Motorola (also part of Lenovo) is determined to capture the mobile market, and the Edge 20 Fusion is positioned as their primary midrange device. The Motorola Edge series currently comprises of the Edge 20 Fusion and the Edge 20 Pro, both of which are currently available in the Philippine market.

We got our hands on the brand-new Moto Edge 20 Fusion, which is different but altogether not a complete downgrade from the Edge 20 5G. Although we were initially confused by the naming scheme, their major differences lie in their SOC (Snapdragon vs Mediatek) and their battery. Since Mediatek is a relatively cheaper but equally powerful processor platform, it’s no wonder that Motorola Philippines positions this device as their go-to midrange 5G smartphone for this market.

Packaging and Contents:

See our full unboxing video here: Facebook

The Motorola Edge 20 Fusion comes in a plain black box, as most smartphones come in nowadays. Inside, the device comes with a pre-installed with its clear case, which is pretty cool. The case itself is thick with matte edges on all sides.

Accessories included are the 30W TurboPower charger and a type-c to type-c cable. There’s also the SIM ejector tool, manuals, and a pair of earphones. ADditionally, the device itself already comes with a screen protector, which is just one of the small things that Motorola in their packages that just adds so much value.

Design and Build

For a midrange phone, the Motorla Edge 20 Fusion just seems more premium than most other phones in its range, including the Redmi Note 10 Pro or the Huawei Nova 8i. It’s also relatively lighter (185g) compared to other phones I’ve tested before, with It has a matted finish at the back with the legendary Moto logo in the middle. Sometimes I felt that the phone was not real – it’s so light that you couldn’t think of it as a powerhouse that it is. It’s a joy to hold and behold.

At the back of the phone is the rear camera setup, which is a 108MP main + 8MP ultra wide + 2MP depth sensor, plus an oval-shaped flash. It doesn’t take up much of the space at the back.

At the left side of the Motorola Edge 20 Fusion is the SIM card tray and a customizable side button, which is set to access google assistant by default.

On the right side is where the volume rockers and the recessed power button + fingerprint scanner is located. The powerbutton feels very natural and is slightly angled towards the back of the phone.

Finally, at the bottom is a 3.5mm audio jack, the type-C charging port and a speaker grille.

Display

The Moto Edge 20 Fusion has a 6.7-inch FHD (2400 x 1080) OLED display with DCI-P3 color space and HDR10. Overall, it’s just simply a fantastic thing to view. It’s unbelievably crisp, bursts with color, and exceptionally responsive. It doesn’t have adaptive refresh rate, but browsing through the settings makes users able to switch between a permanent 60hz or 90hz refresh rate. Motorola warns users that the 90hz refresh rate setting can consume more battery. However, it’s truly worth it since overall experience is exceptionally better. There are some situations though that the system seems to be hiccuping slightly during some scrolling/loading – but more on that later.

Internal, UI, Performance

The Motorola Edge 20 Fusion runs on a MT6853 Dimensity 800U 5G (5G-B+) chipset, which is slightly underpowered compared to its beefier brothers which use Snapdragon chipsets. However, it’s no slouch in terms of overall performance. Mediatek designed its budget processor for a reason – to cut down the cost but provide quality processing power. Our unit also came with a reasonable 8GB of RAM with 128GB of ROM, and storage is expandable to 512GB more with a microSD card.

While overall experience is quite snappy, there are some instances though where this budget cut shows, and it’s simply in the little things. Some app loading times lag, some sudden scroll shifts also stutter. This might not be very noticeable for some users, but if you’re coming from a much higher-end daily driver like an iPhone 12/13 or Samsung S21 series, then it’s going to be pretty obvious. (Of course, we might also be nitpicking a little bit in this area.)

One thing that does make this device stand out is its use of an almost stock version of Android 11 for its User Interface (UI). It does have its downsides like the lack of more user-friendly customizations and the small things that some manufacturers like Samsung or Xiaomi do. But overall it’s just much cleaner and doesn’t really come with a lot of bloatware or additional apps out of the box. It should also be much cheaper for Motorola to not develop its own skin or launchers.

For CPU-Z validation, the Moto Edge 20 Fusion shows that the MediaTek Dimensity 800U 5G (5G-B+) is powered by an 8-core system, with 2x ARM Cortex A76 CPU’s at 2.40Ghz and 6x A55 CPU’s running at 2.00Ghz. GPU is an ARM Mali-G57 MC3 which is, although launched last 2020, is still quite a capable GPU to power most gaming experiences.

Gaming Performance

Simply put, we had no major issues with using the phone for gaming. Entry-level games played extremely well and even MOBA games such as Mobile Legends and Wild Rift encountered no issues even at high settings and at 60fps. We were blown away by the impressive performance of the overall system and users who spend a lot of time playing games should have no major issues with the Moto Edge 20 Fusion.

Genshin Impact

For a demanding game like Genshin Impact, we already knew that it wouldn’t be able to keep up, as with most other midrange or flagship devices. It did, however, surprise us with relatively okay performance at low settings, with just very minor stuttering. It is still playable but just a mediocre experience at best, one that won’t be able to maximize the full beauty of the game.

