Motorola has launched no less than five different models in its Edge 50 series, and it's not always easy to figure out what is meant to distinguish them from each other. But with the Edge 50 Fusion, it's easy: It's the cheap one.
Edge 50 Ultra is Motorola's top model with a price tag of 13,000 kronor, and Edge 50 Fusion's job is to give much of the feel of this for less than half the price.
The shape is familiar, we get a screen with slightly curved sides with very thin edges around, and a rounded back that provides narrow edges to hold. The camera setup and material choices in the Edge 50 Fusion are simpler, there is no telephoto camera and the back is plastic, but it's not all bad. The phone feels light and nimble for its screen size. Edge 50 Fusion is available in color options with a plastic leather back, an excellent material that withstands shocks and provides a good grip in hand, but our test unit in blue-black instead has a back that mimics matte glass. Included in the package is also a transparent plastic case and Motorola's 68-watt charger, which I happen to be particularly fond of because it is compact like a regular mobile charger but can power a laptop. Motorola Edge 50 Fusion thus supports really fast fast charging, and also excellent battery life in our screen test. However, wireless charging is missing, which the more expensive models in the series have.
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The screen resolution is also slightly lower, but it is still in full HD, and the screen has good color reproduction, a high refresh rate which provides smooth response when I swipe on the screen, and a generously high maximum brightness that allows me to use it even in direct sunlight.
Reasonable performance for the price
The Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset is neither particularly new nor particularly fast, but it provides decent mid-range performance slightly below the more expensive models in, for example, Samsung's mid-range series Galaxy A. The price tag for the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is slightly above these, but it might be justified by the slim format and generously large storage of 256 gigabytes.
The cameras are the area where you might most notice that the Edge 50 Fusion is the cheapest phone in the series. All Edge 50 phones have main cameras with 50 megapixels, but they have different sensors and different powerful chipsets for post-processing the images. It is noticeable in the image results from the Edge 50 Fusion that there is less processing power for post-processing. The images often look a bit harshly processed if you zoom in to 100 percent, and sometimes the colors become a bit dull. For the most part, the camera still takes really good pictures with nice colors, and it handles poor lighting conditions well. Zoomed-in images offer little or no improvement compared to if you blow up an image more than 100 percent digitally, and the phone does not take advantage of the sensor's 50 megapixels for optical zoom unless you combine four pixels into one to get a 12.5-megapixel image. The 13-megapixel wide-angle camera takes noticeably worse pictures than the main camera, and even if you don't zoom in on them, you notice that the color reproduction becomes strange.
Motorola's system has quickly gone from being one of my favorite interfaces for Android to a minor nuisance. The reason is the amount of bloatware that Motorola wants to install. First and foremost, I get a number of third-party apps like Booking.com and Tiktok pre-installed without being able to opt out. Then the phone also wants to install recommended apps, mostly games. Despite opting out of all of them, I get more than a dozen games of the type I opted out of installed on the phone, and I also have to uninstall them several times as they come back with system updates. The phone also offers to install three selected apps per month on my phone without me having to do anything. It sounds like a nightmare, and I quickly decline.
Apart from that, you get a simple and clean version of Android 15 after the phone has finished updating. Simple and clean might describe the phone as a whole; it's not a top model, but it's a decent mid-range phone that mimics Motorola's top models but at a significantly lower price tag.
Questions and Answers
How is the speaker sound? Motorola is reliable when it comes to speaker sound, and you get a pair of really good stereo speakers here.
Can the screen show time and notifications even when it's off? No, the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion does not have a true always-on display, so you need to wake it to see the clock and notifications.
How is the fingerprint reader? It's located in the screen and responds quickly to my touches.
An Alternative
Samsung Galaxy A55 has roughly the same performance, a slightly bulkier format but a better camera setup.
Camera Example
In high-contrast conditions, parts of the image easily become over- and underexposed.
