Design phone for SEK 7,000

Review: Motorola Edge 70 Pro – Good-value near-flagship with charm and battery life

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a slightly more premium mobile phone with a large battery that is becoming genuinely good value.

Elias Nordling Elias Nordling

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:17 Modified 24 September 2026 - 14:17

Motorola's Edge series focuses on design, with rounded shapes, colour collaborations with Pantone and sometimes more unusual material choices. A design-focused phone may sound as though appearance takes precedence over function, but these phones are often good value. There is now a rather varied range of phones in the Edge 70 series, but the Edge 70 Pro can be considered the top model, with features that do not quite match flagships such as the Galaxy S26 series, but come close, while offering a lower price in return.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro actually went on sale in late spring, but it was not until after the summer that we had the opportunity to test it. Interestingly, the Edge 70 Pro is better value now than when it was first launched. This is partly because its price has fallen considerably since then, from SEK 9,500 to SEK 7,000 on Motorola's website, and partly because after the summer we have seen a trend towards sharply increased prices due to memory prices rising severalfold. A phone close to flagship class, launched a couple of months ago and priced at SEK 7,000, is a bargain today.

Rounded shapes

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro has classic Edge styling, with a rounded back, a camera island that protrudes smoothly from the rear, slim sides and a curved display with narrow bezels. Motorola says the display is curved on all four sides, but at the top and bottom it is more rounded off than curved. The curves along the sides are also fairly subtle, not enough to affect usability negatively.

My test unit is white, with a pattern reminiscent of mother-of-pearl. It does not actually look particularly luxurious, nor does it provide any surface texture for a firmer grip on the phone. The phone is also sold in a version with a wooden back.

The box includes a transparent hard plastic case. Unusually, the case has no raised edges around the corners of the screen. This means it does not protect the screen if you drop the phone by creating a gap between the ground and the screen, but only protects the sides and back. However, it offers another advantage: the Motorola Edge 70 Pro has wireless charging but no magnetic attachment according to the Qi2 standard. The case does have a magnetic ring, however, which means you can magnetically attach the phone to chargers and power banks using the included accessory.

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a large phone, with a 6.78-inch screen, so it is not a phone for those who like to use their phone with one hand only. However, it is not particularly heavy for its size.

The screen is also very good, an AMOLED type with a high maximum brightness and a 144 Hz refresh rate. Normally, the refresh rate only goes up to 120 Hz, but it can be higher in games. The speakers are also worth mentioning, with clear sound and a distinct stereo effect.

Good performance

The phone is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset. In performance tests, the phone scores somewhat below flagship models, but clearly above the typical mid-range model. For SEK 7,000, it is a genuinely fast mobile, and 512 GB of storage is generous too.

Battery life is top-class, partly because Motorola was early to incorporate silicon into its batteries, significantly increasing battery capacity, and partly because Motorola's Android user interface is itself good at keeping battery-draining background activity under control.

Otherwise, Motorola's user interface stays close to Google's. During setup, I am forced to deselect an absurd number of games and other unwanted apps. Despite deselecting everything I can, I still end up with three unwanted games once the phone has finished setting up. At least they are easy to uninstall.

If you browse through the phone's settings, you can find various Motorola features that you may or may not find useful. For example, I like being able to flick the phone twice to activate the camera and make two chopping motions with it for the torch, while the feature that can display notifications as a glowing edge around the screen when the phone is placed face down is rather limited.

Unfocused AI

Motorola naturally also has AI features; it even has a dedicated button on the phone for activating AI. It is a scattered collection of features that feels a little like a greatest hits compilation of AI functions, such as image generation and a chatbot, and Motorola does not do a particularly good job of giving me a clear picture of how they are useful to me. For example, the app suggests that I ask it to play games, and when I do, it sends me to the games section of the Google Play Store. Right.

The camera island on the back has three cameras: in addition to the standard camera, there is an ultra-wide camera and a telephoto camera. If I compare it with the Samsung Galaxy S26, which has the same three cameras and costs more, the main camera has the same 1/1.56-inch sensor size, which is something of a standard for self-respecting phones. The telephoto camera has a larger sensor, but the ultra-wide camera has a smaller one.

Then again, the sensor is not everything; processing power also determines how much post-processing can be done to the images. When I compare the image results with the Galaxy S26, this is most noticeable in low-light images, where Samsung is clearly better, and in zoom modes that make use of the camera sensor's high resolution. That is, when taking a picture at two or seven times magnification, double the zoom of the main camera and telephoto camera respectively. In a really good camera phone, these images are almost as sharp as if you had not zoomed in; here, they are only slightly better than if the image had been digitally enlarged.

As expected, the main camera is roughly on the same level as those of cheaper flagship models, the telephoto camera is above average and the ultra-wide camera below. Colour reproduction is pleasing, with warm tones, while sharpness can seem a little harsh. This makes details clear when you zoom into the image, but they can also feel somewhat artificial.

I have enjoyed my time with the Motorola Edge 70 Pro. The cameras have not disappointed me, the phone feels fast, and the long battery life in particular has come in very handy. At SEK 7,000, I think the Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a bargain.

Questions and answers

How many system updates is the phone promised? Three major system updates, the first of which will be Android 17, currently the latest version, and five years of security updates.

Can you reprogramme the AI button for something else if you do not care about AI? Unfortunately not; you can only turn it off if you activate it by mistake.

What are the differences compared with last year's Edge 60 Pro? Faster processors, a larger phone overall with a bigger screen, more battery capacity, slightly rounder corners and a better telephoto camera.

An alternative

If you are looking for affordable flagship models, the Poco F8 Pro in the same price range may be worth a look. It is faster but has slightly worse cameras.