Motorola’s Edge 70 is the blueprint for future thin phones

I’ve been as thin a phone skeptic as anyone. Why would I give up camera specs and battery life to shave a few millimeters off the back of the phone? That’s exactly what I asked when I first laid eyes on Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge earlier this year.

But the Motorola Edge 70 may have changed me. It’s a bargain on the S25 Edge or the iPhone Air, which is now available in the UK and Europe for £9,699 / €799 (about $920), but it “won’t be a US device”, according to Nicole Hagen, Motorola’s head of global product marketing.

It’s only a third of a millimeter thicker than the Air—a but negligible difference—but it makes up for some of that phone’s shortcomings by offering a larger battery and a more durable design. It introduces some new flaws of its own, but as a blueprint for where thin phones go next, it makes more sense to me than Apple and Samsung’s offerings.

We’re truly in silicon-carbon battery season, as this is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve found myself applauding a manufacturer for fitting a high-capacity battery into a small space. While the OPPO Find X9 Pro uses novel battery tech to cram an unusually large 7,500mAh cell into a regular-sized phone, Motorola has instead used it to fit a regular-sized battery into an unusually thin phone.

The Edge 70’s 4,800mAh battery is as large as many flagships’, going well past the iPhone Air’s “all-day battery life,” lasting well into the second day. It won’t last a full two days unless you use it lightly, but heavy users will struggle to run the phone dry in a single day.

The Silicon Carbon battery fixes the single biggest fear most potential buyers have of this year’s wave of thin phones, comfortably leaving the 3,149mAh battery in the Apple Air or the 3,900mah cell in the Samsung Edge. They force phone buyers to sacrifice battery life. Motorola does not.

The Edge 70 tops out with 68W wired charging, and 15W Qi wireless is also available. There’s no Q2 support, although Motorola includes a magnetic plastic case with the phone in EMEA if you’re jealous of the Q2-capable Pixel 10 phones.

As is the case, it inevitably detracts from how thin the 70 Edge feels. I’ve only used slim phones from Samsung and Apple in passing, and after being glued to this phone for a week, I was surprised to find that the thin feel never got old. I’m amazed every time I look at a phone, that it can be so thin, so light, so comfortable in the hand.

I believe the Air and S25 edge feel the same. Where Motorola diverges is in how it’s constructed the Edge 70 with an aluminum frame and textured silicone rear that feels less vulnerable than its competitors’ glass backs. It’s the only phone of the three to be rated IP68 and meet the tough IP69 standard, and it also meets the MIL-STD-810H military testing standard for durability.

That’s not to say the Edge 70 is unbreakable—far from it, especially since the Gorilla Glass used on the 7i’s screen is far more vulnerable than the ceramic-hardened versions on these other phones. But free from the fear of shattering the back, I’ve found myself more careless about using the phone as is, rather than trying to cram that thin design into a bulky case.

So it is; The Edge 70 has solved thin phones for good. If only, ah? It may have improved on some of Samsung and Apple’s failings, but not all of them — and it introduces some of its own.

The cameras are the most obvious compromise, though less than you might think. The 50-megapixel main camera isn’t bad, even doing a good job in dim conditions, although the combination of dark skies and bright lighting at an evening soccer game proved too much for it to handle. Unlike the iPhone Air, you get an ultra-wide lens with it, though there’s still no telephoto — what appears to be a third camera is really just a light sensor. You can get a half-decent phone for less in the likes of the Galaxy S25 or the Xiaomi 15T Pro.

Specific heads can also be hidden inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset. It’s not a bad chip, but you’ll find flagship silicon in similarly priced devices. That’s plenty of power for most people, but on paper it’s less capable than other phones at this price, even if competitive gamers are the only ones to notice.

Motorola’s biggest problem is working on Android, and it’s probably the only version of the operating system Worse.

Quite simply, a £699 phone – hell, any phone – shouldn’t be sent to the rafters with ads and bloatware. There are at least 14 Motorola-branded apps pre-installed, plus other apps too Candy Crush SagaMicrosoft Copilot, MonopolyPinterest, and so on Tone Blast.

Worse, the first slot in the app drawer is taken up by a games “folder” that actually only suggests more time killers I should download, including gems. Block Blast! And Steakball. On top of that, a suggestions row dynamically recommends three of my own apps that I need at the moment based on my past behavior (which is pretty useful), along with a fourth app I don’t have and never want, ranging from the payment app MoneyGram to the musical Just Guitar.

I’m not done yet! Live lock screen is the most capable. Suggested during setup, it replaces your lock screen with a cycling stream of images paired with web articles paired with broad interest sets like “food” or “tech.” These are ads in disguise, but every three or four, you’re rewarded with something else—usually a full-screen banner advertising team.

It’s easy to turn them all off and uninstall apps, but it shouldn’t be done in the first place. Motorola is embarrassing itself by including this.

I’m not sure if its compromises make the 70 a better phone than the iPhone Air. But while I look forward to seeing where this form factor goes, Motorola’s phone feels like a better blueprint than Apple’s, and suggests that adopting a silicon-carbon battery is what’s needed to elevate the second generation of the Air.

The Edge 70 preserves battery life while shaving bulk, and feel only The case is tough enough to risk going free so all that hardware R&D isn’t wasted. The cameras are basic, but so are iPhones, and the power can be understated, but who’s buying the third-thickest phone of the year and expecting a powerhouse? You want it to feel great and last all day, and on that count, the Edge 70 nails it.

Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge