(Pocket-lint) – It was in mid January when the Motorola Edge S was rumoured to appear at the end of the month. And appear it has, following a 26 January launch event – but only in China, where it seems this ‘S’ edition of the phone is exclusively destined.
It’s an unusual move, too, as Lenovo-owned Motorola doesn’t release phones in China. It hasn’t needed to, really, as there’s Lenovo for that (which, conversely, doesn’t really launch devices outside of China). The Edge S changes all that.
So what of the phone? As expected it packs in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor, complete with 5G connectivity, to keep the 6.7-inch LCD screen comfortably chugging along at its 90Hz refresh rate.
You will note, however, that there’s no ‘edge’ to this Edge device. Which is most peculiar indeed. The point of the Edge series, as we understood it, was to deliver a curved screen edge – as seen in the Moto Edge and Edge+ – to make the display almost melt away from the bezel. But that’s not the case with the Edge S.
And with talk of Motorola releasing a G series device with a Snapdragon 800 series processor, could the Edge S be a prelude to a wider global launch under a different guise?
Anyway, back to the Edge S: it also packs in a dual punch-hole front-facing camera setup, while the rear offers a quad arrangement that comprises 64-megapixel main, 16MP wide-angle, 2MP depth sensor, and a Time-of-Flight sensor (we’d argue that’s three cameras as the depth and ToF sensor do the same job).
The Motorola Edge S is expected to arrive early February, but as stated above only in China. It starts a new era for the brand in the East, but otherwise, to our eyes, just dilutes the Edge brand for the wider world.
Writing by Mike Lowe.
