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By Kate Kozuch published 18 August 22

The Motorola Edge 2022 delivers flagship-level features for an affordable price, including a 144Hz display and 50MP camera. Starting at $498, the updated Motorola Edge has potential to be one of this year's best value phones.

Rear casing is a fingerprint magnet

Price: $498 Screen size: 6.6-inch OLED CPU: MediaTek Dimensity 1050 RAM: 6GB / 8GB Storage: 128GB / 256GB Rear cameras: 50MP main (f/1.8); 13MP ultrawide (f/2.2) Front camera: 32MP (f/2.45) Battery size: 5,000 mAh Size: 6.3 x 2.9 x 0.3 inches Weight: 5.99 ounces

The Motorola Edge 2022 is Motorola's next big phone, and despite being more affordable than previous the Motorola Edge, it actually looks to have more in common with the higher-end Motorola Edge Plus.

For just $498, the Motorola Edge 2022 has a 6.6-inch OLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. It also has a 5000 mAh battery like the Motorola Edge Plus and a fair amount of interesting camera features. 

The new Motorola Edge is shipping with Android 12 and a MediaTek Dimensity 1050 chipset, and its performance will tell us whether this handset will be one of the best cheap phones of the year. For now, here are our first impressions of the Motorola Edge 2022, plus an overview of the key features and specs.

For those in the U.S., the new Motorola Edge starts at $498 and will be available at T-Mobile first in the coming weeks. Motorola said the Edge 2022 will eventually come to other carriers including AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Mobile, UScellular, and Visible.

The Motorola Edge 2022 comes in two storage configurations: 6GB RAM + 128GB storage and 8GB RAM + 256GB storage.

The Motorola Edge 2022 is a rather basic-looking handset, though fits nicely in our hand and feels rather lightweight at less than 6 ounces. It comes in a singular mineral grey finish, which looks sleek when it catches the light but seemed to be a total fingerprint magnet in our hands-on session.

As for the display, Motorola Edge 2022 features 6.6 inch FHD OLED panel with a 144Hz refresh rate, up from the 90Hz refresh rate on both the previous Motorola Edge and the Edge Plus.

The display can be adjusted for different lighting situations, including a dimming technology that can reduce screen flickering if you have sensitive eyes. It also has up to a claimed 1300 nits peak brightness in a high brightness mode for using the Motorola Edge in sunlight. 

We'll also note that this is the company’s first phone to ship in entirely plastic-free packaging. Motorola seems to be taking sustainability efforts more seriously this year, though that's not a total surprise. We saw Lenovo switch to plastic-free laptop packaging at the beginning of this year.

The Motorola Edge has a 50MP main sensor with optical image stabilization to help with shakes, as well as a 13MP ultra-wide lens that supposedly gives a 4x larger field of view for shots. The ultra-wide lens also supports macro vision. The Edge sports a 32MP front camera, which seems like it’s ready to take high-resolution selfies. 

As for photo software features, the Motorola Edge 2002 has Auto Night Vision, promising deeper blacks and better clarity in low-light situations. It also has a dual capture mode that lets you capture photo and video with selfie and rear at once. So, you could film something happening while filming your reaction. 

Finally for camera features there’s a super slo mo mode that shoots video at 960 HD frames per second. We demoed it while playing skee-ball and the quality impressed.

The Motorola Edge 2022 is a Android 12 phone, though the software is layered by Motorola’s My UX for gestures and further color and appearance customizations. 

Additionally, there are some features unique to the Motorola ecosystem. Motorola’s ‘Ready for’ platform lets you hook up the smartphone to a large display or TV. You could even create a mobile desktop for your larger devices, using the Motorola Edge as a wireless touch pad. The phone plays nice with Lenovo laptops (Lenovo owns Motorola), letting you easily transfer photos and files between your screens.

For connectivity, the Motorola Edge has NFC, WiFi 6e and GPS. It’s also a 5G device in partnership with T-Mobile, and the MediaTek Dimensity 1050 should support the device through upgrades to 5G in the coming years.  

Speaking of the future, the phone supports to 3 years of OS updates and 4 years of bi-monthly security updates. This is longer than Motorola has offered before — the company said it's seeing people keep their phones for longer. 

Motorola hasn’t given a time estimate on how long the Edge 2022 is expected to last on a full charge, but the 5000 mAh battery capacity makes us optimistic. The Motorola Edge Plus, also with a 5000 mAh battery, lasted 10 hours and 55 minutes in our battery test. Perhaps we'll see something similar for the new Edge.

The Motorola Edge 2022 charges with 30W "turbo power," or 15W wireless.. It can also share power over 5W to other devices, which we successfully tried out with an iPhone.

At half the price of the Motorola Edge Plus, the Moto Edge 2022 seems to have a lot to offer. The 144Hz refresh rate, camera features and battery specs give us reason to believe this could be one of the best phones under $500 we'll see this year.

Stay tuned for our full Moto Edge 2022 review. 

Kate Kozuch is an editor at Tom’s Guide covering smartwatches, TVs and everything smart-home related. Kate also appears on Fox News to talk tech trends and runs the Tom's Guide TikTok account (opens in new tab) , which you should be following. When she’s not filming tech videos, you can find her on an exercise bike, mastering the NYT Crossword or channeling her inner celebrity chef. 

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