On paper, the Motorola Edge 40 Pro has the right stuff to take on Samsung in the flagship tier. It’s just unclear whether it’ll come to the US.
Motorola hasn’t had much of a presence in the flagship phone space in the past couple of years, but that might be about to change. The company is unveiling the Edge 40 Pro, which is a global version of the X40 it released in China at the end of last year. It comes with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a 6.67-inch display with up to 165Hz refresh rate, and an IP68 rating for weather and dust resistance.
In short, it looks like a serious challenger on the Android flagship landscape at least on paper. It’s coming to European markets “in the coming days” for €899.99 (about $980) and Latin American markets soon after.
What about the US, then? Motorola’s being a little sly about that, with a statement in today’s press release that it’s “excited to share its commitment to expand the Edge family in North America this year.” So it is bringing this phone to the US… or maybe not? Whatever that means, Motorola is committed to it.
I, for one, hope that the Edge 40 Pro does come to the US. In addition to a proper IP68 rating which last year’s Edge Plus didn’t offer it includes 12GB of RAM, a 50-megapixel main camera with optical stabilization, very fast 125W wired charging, and 15W wireless charging. There’s a 12-megapixel, 2x “portrait” telephoto camera, which is another improvement over the Edge Plus it didn’t have a telephoto camera.
That is all music to my ears, but there’s one important feature that I hope Motorola has improved, too: its software support policy. The Edge Plus was only promised two OS upgrades and three years of security updates. If it’s really going to go toe-to-toe with Samsung, it’ll have to do much better to match its typical four OS updates and five years of security support.