Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a flagship killer. The smartphone offers high-end performance at a midrange price. Developed and released by Motorola, the Edge 50 Pro is a flagship-killing handset that oozes potential but slightly falls short. Some customers spent weeks with the device and have found it to be a mixed bag, costly in some places but disappointing in others.

When it comes to the pros, the Edge 50 Pro offers an impressive 6.7 inch display, which benefits from the punchy and vibrant effects of an AMOLED screen, in addition to a very nice 120Hz refresh rate for silky smooth scrolling. It supports HDR10+ and features a peak brightness of 1500 nits, so it’s perfect for movie watching or gaming. Its design is sleek, with its metal frame and glass back that feels as good in the hand as ever, even if it is a finger print magnet.

Meanwhile, under the hood, you can get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which keeps operations smooth and multitasking and demanding games easily executed. With LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 internals, apps open nearly instantly and load times are next to nothing. And the cooling system also works well, with limited throttling during long gaming sessions.

The 5,000 mAh battery is pretty fit, and will easily get you through a day of moderate use. The 67W fast charging support is also a nice-to-have, since it fills your battery up quickly when required. But that real-world experience went down the drain when the Android 15 update rolled out, as some users began noticing severe battery drain, down to 4 or 5 hours of screen time. And this is a big flaw that Motorola should fix as soon as possible.

In theory, the Edge 50 Pro shines in the camera department, but not in practice. The 1-inch IMX906 main sensor takes detail-filled shots in sufficient light, and the ultra-wide and telephoto lenses offer versatility. But since the update, users, myself included, have reported frequent crashes and lag in the camera app, making it unreliable when it comes to taking swift snappies. The device’s gesture-based quick flashlight does not work for some, and it can be annoying at times.

Further more, where Motorola stumbles the most is in its software. Clean, bloat-free near-stock version of Android 15, no third-party software aside from a few Motorola apps such as Moto App Manager are preinstalled, and even these can be uninstalled if you want to. And the lack of some of the said features – such as Circle to Search and Moto AI seen on more modestly priced devices like the Edge 50 Neo - only exacerbates the disappointment.

In brief, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has solid hardware, but its software drawbacks are too hard to ignore. If Motorola is able to address these quirks via software updates, it has the potential to be a really great mid to high end play. For now, would-be buyers should consider its performance strengths relative to its frustrating software quirks.