Review Summary
Expert Rating
Motorola launched its Edge 50 Pro (review) handset recently and the smartphone earned heaps of praise from both reviewers and consumers for its design, display, and camera performance. In our review, we said that the phone brings an eye-catching design, a fluent display, an impressive camera setup, and premium features such as wireless charging support, lightning-fast wired charging speeds, and solid build quality. While the Edge 50 Pro is a solid handset, currently it is priced just above Rs 30,000 in India. For those who want a similar experience at a more affordable price point, Motorola has now introduced Edge 50 Fusion into the market. With the price starting at Rs 22,999, this new model promises to offer excellent value for money along with some segment-best features.
Does Motorola manage to deliver on this promise? Does the Edge 50 Fusion recreate the magic of the Edge 50 Pro? Read my detailed review below to get your answer.
Verdict
Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is not aimed at a particular audience or at those who just want a long-lasting battery. The phone aims to offer well-rounded features across the board that could attract all users. It manages to offer a clean and clutter-free user experience, a slim and lightweight design, and decent charging speeds. On the flip side, it doesn’t really top the charts when it comes to aspects like performance and camera.
Design and display
Aesthetically speaking, the Edge 50 series phones share a lot of design elements. This means that the Edge 50 Fusion comes with a textured vegan leather back that lends it a premium look and feel. I’ve personally been a big fan of the vegan leather finish on the back panel of phones as it gives them a soft touch and ensures they don’t feel slippery in hand either. Unlike some other mid-range phones which now have the camera sensor rings protruding well outside the phone’s body, the Edge 50 Fusion looks elegant with a near-flush design.
This is one of the slimmest and lightest phones in this price segment, measuring just 7.8mm in thickness and 175 grams in weight. As a result, using the Edge 50 Fusion with just one hand, and carrying it around in a pocket is a comfortable experience. The volume buttons and the power key are located on the right spine of the phone. I found the keys to be easily accessible and tactile.
You get the USB Type-C charging port, SIM card slot, and speaker grille at the bottom of the handset.
The Edge 50 Fusion comes with a 6.7-inch FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080 pixel) Endless Edge 10-bit P-OLED curved display with a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz. Admittedly, I’ve gone back and forth in my preference between displays with curved sides and the ones that have completely flat panels. On one hand, the curved displays give you an immersive feel with content flowing through the sides. On the other hand, the flat panels ensure you don’t have to deal with unwanted reflections and get a more consistent viewing experience.
While I would have preferred a flat display panel on this phone, the multimedia consumption experience on this panel was still top-notch. With the excellent contrast ratio delivered by the P-OLED panel, binge-watching TV shows on this handset was a fun experience. The inky blacks delivered by the panel and the punchy colours truly stood out. With a peak display brightness of 1600 nits, I could see the content on the phone’s display easily even under direct sunlight.
With the 144Hz refresh rate, playing Alto’s Adventure was a breeze on this handset, and the phone managed to deliver a consistent frame rate. In BGMI, the phone supports Ultra HDR and Ultra frame rate settings, I didn’t face a single stutter issue or even frame drops. It would be fair to say that this is one of the better handsets for gaming you can find in this price range, especially with Game Hub. Game hub not only provides you with tools to enhance your gaming experience (block calls/notifications, disable adaptive brightness, control refresh rate etc.) but also the option to record game clips and click screenshots.
Cameras
The Edge 50 Fusion comes with a 50MP Sony Lytia 700C primary camera with an f/1.8 aperture and a pixel size of 1.0µm. With the Ultra Pixel Technology, this pixel size goes up to 2.0µm, as per the brand’s claims. The primary camera sensor is assisted by Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) for blur-free photos and videos. Tagging along is a secondary 13MP ultrawide camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a 120-degree field-of-view. The 32MP selfie camera comes with an f/2.4 aperture and 0.7µm pixel size. With Quad Pixel Technology, this size goes up to 1.4µm. The handset comes with a dual-pixel PDAF (Phase Detection Autofocus) sensor to enhance focusing speed and accuracy.
Now that we have the nitty-gritty out of the way, let’s talk about the camera features and performance.
- In the default camera app, you get the Slow motion video, video, Portrait, Pro, and Scan options on the home screen. You can further choose Spot Colour (Photo and Video), Night Vision, Panorama, Ultra-res, Dual capture (Photo and Video), Photo Booth, Tilt-shift, and Timelapse options.
- In the settings section, you get the option for Shot Optimisation, Audio Zoom, Efficient videos (H.265/HEVC), Selfie Mirror, Quick capture, and Keep last mode (opens the camera with the last used mode) options.
- Coming to the camera performance, the primary camera managed to click some impressive pictures for me. One thing to note here is that the phone has a tendency to boost colours. So the sky will look extra blue, the grass will look greener, and skin tones will also be far more pronounced.
- The primary camera setup captured details fairly well, particularly in the Ultra-res mode. In portrait mode, the Edge 50 Fusion managed to detect the edges with precision.
