Motorola Moto X30 Pro / Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
At the end of last year, Motorola released the edge X30, the world’s first SnapDragon 8 Gen1 platform smartphone. It is one of the cheapest models powered by the flagship chipset. Even compared to Xiaomi 12 series, it’s still very competitive in pricing. Not satisfied yet? The more powerful Moto X30 Pro/Edge 30 Ultra just comes. Not just the chipset upgrade, the Moto X30 Pro/Edge 30 Ultra also brings the highest-resolution 200MP camera sensor in the history of Smartphones.
Motorola didn’t continue the tradition of debuting the latest flagship chip, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. A month after their rivals launched their flagship phones with the 8+ Gen 1, Motorola finally brought us the new Moto X30 Pro, which just got released as the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra in Europe.
Unboxing & Design
To be honest, when I saw this X30 Pro for the first time, I couldn’t believe that it came from Motorola. This pure white back cover with a matt finish looks like a piece of ice cream. There is no extra detail on it, and I really like this minimalist design, moto even did some special texture processing with the logo, so that it’s just visually hidden on the back cover from multi-angles. You might only be able to see the logo at certain angles and in certain light.
So at first glance, I got immediately impressed by the whole-white back design. I even imagined that it could be hard to find the phone if the camera module just happens to be covered in snow.
Compared to other flagship phones, the moto X30 Pro has a more compact and refined camera module, which reminds me of some of Vivo’s flagship phones last few years, such as the Vivo X60 series. It’s nice to see this kind of artistic design back with us, although it’s not exactly a novel design.
Along with the refined camera module, this time the Motorola X30 Pro more focuses on phone photography. And we will talk about it later.
The X30 Pro has very good control over the body thickness, as well as the weight. It weighs less than 200 grams. But if you just look at these numbers, you may think it will be comfortable to hold in your hand, but unfortunately, although it has an edge-curved screen and back cover, the connecting frame is too narrow, a bit sharp, and protrudes a lot from the back cover, so it would be like holding the back of a knife, which is kind of uncomfortable.
Display & Speakers
The X30 Pro comes with a 6.7-inch OLED screen. Motorola still hasn’t brought a 2K resolution to their flagship phone, but this screen still looks great with rich detail. It has 10bit colors and supports up to 144Hz refresh rate, which offers smoother touching in a more power-efficient way for daily use. And it also has good brightness, there’s no problem if you want to use it in the sunlight.
In terms of audio experience, the X30 Pro has dual speakers with Dolby Atmos support to provide stereo sound while you watch films or play music.
Cameras
The camera performance is probably one of the biggest selling points of the X30 Pro. For the last two years, moto is a big fan of high-pixel sensors. Probably for the brand, 100MP is way behind the times, so this time they brought the world’s highest pixel mobile sensor to the X30 Pro, it has an insane 200MP resolution, four times more than the iPhone 14 Pro’s main camera. So, how much detail can it really capture?
In fact, by observing a large number of samples, we found that although we could get clearer details after turning on Ultra-High-Resolution mode, the gap was not as large as expected, and meanwhile, it brought two problems.
The first problem is the shutter delay, obviously, Ultra High-Resolution mode is only good for shooting still subjects or landscapes, as it takes two seconds to complete the shot. And the other trouble is the huge photo size that occupies, so I really don’t recommend you buy the standard version with 128GB ROM. Or just forget about the high-resolution mode.
But it still brings some additional benefits, such as the 4-in-1 pixel binning in daily shooting on the main camera. And under the auto mode, the shutter response is very fast and you can still get good detail with the pixel binning. So rather than touting an output of the 200MP, it should be advertised as being able to simulate the rich color detail that comes with pixel binning. So I think the biggest use of the figure, 200MP, is still in marketing.
Performance
Not surprisingly, the X30 Pro powered by the SnapDragon 8+ Gen1 platform has a decent performance output. In Benchmarks, it has a similar performance to other Android flagship phones, but don’t forget that it has a very compact body design. So I was concerned from the start about its stability under high-performance loads. As expected, the 3DMark Wide Life Extreme test showed us that it’s really not stable, along with heating issues. So if you like to play those heavy games like Genshing Impact, this phone is not a great option for you!
MYUI & software features
Since Oneplus returned to the arms of Color OS, it’s really hard to find a brand that offers a similar experience to Google Pixel, but MYUI on this X30 Pro gave me an unexpected surprise by offering a very simple and non-intrusive experience.
All your operations are responded to quickly and smoothly. In addition, Motorola also offers a lot of customization options for the pages, you can change the font, home screen layout, and even the icon shape. Or feel tired of the preset app icons, don’t you? No problem, there are many third-party icon packs for you to choose from.
Another system feature I’d like to show you is gesture shortcuts, you can twist your wrist twice to quickly open the camera, touch and hold the screen with 3 fingertips to capture a screenshot or double tap the power button to start screen recording. All of these features are very commonly used and it could be easy for most users to get used to.
Charging
The X30 Pro supports 125 watts of fast charging, which allows it to be fully charged in just 20 minutes. And thankfully, we have wireless charging on this phone. It supports up to 50 watts of wireless charging and even 10 watts of reverse charging. This certainly puts some of the more expensive phones to shame. You guys can leave those models that come to mind in the comments.
Conclusion
Well, that’s all about the unboxing and quick review of the Motorola X30 Pro, as known as the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra. As far as we can tell, there is little difference between the international version and the Chinese version, even though the software is very close. If you choose the Chinese version, please make sure you know how to install google services yourself, or you can ask your retailer to do it for you.
Back with the phone in my hand, I have to say this time they did a good job of showing us what less is more means. A back cover with no special textures and no shiny colors is already enough to win over many users, and I even think this look is one of the best in 2022.
In terms of photography, I can see the improvement here and the fact that Motorola trying their best. But can someone here tell them that the Sony sensor is always the safer choice, and please stop bringing ultra-high pixels to the phone camera. It really doesn’t make any sense. And it doesn’t hide the fact that your software is not yet well optimized either.
