Motorola Edge 40

As far as optics are concerned, the phone comes with a 50MP OmniVision OV50A sensor and a 13MP ultra-wide shooter. On the front is a 32MP selfie camera which is also an OmniVision lens. In short, the Edge 40 snaps reasonably good photos that are rich in detail and offer a wide dynamic range, expected in this price range. The default resolution is 12.5MP which combines four pixels into one for greater clarity although there is also a full resolution 50MP option as well. Apart from that I quite like the sensor's quick autofocus and shutter speeds for capturing fast-moving objects. Exposure levels are metered and can be manually adjusted to your satisfaction in the viewfinder. In terms of the colours, saturation levels remain a tad bit high but the overall tonality of most scenes can be considered neutral. For example, if the sky has a heightened shade of blue then the flora just below has controlled colours. The 13MP ultra-wide camera has a 120-degree field of view which can be considered quite wide and indeed it captures much more of a scene than the primary shooter. What I like here is that there is minimal distortion at the edges and the focus is spread evenly across the frame. You can also snap close-up macro images from the sensor which utilises the sensor's higher resolution for better detailing than any of the commonly used standalone 2MP lenses. As for portrait shots, it uses some computational chops to separate the subject from the background, but more often than not it does a less than stellar job of it.In terms of the camera's low-light capabilities, it can churn out nice images, though that might need a couple of attempts. The standard point-and-shoot experience can be considered a hit or miss depending on much ambient lighting is present. However, once you learn to adjust the exposure and hold the focus, the snaps become much better. You can also use the dedicated Night Mode to de-noise a scene without overprocessing the details. The phone's low-light capabilities are decent enough but a bit more software tweaking can make it a stellar choice. Lastly, you get the selfie shooter which can snap 32MP shots that fall prey to facial oversharpening but maintain a healthy dynamic range behind my face.

The Motorola Edge 40 comes with the MediaTek Dimensity 8020 SoC, which is a shade lower in performance metrics than the 8100, released last year. At times the handset's thin design restricts its thermal envelope leading to some throttling. The phone does bang in good scores on benchmarking platforms with Antutu showing a result of 714,606 and Geekbench 6's multi-core test outputting 3,677. Despite this, the Edge 40 has a tendency to heat up a bit during strenuous tasks. All this to say your regular smartphone usage remains unaffected but something like playing BGMI for long periods of time at Extreme 60fps settings will burn through the battery rapidly while also introducing a bit of lag. The phone comes in a single 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage variant.For authentication, the device has an in-display fingerprint sensor of the optical variety. It does a snappy job of registering but can sometimes falter when actually put to use for unlocking the phone. In that regard, I found the facial unlocking much quicker although it will not be as secure. The speakers on the device are actually quite good and the Dolby Atmos support adds to the clarity and depth in the sound. As for network support, the Edge 40 supports most of the popular SA and NSA 5G bands on offer, and my experience with Jio on Noida's circle was acceptable enough.On the software side of things, the Edge 40 has Motorola's proprietary MyUX skin running on top of Android 13. Its speciality is its mostly clean outlook, no bloatware, and long-standing support for future Android updates. The skin's lightweight nature allows you to run a host of custom ROMs that will fine-tune the UI to your liking. Apart from that Motorola is keeping its gesture-based inputs on the Edge 40 and they include double-tapping the back or twisting the phone twice or even shaking it hard to access different functionalities.Here's a speed test done using Airtel 5G Plus network in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi.

The Edge 40 packs in a 4,400mAh cell which is certainly a feat given the phone's super slim dimensions. While its capacity is more than the Edge 30, compared to some traditional 5,000mAh offerings from Realme or Xiaomi, the Edge 40 can seem a bit lacking. The device has a screen-on time of around 5 hours, which can be pushed to about six hours on moderate usage. I would call it just about acceptable, although you do have 68W charging that can juice up the phone in less than an hour. Impressively the phone also does 15W wireless charging which adds a bit of convenience.