- Even in the night shots, the Edge 50 Fusion performed well (with and without the Night Vision enabled). The cameras captured details and there were no banding issues either.
- I compared the Edge 50 Fusion with the Nothing Phone (2a) (review). In the comparison, I found that the Edge 50 Fusion managed to offer better edge detection while the Nothing handset offered better colour accuracy and captured skin tones better, as you can see below. While you would likely prefer the pictures clicked by Edge 50 Fusion to post on social media, Nothing Phone (2a) offers a more accurate colour reproduction.
- A strange bug that I encountered with the phone was that more often than not, the phone was unable to click portrait images with the selfie camera specifically in landscape orientation. It managed just fine in the portrait orientation but when it came to landscape, the phone either failed to implement the bokeh effect or the app crashed. Hopefully, this bug will soon be resolved with a software update.
- Apart from this, the 32MP front-facing shooter managed to click decent shots for me both in terms of skin tone accuracy and details.
Performance and software
The Edge 50 Fusion is powered by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, which is a decent choice and allows the phone to run through apps and provide a seamless experience. However, it is important to point out that right now, there are handsets with better processors available in this price range. In the AnTuTu benchmark, the handset scored 620648, which is a respectable score.
On Geekbench, the Edge 50 Fusion managed to put up a score of 1020 in the single-core test, and 2945 in the multi-core test. These are impressive scores and suggest that the handset can easily handle multitasking and demanding apps.
While these are benchmark tests, the results were in line with real-world usage. I found that the Edge 50 Fusion handled the workload quite efficiently. Be it the UI animations or the speed with which the apps were launched, there were no stutter issues or inconsistency. Even while playing some demanding games, the phone didn’t let the frames drop and offered an enjoyable experience.
Motorola Edge 50 Fusion runs Android 14-based Hello UI out of the box. Just like we mentioned in our Edge 50 Pro review, the Hello UI comes with a near-vanilla version of Android. The Edge 50 Fusion comes with some Moto apps pre-installed but thankfully, there are no third-party apps that greet you when you first boot up the phone.
The handset supports various signature gestures from Motorola and Lenovo, and incorporates ThinkShield security and privacy features within the Moto Secure app. The handset also offers Smart Connect Hero features. For example, the Ready For app offers the ability to mirror your phone’s display or create a virtual phone screen on a PC, allowing you to make use of the phone’s camera for high-quality video calls on your PC. It also allows you to launch apps directly on your Windows PC or laptop to check messages, receive calls, and more. You can easily transfer files between your phone and PC with a simple swipe or drag and drop through this app.
On top of this, These new features complement existing ones such as Moto Connect, which provides a DeX-like experience by mirroring the smartphone screen to an external display, as well as Moto Secure, Family Space, and more. Motorola has promised three major Android updates and four years of security updates for the Edge 50 Fusion, which means the handset will get the latest features for quite a long time.
Battery and charging speed
The Edge 50 Fusion packs a 5,000mAh battery with TurboPower 68W fast-charging support. The handset took 54 minutes while charging from 20 percent to 100 percent in our charging test. However, that’s not the end of the story. There’s a Charge Boost feature in the settings menu, which has to be enabled manually, and using this feature, the handset managed to charge from 20 percent to 100 percent in just 36 minutes. When you’re in a hurry, this feature could be a lifesaver.
In the PCMark battery test, the handset lasted 9 hours and 53 minutes, which is on the lower side in this price segment. In my experience, the Edge 50 Fusion offered a screen on time of around 5-6 hours on average on a single charge. There is a toggle option in the battery section (settings) that can be enabled to use AI to learn your behaviour and limit background apps when your phone is inactive. I found that this feature can reasonably increase the battery backup offered by the phone but it is still well short of some of the other handsets in the price range (most notably Nord CE4).
Final Verdict
Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is a handset that you should consider if you’re looking for a phone with a stylish and lightweight design, captivating display, decent performance, and capable primary camera setup. The phone ticks a lot of right boxes but it is hard to place it in any category as there are some better performers in each of the categories that it is good at within this price segment – OnePlus Nord CE4, Nothing Phone (2a), and Infinix GT 20 Pro. If you’re looking for a phone with better battery backup, you can go for Nord CE4, and if you’re more inclined towards gaming, GT 20 Pro should be a good choice. Having said that, as an overall package, the Motorola phone might be a good choice for those who want a clean UI, a slim and lightweight design, and a smooth, 144Hz display.
Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10
Reasons to buy:
- The lightweight slim design with a vegan leather back feels great in hand.
- The 144Hz display is smooth, vibrant, and immersive.
- Charging speeds are impressive, especially with the Charge Boost feature.
- The Hello UI offers a clean clutter-free user experience.
Reasons to not buy:
- More powerful competition in this price range.
- The Selfie camera is currently unable to take bokeh shots in landscape orientation.
 | Rs. 25,996.00 | Go To Store |
 Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | vs |  OnePlus Nord CE 4 5G |
| Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | vs |  Nothing Phone 2a |