Call of Duty: Mobile

Running this game was a great experience overall, and really showcased what the Moto Edge 20 Fusion could do. Even at medium settings and high FPS mode, the game played smoothly and didn’t get very hot as well even after 30+ minutes of playing.

Benchmarks Result

3DMark

PCMark

Geekbench

Battery Life and Charging

Battery life is definitely one of the key areas where the Moto Edge 20 Fusion shines. With a whopping 5000mah battery and great software optimization, it can easily last more than a day’s full use at around 16+ hours. Coupled with 30W of fast charging out of the box (can be charged to 80% in less than 1 hr), it’s a key feature that Motorola really focused on.

Camera setup and Samples

The Moto Edge 20 Fusion has a triple rear camera setup. It has a massive 108MP f/1.9 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 Ultra-wide camera (118-degree FOV), and a 2MP f/2.4 camera. The front camera is a 32MP f/2.25 shooter. Overall, while it doesn’t stand out as much as other phones, it’s a terrific setup and Motorola made a good choice in putting all these in the Edge 20 Fusion. Additionally, it can record 4K video at 30fps or HD videos at 120FPS.

There’s a couple of other features that this device does that I personally haven’t seen in other cameras. A few ones that I wanted to explore further here are the spot color and the cutout feature, which do come in pretty handy. The cinemagraph feature (isolating a moving part of a scene) was also pretty interesting but I couldn’t really find an opportunity to use it, thus probably not something you would use on an everyday basis.

Here’s the spot color feature in action. It isolates a specific color in the scene and lets you adjust how much of the color should be shown. At 100%, it will automatically isolate all similar shades in the scene. In this picture, it isolated all the reds and pinks in the scene, and everything else will be black and white. However, at near 50%, it will isolate only those much closer to the specific shade of the color you chose. At 0%, it will be just black and white. Pretty cool effect!

Cutout mode automatically cuts out the subject in the photo, and you can adjust how much of the subject can be seen. Of course, it would help if the subject is not too close to the shade of the background. Also very cool option for a phone.

Here’s a quick comparison of its front and back cameras in different modes and lighting conditions.

Macro mode is quite good and details are very sharp. One of the key things that we found difficult though is to set proper focusing – it doesn’t seem to focus very quickly or as accurately as we might have liked.

Overall, while the rear camera performs brilliantly under ample lighting conditions, the front camera drastically changes quality during poor lighting conditions – colors start to fade and brightness tends to overcompensate thus loosing a lot of detail and sharpness. So, as long as you’re not a fan of taking selfies in the dark, the setup will be just enough for daily use.

Conclusion

The Motorola Edge 20 Fusion seems to be an important phone for Lenovo/Motorola Philippines, especially since it’s priced right smack in the chaos of other competitive midrangers such as Xiaomi’s Redmi Note Series, Vivo’s V21e, Reno 5, and many others.

However, while it doesn’t seem as flashy or advertised as heavily as the brands mentioned above, it shines in key areas such as CPU/GPU performance, quick charging, and a fast, bright screen. Its UI is also much cleaner compared to any other interface in any other android phone, which in our opinion is simply refreshing to look at and offer much more user customization possibilities.

It seems to have all the right features but the question now is – does it have enough competitive edge to dominate the market? We think that for now, maybe not yet – but we definitely think it’s one of the best entries in Motorola’s increasing roster of phones, and an exciting series to look forward to.

Motorola Edge 20 Fusion Specifications

Display	6.7″ OLED FHD+ display, 20:9 Max Vision, DCI-P3 color space, HDR10+, 90Hz refresh rate
Rear camera	108MP | 1/1.52″ optical format, f/1.9 aperture, 0.7μm pixel size | Ultra Pixel Technology for 2.1μm 8MP Ultra-wide angle (118-degree FOV) | Macro Vision | f/2.2 aperture, 1.12μm pixel size 2MP Depth camera | f/2.4 aperture, 1.75μm pixel size Video: Rear main camera: 4K UHD (30fps) | FHD (60/30fps) | Slow motion UHD (120fps), FHD (120fps), HD (240fps) Rear ultra-wide angle camera: FHD (30fps) Rear macro camera: FHD (30/60fps)
Front camera	32MP | f/2.25 aperture, 0.7μm pixel size | Quad Pixel Technology for 1.4μm
Dimension & Weight	66 x 76 x 8.25mm, 185g
Processor	MediaTek Dimensity 5G-B+
RAM+ROM	6 or 8 GB RAM, 128GB ROM | Up to 512GB microSD card expandable
Security	Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
Charging and Battery	5000mAh 30W TurboPower™ charging
Ports	3.5mm headset jack & Type-C port (USB 2.0 compatible)
Connectivity	5G: NR sub-6GHz | 4G: LTE (UL Cat 13 / DL Cat 18) | 3G: UMTS / HSPA+ | 2G: GSM / EDGE 3.5mm headset jack & Type-C port (USB 2.0 compatible) Bluetooth® 5.0 Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4 GHz | 5 GHz WiFi hotspot
SIM Card	Dual 5G SIM (2 Nano SIMs, 5G + 5G)
Available color*	Electric Graphite and Cyber Teal
Packaging	Motorola edge 20 fusion, TurboPower 30W charger, USB Type-C cable, guides, SIM tool, protective case, headset