, then a counter rolled over and it'd stop working for another 30 days. Forever. That was not ace.

Just looked up the specs: 3.7" 480x854 display, 256MB of RAM, 600MHz Arm Cortex-A8 CPU and PowerVR SGX530 GPU, a bundled 8GB microSD, and a five-megapixel camera capable of VGA video at 24 frames per second. Android 2.1, upgradeable to Android 2.2 - which still didn't fix the camera.

But d'you know what it has in common with my shiny new Motorola Edge 40 Neo? It had USB 2.0 as well. The more times change, the more they stay the same!

 

Quick camera test before I crack on with paid work. I won't put the full-res photos 'ere, 'cos massive, but a little look at 'em resized plus a 1:1 crop along with my thoughts. All settings at default, auto-HDR enabled, but the "AI enhancement" feature switched off.

Main camera:



A little cold, a little dark, nothing that can't be solved in post. The 1:1 crop's a little soft, but c'mon, this is a camera on a £250 smartphone with a lens the size of my fingernail. Scaled to half resolution, which'd still be 2k, and with a little artificial sharpening, it'd be fine.

Main camera, "2" zoom setting:



Ugh. Yeah, maybe don't use that setting - take it at standard and crop the result yourself, it'll look better.

Ultra-wide:



Interesting change in colour temperature, here. The result is very soft, sadly, but you could get something halfway usable if you fiddled in post.

Weirdly, the ultra-wide lens can also be used as a macro lens:



...and it's really rather good at it. Yeah, I was surprised too. Reckon I'll be using it as a macro a lot more than I'm using it as a wide-angle!

No samples from the selfie camera, I'll spare you that pain. I did take a night-time shot last night:



Handheld, didn't brace against anything. Actually quite impressed with that!

(And yes, I do know the fence is falling over. It's on the to-do list!)

 

Six and three quarters hours screen on time, 19% still in the tank - and that includes a chunk of video streaming with Bluetooth headphones attached and a five-gig sync in the Remarkable app.

 

Hopefully not, and hopefully - in that order!

Haven't used it quite as heavily today - mostly just reading an ebook I've borrowed from the library, no video or Bluetooth shenanigans. 41% remaining, after nearly six hours' screen time.

 

Bought a second one for the missus, whose old Motorola was EOL - though not as badly as my Nokia. Oh, and it's now a tenner less than when I bought mine!

Tell you something, though: the display is supposedly HDR10, but Netflix says it can find no HDR support. That might be 'cos I'm on the middling 1080p tier, though.

EDIT: Yeah, it's a Netflix thing: a test app says HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ supported.

 

Still happy with my purchase. Haven't had the guts to test out the IP68 rating, though!

 

Oh! And it turns out the lack of Wi-Fi 6 in the office was an Asus problem: since last night's power cut, which I'm assuming rebooted the mesh node (I should really hook that into the UPS), the phone now connects to the office as Wi-Fi 6 just fine. Weird.

 

Well, "optimised charging" is a bust.



I plug it in when I go to bed, ±1 hour every night, and unplug it when I wake up, ±1 hour every morning. How long does it take to learn that pattern‽

 

I mean, none of my other phones even offered the option. Not even the flagship ones.

I'm not sure I have to worry about battery longevity, anyway, given it's going to drop out of software support in a couple of years!

EDIT:
Speaking of flagships, imagine how annoyed I'd be if I'd plumped for a Pixel 8 Pro and Google had bricked it with a bad update. At least the Motorola *works*!

 

Not even just the physical ones - oh, Google Reader, you are sorely missed.