Best budget smartphone: Motorola Edge 40 Neo

Table of Contents

Motorola Edge 40 Neo: Review

Okay, so today we have the all new Motorola Edge 40 Neo. This has the Dimensity 7030 processor, 144 hertz display. That’s interesting. Now, recently, Motrola has been doing really good work with their launchers. A few months back, there was the Motrola Edge 40 for around 30,000. It was a good phone. Now, this one, the Motorola Edge 40 Neo , is like the younger brother starting at 23999. The question that has to be asked is, is it a good phone at that price? Well, to answer these questions, we have been using this phone for some time now, so we’ll share our practical opinion on this phone. Stick around till the end of the video. Let’s go. Now, after using the phone for a few days, I would say there are three things that I really found interesting about this phone.

Build and display

First would be the build and display. If I talk about the build, I would say the in-hand feel of the phone is something that I like. For starters, see, it weighs just 173 grams. That is pretty good. Usually other phones have 180 grams or so. This feels very light on the hands. Plus, this has a curved design like the display here is curved, even the back is curved, so it is easy to hold in the hand.

This is just Sam’s opinion. He really doesn’t prefer boxy phones like he was using the nothing phone too, but when we gave him this phone, he really liked it. Besides this, the variant that we have has vegan leather back, and I’m noticing this trend in 2023, many phones in this price range now have vegan leather finish. I, for one, like it because A, it does not break if you drop it, and B, it doesn’t catch scratches as easily as plastic bag, and this blue color really pops in the hand. Also, this comes with an IP68 rating, meaning you can wash your phone, shower with it, do anything that involves water.

Plus, a special mention to this included back cover. Generally, brands give a very basic TPU case that turns yellow in a few days, but this one has this hard cover and also is colored blue. It goes really well with the phone, see? Now, that being said, you have to be really careful while using the phone. You will not find any tempered glass because of that curved display. So in case you drop the phone on the ground, chances of the screen damage is really high. Just be careful. And Motrola is giving some N-E-G glass protection for the display. On the front, you get a 6.5 full HD plus 144 hertzFU OLED display. Now, this is a curved OLED display, and technically, it is a 144 hertz display. But by default, most of the time it remains at 90 hertz. Like on Instagram or YouTube, see, it is 90 hertz. But if you want 144 hertz, you will have to manually set it to 144 hertz. That being said, the quality of the display is really nice. The color, sharpness, and everything is so nice. Now, this is an HDR panel. On YouTube, you can see HDR videos. However, it doesn’t support HDR on Netflix, but that’s not a big deal in my opinion. I have the basic Netflix subscription and videos and all work just fine. Also, these are Dolby Atmos with dual-series speakers, and I’ve been listening to Javan’s soundtrack on Loop. The experience was good. I like the build quality and display of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo here. That being said, it is nothing new because the Edge 40 before it also had a near identical design and display.

Camera

But the one thing that will matter you the most is the camera, because I think everyone now primarily uses their phone to click pictures. On the back, you get two cameras, 50-megapixel main camera with OIS and a 13-megapixel ultra wide angle camera. Now, at first the pictures and all seem nice, like outdoor in the sun, the pictures look good. They are slightly boosted than natural, but a lot of you like, will like that, which is fine. We even took quite a few shots at night. They seem decent. However, if you zoom in on any photo, see, there is over sharpening.

See this portrait shot that we took? Photos look good, but if you zoom in on my face, there is extra sharpening. The HDR could have been better. See this shot? There’s not much details in my white T-shirt.

Now, I say this because we took the same picture on the ultra wide angle camera, and the picture on the ultra wide looks better. Like my T-shirt, my face, even the clouds in the background are properly exposed. The HDR on the ultra wide angle is better than the main camera. We also took more pictures on the ultra wide angle camera, and overall the photos look good.

Also, the ultra wide angle camera can act as a macro camera, and the macro photos are decent. Coming to the front, you get a 32-megapixel selfie camera, and the pictures from this are good. There is a slight warm tone here, but in general, the selfies came out nice. In videos, you can do 4K 30F on the main as well as the ultra wide angle camera, but you cannot switch between them while the video is recording. And you can also do 4K recording on the front, and the video quality, I would say, is good enough for shots or reels. Yeah, from the camera perspective, I would say the main camera requires a bit of polishing.

Performance

But what’s different Motorola Edge 40 Neo have from the big brother, Edge 40, is performance. This is the first phone to come with the all new Dimensity 7030 processor. Also, this variant here has a 12-GB LPDDR 4X RAM along with 256 GB UFS 2.2 storage. So in normal day-to-day tasks like browsing the web, watching movies, scrolling Instagram, all of that, I did not find any lag with the phone. Now we ran everyone’s favorite and to benchmark. It gives an overall antutu score to the phone, so it scored around 5.21lakh , which is closer to SnapDragon 778G. Now to test it further, we also ran CPU throttling test, which runs the CPU at maximum 100% for 15 minutes.

There the scores are decent. Everything is all green. There’s no throttle or anything. So of course, you can easily play games like Asphalt and all of that. Now we also ran BGMI. It can give a maximum of HDR graphics and 40FPS, which is what you get in this price range. We played games on it for a few minutes. There were no frame drops or anything. I would say the performance for the price here is good.

Software

Coming to software, you get motorola’s MyUX skin over here, which is running on Android 13 right out of the box. And motorola’s software game is really good. It is running on near-stock Android with extra motorola features here and there added. Here are two of my favorites.

1. Number one is Moto secure, and it has a feature called Pin Scramble, and this feature is so simple yet so effective at the same time. Every time you go to unlock the phone using pin, the position of the numbers keep changing. Even in public, no one can memorize your pin just by seeing what you type on the phone.

2. Number two, family space. This is more of a parental control app.You can set the apps that your child can use on the phone and have a time limit for it. Once the time crosses, you need to insert the pin to keep using it.You have Motohub, Motosecure, and all of that, but those are not bloatware. These are first-party apps. Even Samsung and Apple have their own apps in the phone. That being said, I must mention a few things that I noticed here. You get this feature flip for DND. If you keep your phone like this, it automatically goes to DND, which is nice. But twice this has happened inside my pocket. If I keep my phone like this inside my pocket, it activates DND, so I don’t want DND in my pocket. Then I took a few calls on loudspeaker and the person at the other end said my voice was not clear. This happened to me twice talking to two different people.

Software Updates

Now, these are not major issues and they can be easily fixed with a software update. Speaking of which, motorola is promising two years of software updates with three years of security updatesof Motorola Edge 40 Neo, which is good as long as Motorola delivers those updates on time. Overall, from a software standpoint, I would say the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is pretty good.

Battery and Charging

Besides this, this comes with a 5,000 mah battery, which has now become a standard for all the smartphones.It easily goes one full day. See, here I have 11% battery left and it lasted for one full day plus three hours, with four and a half hours of screen on time. These are good numbers, but of course, if you constantly play games or record videos, it will drain quicker. Though it does come with 68-watt fast charger in the box, so you can top it up to 50% in about 15 minutes. You get all the necessary sensors, including NFC, in case if you use your phone for tap and pay. Yeah, that was our first impression of the all new Motorola Edge 40 Neo.

FAQ

Is it worth it?

Now to answer the question, is it worth it? Well, that depends on your needs. It is a good-looking phone. The movie-watching experience is good, casual gameplay is good. No major complaint as such, just that the camera could have been better.

What Is price of Motorola Edge 40 Neo

Now, the 8/128 GB variant of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is starting at 23999. And during the festive sales, motorola will be bringing down the price to about 20. And on top of that, you can add flip cards, 1,000 bank offer, exchange discount, all of that.